playing ground because actors who ordinarily don't have the resources or the skills or the equipment to launch a physical attack against an enemy can do can do it for much cheaper, a digital attack. >> host: do you know have a flash drive got to the iranian computers? >> guest: there are a couple of possibilities. one is that it was there are contractors that work there and the belief is that the contractors were infected and that they became unwitting accomplices in sort of carrying the worm into the protected facility. there are other suggestions that there might've been some insiders who helped and assisted in planting it your there are two versions of stuxnet. the first version like i said doesn't have zero days so it seems to indicate that there was some kind of more intimate

connection with computers were infected meaning that they didn't need to work from outside to get into. maybe the first version of stuxnet was planted there and maybe they lost that access in subsequent versions and the maven the reason why they had to add zero days to spread. >> host: kim zetter has been with "wired" magazine since 2003. prior to that, pc world. ms. zetter, are you a techy? >> guest: no. know i get into tech journalism journalism, not by choice. and then found i really loved it. i don't particularly like gadgets in particular or computers in the sense of taking them apart and programming things like that i love the issues around computers. issues around cybersecurity and privacy issues and civil liberties, those are the things

that attracted. >> host: what was it about stuxnet the passage enough to write about? >> guest: it was multifaceted. it wasn't a simple worm and it wasn't a simple attack and was unlike anything we've seen before. it was just multiple ways of approaching this story and coming added that really fascinated me. i was also fascinated by the opportunity to finally tell the story of the security researchers. i've been reporting on the work security researchers do for over a decade and i think they are brilliant. i have wanted to showcase that work and the skills required to really, this was a mystery, and they had to take it apart bit by bit and to take months before they fully understand what was going to so i wanted to highlight that kind of labor. >> host: so have offensive and defensive mechanisms to defend and attack coming industry in silicon valley? >> guest: not necessarily silicon valley. this is a burgeoning market of

the zero days in particular for the government, for intelligence agencies. there are small sort of beauty to companies that specialize just in finding your faithful bellies and selling them to the government. we also have the defense industry. the raytheon's and those companies that were used to seeing in the conventional warfare realm have not gotten into the digital realm. they have the teams that also looking for of all abilities and designing digital weapons. >> host: is this a case where contractors would use hackers translate the contractors are hackers. so as you've got an essay you potential to become elite teams that are doing the hacking and the development internally but your contract firms that will work for the nsa and design weapons, and zero days on a

full-time basis. >> host: i don't know if you want to enter this or not but what would end all digital war look like? >> guest: you know a lot of people have sort of positive scenarios about this. i don't know that we will see and all digital war. i don't think that digital war kennicott which everything you need to acknowledge in a war. i think it is something more use as an adjunct to -- adjunct to conventional warfare to get assistance you normally can't get that, to get information you normally can't do that. someone was describing to me in world war ii despite all of the carpet bombing that occurred you still needed troops on the ground. i think that's the same thing with digital warfare that you can disable computers you can attack computers, attack systems that are connected to computers bundled link in the in the war person are you you a student boots on the ground and still made to see territory. i'm not sure we will ever see a

wholly digital warfare. >> host: have there been any efforts among the countries in the world to develop standards or at least rules when it comes to cyber warfare? >> guest: we are just seeing that now, that's what was interesting about stuxnet is this wasn't fully developed prior to the launch. in estonia, there was a group of legal experts from the u.s. and some other countries who look into what are the laws of warfare in relation to digital warfare, and whether not they still apply or whether or not we need new laws. they have come out with a huge volume examining that to sort of assist the nato countries in defining rules of engagement and developing the cyberwarfare programs but i don't think we fully have all the answers but i think the u.s. began developing its rules of engagement around 2011-2012. and we are further along than we

were when stuxnet was unleashed and when it was discovered by think there are still a lot of questions we as a society have to edge about how we're going to conduct warfare in this manner. >> host: are their political come is their political opposition to some cyberwarfare by the u.s.? >> guest: the political opposition in the u.s. to cyberwar for? >> host: specific in congress or perhaps the administration. >> guest: there has been very little discussion in congress, on capitol hill and the white house to the white house has never fully admitted to engaging in offensive operations. we are just sort of sitting a peak of this now publicly. all of this has been classified. reports were classified in terms of the development of the operations. no one ever want to go on record. acknowledging it was to building this capability. and as a result of that we haven't had a discussion we need

a. i think we need to have discussions about the use of zero days, about stockpiling of zero days. because when you have zero days and zero day vulnerability that you told them you don't tell the vendor about them that leaves everyone else a vulnerable to these same kinds of attacks from others. so while stuxnet was exploiting 50 days we don't know who else knew about those zero days and who else might have been using them. and so i think we haven't fully explored the full consequences of an attack like stuxnet and we haven't fully explored all of the issues around. there are other issues as well. stuxnet the attackers stole what's called a digital certificate to sign their mellow and make it look like a legitimate code. these are certificates that are owned by legitimate companies. so when you do that when you steal a digital certificate that is a legitimate certificate and use that to a side mount work on

your creating problems for the company itself. stuxnet attackers create an espionage tool called flame which undermined the windows update system which is used by millions of computers to obtain security patches. so when you undermine a system like that you're underwent the trust we have individual infrastructure. we haven't discussed that i society, and partly because the u.s. won't openly admit to committing these tools and unleashing them again until we really examined the full percussions of that i think we're going to be putting critical systems here in the u.s. at risk and endanger. >> host: kim zetter, we have talked for 30 minutes and we started with this. let's end with it. again, the definition of a zero day? >> guest: a zero day is a full ability, so sergei ivanov and jody exploit the vulnerability is executable and software that the vendor does know about and therefore, there's no patch available yet zero day exploit

is the malicious code that hackers developed to attack that hole and attained access to the system and install a virus or a trojan horse or something else on the system. i described the equivalent of a burglar using a crowbar to open a window and again into to house the that's what a zero day exploit is. >> host: and wired reporter kim zetter is the author of this book, "countdown to zero day." thanks for being with the. >> guest: thanks for having me. >> every weekend tv offers programmiprogrammi ng focus on nonfiction authors and books. keep watching for more on c-span2 and watch any of our past programs online at booktv.org. >> while in corpus christi we spoke with robert worcester author of american military frontiers should force the varied roles the military has played in america's western expansion. >> when people think of the military in the american west they think of fighting indians.

there's good reason because there are over 1100 combat actions between the army and american indies and dashing indians. but there are other things that many people don't really understand. michael kate once called is a multipurpose army. in the 19th century the federal government is very limited. they don't have many deployable resources. and so the army does a whole variety of things. they are discoverers, explorers. army contracts are an important part of the western economy. the army plays a role in conservation. in the recent ken burns says on the develop of american national parks, the parks were established in the 19th century but there was no one to protect them or preserve them or

keep trespassers away or keep hunters off of them. and so the army really because of the efforts of the commanding general at the time, the army steps in and literally saves the national parks and to another organization can be created. from our english traditions and revolution and war traditions, we fear a standing army as antithetical to liberty but again it's hard or modern observers to realize because now the military is one of the most trusted institutions in the united states. but that wasn't the case in the 19th century. and so the army really even as late as 18 said the army had about 25,000. it has a lot of job to do and so the army would argue we are too spread out.

the army would argue, would've argued at the time that they don't have nearly enough men to do the things they're supposed to do as effectively and as efficient as they could have. but the american people again didn't see it that way. although they certainly welcome the army's presence. >> the army is often placed in the middle of two competing interests. for example, the army often sees itself as being in the middle of american indians and non-indians who want to take that indian land. that it goes beyond just the indian-non-indian issue. for example, in the 1880s in wyoming of all places to are some riots where local workers are opposed to the introduction of chinese immigrants who are coming to do various tasks. and the army gets called in to restore order and there's this

wonderful scene in the book where you have the chinese console from seven cisco, the chinese consul from new york, a translator and two army officers meeting in rock springs wyoming, trying to protect the chinese immigrants, trying to restore order. and so the army is placed in all sorts of difficult balancing act. and sometimes it does pretty well. sometimes it boggles the job unfortunately. at wounded knee over 200 indian men, women and children are slaughtered. that were about 30 army soldiers killed as well that it's one of those tragedies that didn't need to happen and just a horrible example of things gone wrong, the needless slaughter of hundreds of combatants. i would argue although the last major indian conflict in 1890

that the army continued to see the west as the fundamental importance to its mission really until the spanish-american war. that we know with the vantage of hindsight that the are no major conflicts with indians after 1890, but army officers at the time were sure talk about the possibilities of conflict. so the army remains heavily involved in the west really up until the spanish-american war when ironically it quickly finds itself in a somewhat analogous position in the philippines. here again they are called upon to try to not only call to an area but then to try to provide law and order, provide some sense of order, stability. so in many ways the experience in the philippines are very similar to what many of them had undergone in the west. in many cases this love-hate relationship that westerns have

with the federal government is reflected in their dealings with the army. this is nothing new. we still have it today. i happened to be in washington, d.c. at the beginnings of the modern-day tea party movement, and it was fascinating to me, and i'm not trying, it's not a policy issue, just fascinating as an observer to watch the tea partiers go on the metro, the washington metro system, which, of course, was funded largely by federal dollars that i thought it was ironic that the tea partiers are going to the demonstrations opposing the federal government on this creation of the federal government. and they didn't see an iron in the. i caught the irony of these. westerners take the same very much the same attitude that on the one hand in theory they

dislike the government. they don't want the government, but when they want the government's help they are more than happy to accept it. and so typically westerners are more supportive of the army in congress than non-westerners in the 19th century you can see patterns where western guardsmen were traditionally opposed to the federal government. in part because they want those soldiers there helping them conquer the continent. i think many of those connections to historians in the 19th century, we find it interesting that the army has traditionally not try to incorporate that the army has attempted to focus on conventional warfare. that's understandable, conventional warfare is in many ways a potentially bigger danger

to america's security. it's in many ways easier in that there's an enemy and you know who the enemy is. there's not a lot of fooling around with that. but it's interesting that at least until the 2000s, and we got involved in iraq and afghanistan that the army's interest was on conventional affairs and that runs counter to the issue of the american army which traditionally has handled all sorts of nonconventional operations. in the mid-2000s right as we're getting involved in iraq the army conducted a big study, brought a bunch of dumb historic together and we're supposed to get papers on the army's role to these nonconventional affairs and the interesting thing to us was, well, this is the history of the