talk radio show eric erickson, author of life lessons from a father to his children. then on sunday, our live coverage continues at 1 pm with best-selling author liza monday with her book code girls, the untold story of the american women codebreakers of world war ii. national book award finalist patricia del scott with the firebrand and first lady, ortrick of a friendship . eleanor roosevelt and the struggle for social justice and creative writing professor erin sexton, author of the people are going to rise like the waters upon your sure, a story of american rage. watch our live coverage of the 2017 southern festival of books in nashville this weekend on c-span2's book tv. >> now we join live coverage of the hearing examining the threats posed by north korea. this is a house homeland security subcommittee just getting underway. >> and his maniacal regime

have ratcheted up tensions with the united states at an alarming rate. with the knowledge that north korea conducted 20 missile test on over a dozen different occasions between february and september 2017, including tests of intercontinental ballistic missiles, many americans and our allies around the globe remain on edge. however, americans may rightly wonder about north korea's ability to threaten the homeland. intelligence from the kingdom is often inconsistent and limited, despite these intelligence challenges, information that has been gathered is reason enough for alarm. according to media reports, to north korean shipments to a syrian government agency responsible for the country's chemical weapons program were intercepted in the past six months.

while these reports did not detail what the shipments to syria contained, this is not the first time a north korean ship has been seized carrying suspected missile system components. in 2013, a north korean ship was intercepted in the panama canal with manifests hidden under legitimate cargo parts, fighter jets and rockets. in addition, according to the council on foreign relations, recent estimates suggest north korea's future weapons stockpile comprises 16 nuclear weapons and has the potential to grow rapidly by 2020 to potentially 125 weapons. furthermore, the center for nonproliferation studies estimate north korea has between 20 505,000 metric tons of chemical weapons and as we are all aware with the assassination of kim jong un's half-brother with a nerve agent, those weapons

have been put to use. whether or not north korea intends to act on any of its threats to the us, we must also keep in mind that pyongyang is willing and able to supply weaponry, expertise and/or technology to other hostile nationstates and possibly nationstate actors that are intent on destroying the united states and the freedoms we stand for. department of homeland security repertory john kelly stated in april that the most internet threat from north korea is a cyber threat. north korea's in increasingly sophisticated cyber program had the ability to pose a major threat the united states interest. for example, federal prosecutors are investigating north korea or a role in the international banking system for the swift act that resulted in the death of $81 million from the central bank in 2016. in late 2014 computer systems of sony pictures entertainment were infiltrated with was said to have been in retaliation over

express outrage over the sony backfill centered on kim jong un. with a growing variety of digital press from the private sector and federal networks, are we prepared to safeguard our infrastructure against a north korean led cyber attack while cyber attacks are a serious risk, we cannot discount other possible threats such as electromagnetic pulse or emp and while some believe as a lowprobability , the va catastrophic event, that would result in paralyzing united states and other key infrastructure that rely on the electric to function. disrupting to our power grid would be disastrous according to a 2016 government accountability office or report, the major emp event could result in potential cascading impacts on fuel distribution and transportation systems, food and water supplies and communication and equipment

for emergency services. >> as north korea continues its belligerent actions, the united states must be prepared to protect the homeland from an array of threats. the department of homeland security has a vital role in protecting infrastructure and preventing chemical biological, radiological and nuclear terrorism. this will allow us to gain a greater understanding of the multitude disparity and probability of threats posed by north korea and the department of homeland security how theycan best prepare for and mitigate these risks . the chair recognizes the writing party member of the subcommittee, the gentleman from california. >> thank you chairman perry and welcome all here today. i think you: today's hearing on the threats of north korea and again, i think the witnesses for being here today. i wanted to take a moment to

send my thoughts to those affected by the southern california wildfires. in my district, any folks near and dear to me having evacuated. thousands have had to be evacuated from their homes and a couple of cans, seeing those evacuated are in my district. so my thoughts and prayers are with them as well as others from california. >> i want to thank the first responders for again, doing the work they are doing right now in and around the district. the chairman will recognize the seriousness of north korea and the threat it poses to us. i just want to take a moment to acknowledge that we also have to look at those affected by hurricane harvey, earl and maria and hope you get their attention as well. >> coming back to north korea, america's current diplomatic policy must be cautious and engaging this

individual leadership that appears to be very unpredictable. reports do confirm that north korea is accelerating the physical testing, developing more of its resources to develop cyber operations and threatening to create a multi functional nuclear bomb. we recent actions such as the north korean connected hacking groups that still $81 million from banks in bangladesh show that north korea is getting more daring and much more dysfunctional with their cyber operations. >> from the witnesses today i look forward to hearing from you and how this department of homeland security can protect the vulnerable critical infrastructure cyber threats and how we can mitigate such threats here in our country. further, while the probability of a electromagnetic pulse appears to be at this time unlikely,

north korea has made it clear that it is testing its ability to make a hydrogen bomb capable of such destructionso my question is , is emp something that is a threat this time or very soon. >> speaking on the s administration with president trump, north korea's leader stated that trump denied the existence of insulting me and my country from the eyes of the world, my question is is this anything new or is this what they been going on for the last 20 years. >> i'm interested in hearing today from the witnesses in this panel. what happened to the unthinkable happened. but what would happen if 20 or 30 minutes in that hypothetical scenario but i think it's one that we need

to be apprised of. with that mister chair, i think you and i feel back the balance of my time. >> thanks gentleman. i would also like to join you and echoing my concerns for those affected in and around your district and of course in california, wildfires and first responders as well as the victims of the recent hurricanes this year. the continental united states and our citizens in puerto rico and the caribbean. with that, other members of the subcommittee are reminded that opening statements may be submitted for the record. we had a distinguished panel of witnesses before us today, the entire written statements will appear in the record. the chair will introduce the witness first and recognize each of you for your testimony. mister frank, all right. it is associated vice president at george washington university and director of hunter for cyber and homeland security, he previously served a numerous

positions in the white house and homeland security advisory council, welcome sir, mister anthony did jerry. okay. is a senior fellow with the foundation of defense and democracy , he served that in the treasury department as director of the office of global affairs and office of terrorist financing and spent 13 years in various positions in the state department, welcome sir. mister patrick correll. is a senior research fellow at the center for the study of wmd, weapons of mass instruction at the national defense university, served in the u.s. army corps or 27 years and was the wmd military advisor and deputy director for chemical, biological and radiological defense policy in the office of the deputy assistant secretary defense for wmd,

thank you for your service and welcome. mister jeff green is senior director of global government affairs and policy at symantec where he leads a team focused on cyber security data integrity and privacy issues. prior to joining symantec he served in possessions on the homeland security and welfare committee and as an attorney with the washington dc wall law firm, welcome. doctor peter visits scribe the nationally not expert on electromagnetic pulse or emp. doctor fry was most recently chief of staff of the emp commission and has served on the staff of various congressional commissions related to national security as well as the house armed services committee and was an intelligence officer with the central intelligence agency. welcome sir. >> i thank you all for being here, the chair recognizes that mister soto or an opening statement. >> chairman perry, ranking

member, and distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today. i'm on such a critical set of issues. north korea poses an increasingly complex and multidimensional threat to the us homeland. many facets of the challenge include the nuclear threat, the missile threat and the proliferation threat. my old remarks will focus on the cyber. as regards to the cyber aspect, is not one-dimensional. to the contrary, it may manifest in at least three ways, as a standalone cyber threats, as a component in conjunction with the broader campaign, i.e. military or connect means or as an indicator of an attack or campaign that is yet to come. the cyber equivalent of intelligence preparation on the battlefield or the mapping of our critical infrastructure. i have a conference we close was it with the central intelligence agency last week

, the senior cia official described north korea as between bookends. >> they are tiny abandoned on the one hand and the fear of the us on the other. the official stated further that north korea opposed the united states and that kim jong un defines wedding as changing the game. it is against this background that the overriding revival of the kim regime and the military first policy that the north korean cyber threats must be considered and evaluated. in terms of the bottom line up front, the cyber threat is already here.this persistent, ongoing and comes in various guises and forms. the battlefield includes the traditional airland c space, cyberspace which is simultaneously own domain and transcends all the other domains. my question is if and when the north koreans cyber activity is moving higher up the chain of conflict or going beyond traditional

exploits and cybercrime to bigger and more destructive actions. and if so, what are the primary targets, how can we poorly attack or minimize the impact or contingency planning andbuilding resilience . >> on the high end of the sector in our nationstate, these military and intelligence services are integrating computer network attacks and exploits into their work fighting strategies and docks. >> north korea is one of a small handful of topping the list from the us national security perspective. while many of the details of their cyber warfare capabilities are shrouded in secrecy, we do know north korea is invested heavily in building out their cyber capability. 2015 reports for the south korean defense ministry estimates the north korean cyber army employs anelite squad of hackers. this number is likely increase , and it's worth

noting many of these hackers operate outside of pyongyang in northeast china and southeast asia and while that may not be up to par with the likes of russia or china, what north korea may lack the capability, they unfortunately more than make up for . north korea is engaging in both extensive espionage as well as destructive activities. they operate without compunction, recent reports on covering of classic information from the south korean military and the targeting of us energy companies and other industrial control systems here are troubling and reflective of their united. >> and the attack on sony is one example of destructive activity, there are sadly many more . but perhaps what differentiates north korea from other actors is that they turn to cybercrime to raise revenue, including funneling their nuclear efforts. especially given recent

sanctions that are levied upon them, they then pay as a likely culprit to both you mister chairman and the ranking member has highlighted behind astring of cyber bank robberies as far as poland but also the swift act on central bank of bangladesh , and other crypto currency exchanges and the rental where attack which impacted 150 countries. it passed is prolonged, we ought to be prepared to further fight the north korean cyber crime. while the twist may be relatively new, such behavior is not. north korea has long turned to criminal activities such as currency, pharmaceuticals to fill its coffers and whereas traditionally the forces of crime seek to penetrate the state, in the case of north korea, the opposite is true. the country often uses diplomatic coverage to pursue illegal activities. in essence they are using national collections from all sorts of intelligence for criminal gain or more aptly,

to be compared to a state sponsor of cybercrime. one word on what we do about this. bottom line, we need to train more and better. we need to exercise and think contingency plans are important, make the big mistakes on the practice field, not when it's game day. dhs has done good work in terms of sharing of information intelligence such as cobra where they provided indicators of north korean activity. this is so vital because that's going to be the warning, the indicator that something bigger may be afoot. in terms of the broader threats, other potential scenarios like emp, that will require a broader response and we need to include partners like dod as utilities would be overwhelmed. i hope there's more time to get into that during the q&a, thank you mister chairman >> thank you , chairman now recognizes mister rugiero for

an opening statement. >> chairman perry, ranking member correa and distinguished members, thank you for the opportunity to address you on this issue. north korea's nuclear weapons are expanding after a decade of failed american policy . now we propose a direct threat to the us. pyongyang has threatened our close allies south korea and japan as well as us troops in asia for decades on allied territory. congress of north korea's programs should not be surprising since pyongyang conducted first nuclear test 11 years ago. >> and its long-range missile programs have lasted for more than 20 years. >> pyongyang twice tested and intercontinental ballistic missile in july that could target los angeles, denver

and chicago and possibly boston and new york. >> the regime tested a massive nuclear weapon designed to obliterate cities and could be delivered by pyongyang's long-range missiles. >> these developments are more concerning when you consider that pyongyang has the proclivity for selling weapons to anyone who will pay for them. it's items related to nuclear weapons, chemical weapons and ballistic missiles. among north korea's most troubling relationships are those with iran and syria. the threat we face is a cute and growing, after years of strategic patience, the time has come for a policy of maximum pressure that actually stands a chance of restraining the north korean threat without resorting to war. the trump administration is pursuing a ranch-style sanctions to force north korea to denuclearize. that was all, that protects the us from activities.

both critics and supporters of the b 50 nuclear deal agree that actions were the main driver of that brought ran to the negotiating table. on the success of the second program, the trump administration's efforts clarify the choice we are asking other countries to make . the business with north korea or do business with the united states, you cannot do both. this approach includes diplomatic efforts to convince other countries to cut ties with north korea. reinforced by the threat of losing access to the us financial system. the wall street journal reported that a year-long effort by the state department resulted in over 20 countries cutting off diplomatic or commercial relationships with north korea. and prior testimonies, i detailed laws and the current sanctions regime including a failure to prioritize the sanctions program and the need to focus on pyongyang's overseas business network as well as non-north korea sections of asia.

north korea's shipping network plays a crucial role in supporting this invasion including the prohibited transfer of commodities. encountering america's monetary's resection zach contains several provisions for the department of homeland security and will require it to highlight the role of north korean vessels and illicit transfers in the role of third-party countries to facilitate these transfers. the department must publish a list of northkorean vessels , the office of the foreign asset control currently lists only 40 vessels as block property of north korean designated persons but our research indicates that more than 100 could be linked to north korea. the department of homeland security and other elements of the us government should focus on the activities of north korean length vessels including increasing the number of individuals sanctions in the north korean shipping circles. >> compiling a complete list of vessels linked to north

korea and naming works in china and russia that facilitate north korean sanction invasion. the urgency of the threat calls for the department, should call for the department to take these actions before the hundred 80 day grace period granted by the sanctions laws allow. north korea's nuclear weapons and missile programs are a threat to the us homeland and our allies. they are two basic policy options for the united states. one access this dangerous situation as reality, under the falls, set north korea's provocations can be detained or deterred. the other path was successful in bringing iran to the negotiating table with crushing sections that could force the kim regime to realize the futility of continuing its nuclear weapons and missile programs, the only peaceful way to protect the us homeland is to ensure kim jong un feel the

full weight of sanctions implemented by the us and our allies. you again for inviting me and i look forward to your questions. >> thank you gentlemen, the chair and i recognize mister terrel. >> ranking member correa, members of the subcommittee, my daughter today to testify on the north korean threat to the homeland. these the views expressed are my own, they do not reflect those of the national university or department of defense. we do not yet faced a clear and present existential threat to the american homeland from north korea but it is getting closer each day. the threat will be real very shortly, nevertheless, it's potentially manageable. north korea possesses nuclear, chemical and biological weapons that can at least directly or through others against us vital interests abroad and in the homeland. kim jong-il and kim jong un nuclear weapons development x

progressed at a steady, deliberate pace but with kim jong un we've seen an extreme increase in intermediate and intercontinental ballistic missile testing and nuclear weapons testing to include the most recent one in september. this acceleration has north korea on the verge of road mobile eight icbms available of delivering weapons to the united states.while questions remain about the trajectory of the program, north korea could have by some estimates and a fissile material for up to 60 nuclear weapons. not all of those would be of the most sophisticated design but they could still be employed and whatever midrise warhead they have managed to manufacture to this point could be used against and the continental united states. while the reliability, accuracy and survivability is questionable, we should expect north korea could use these weapons in a time of crisis. additionally north korea maintains a large stockpileof

warfare agents , probably mostly consisting of nerve agents. which while intended for war fighting, korean geography supports rigid employment against the 25 million people living in the seoul metropolitan area which would result in exposure to be 140,000 americans it is living in south korea. and raise the potential for the need to return chemical casualties to the united states or long-term care. the assassination of king john mamma in february demonstrates north korea's ability to use chemical weapons overseas but we know far less about their biological weapons programs. it's believed that given the infrastructure they possess they can conduct research, development and possibly produce small batches of chemical or biological agents. north korea's long history of shipping conventional arms, drugs and counterfeit money to facilitate attempts to move biological weapons into the us homeland while not on

scale achievable in south korea, it could be impactful on the homeland. while no one has clear insight into kim jong un thinking, we can surmise he has two primary objectives. his survival and the continued existence of the regime. to that end, watching iraq and olivia enforced his belief he is more likely to remain in power by demonstrating operational wdm the ability intended to deter attacks. we also know that north korea remains intent on breaking our alliance with asia. and believes that threats to the homeland caused the us to abandon south korea and japan during a time of crisis. we also know that both kim jong un and his father believed they could manage provocation and that by possessing a nuclear weapon, it's believed the us

threshold for war may be heightened, allowing him to be more provocative and belligerent. what can we do about this? the pressure campaign must remain global. it must in our homeland and develop a modern approach to deterrence. regional economic are essential to demonstrating us presence, financial, diplomatic and informational pressures in other regions must be applied to all potential training partners. the us must protect all our territory from north korean attacks and responds should one occur. any of the actions of the department of defense department of homeland security and others have taken prepare for wmd attack by terrorists would apply to north korean attacks against the homeland.we must enhance our preparedness to include planning for, exercising responses to large-scale attacks, perhaps with multiple nuclear weapons. i'm not sure we graph how difficult the logistics will be for immediate lifesaving actions, short-term relief efforts and rebuilding

following multiple nuclear detonations,particularly if one is 2500 miles away in hawaii or 6000 miles away in guam . we need to tailor a deterrence approach to the unique challenge of north korea. kim jong un mustunderstand any conflict with the us will end his regime and he will be denied the effects he seeks to achieve. see how this , his nuclear threats strengthen our alliance and this result is demonstrated not by words but deeds area offering training of our responsibilities, demonstrating our ballistic missile defenses, hardening our infrastructure against and possessing a survival nuclear triad. thank you for this opportunity and i look forward to your questions. >> thanks mister terrel and the chair now recognizes mister green. >> kevin perry, ranking

member correa, thank you. we've been tracking the lazarus group which the us government has linked to north korea for five years and have worked as their targets have evolved and their technical abilities have improved. it's different from other groups in several ways. first, there attacks are unusual both in their targets and the goals of the attack itself. second, lazarus shows little hesitation to engage in activity that other groups might take paul and lazarus targets a variety of industries, many simultaneously and is quick to move from target to target. their technical capabilities have improved dramatically over the past few years and we view them as above average in overall capability an expert in some areas, particularly leave their skill at conducting reconnaissance operations and the quality of their malware has improved dramatically in the past couple years. the combination of this malware and the steps they've been taking an operational security will likely make it harder in the future to direct operations back to

lazarus. in other areas, lazarus has made simple mistakes that at times have her their ability to complete an operation. these are usually relatively basic and we don't expect them making the mistakes in the future demonstrating their adaptability. they then connected to attacks on a wide variety of sectors from infrastructure to government systems to the defense space. unlike other groups that have been connected to nationstates, lazarus has attacked individual internet users en masse. their methods run the gamut and includes denial of service, targeted intrusions, destruction of attacks and the use of ram somewhere. you both mentioned in your opening statement the theft of $8 million from the bangladesh central bank in 2015. that's only part of the story. they targeted as much as $1 billion and but for a simple

mistake might have gotten away with it. they exploited weaknesses in the bank's security to steal credentials and initiated fraudulent transfers. this was a well-planned and sophisticated attack. to cover their tracks, they installed malware which printed confirmation receipts so the fulton bangladesh didn't know what was going on. the threat was detected because they misspelled the names of the recipients of one of the fraudulent transfers which led to inquiries. another lazarus connected attack is the ransom where outbreak that happened in may. this was significant. within the first hour, the national health service in the uk was taken down and the spanish telecom provider was impacted. it was unique and dangerous because it propagated autonomously. it was the first ransom where as a wormthat have global impact. but where while it was good and encrypting data, it was bad at collecting ransom . because of fairly simple coding errors, the coders did not appear to have collected the ransom that was paid by some of the victims. finally, you both mentioned

that they believe the sony attack that was the best known lazarus incident out there, late 2014 they were hit with malware that disabled networks and sold emails. most of the media attention was focused on the salaries of respectivemovie stars and other salacious details . the big story here was the permanent destruction in the united states of a significant number of computers and servers, but one report the attack impacted is much as three quarters of sony systems and the headquarters and the fbi as you know attributed this attack to the north korean government. our technical analysis has linked sony to other attacks including the bangladesh bank heist, wannacry ransom where, or soul which was destructive attacks in korea in 2011, polish bank heist that mister rugiero mentioned.

lazarus is a sophisticated attack group that has a demonstrated willingness to disrupt networks, steal money and destroy computers and data. unlike other major attackers, it can specifically focus on one sector or one industry, times as shown no such limitation. everyone has to assume that they could be a target of lazarus and prepare accordingly. thank you for the opportunity to be here and i'm happy to take any questions doctor fry, you are now recognized. >> thank you for the opportunity to be here to talk to youabout the threat from north korea. particularly the threat from electromagnetic pulse, emp which would result from the detonation of a nuclear weapon . generating which is a emp which is a radiowave or super

light beam that would destroy electronic systems including critical infrastructures that support life in this country and that depend upon them. this threat has been described a couple of times being this hearing as unlikely, i wouldn't recommend that we not use that term in reference to a emp. a better word would be unknown. i suspect people will continue to describe the emp threat as unlikely until the day north korea attacked us, just like we did with the 9/11 attack that the day before it happened would have been regarded as highly unlikely. north korea has the capability to make an attack and does right now constitute an essential threat to the united states. they detonated a hydrogen bomb on september 2 and the new estimated yield is 250 kilotons. that single weapon could put a emp field over not just the united states but all of north america that could cause the collapse of communication, also like sustaining critical infrastructure and it wouldn't be a temporary blackout.

we might not ever recover from it. if we are not prepared to defend our electric grid now and put in place the measures, and if they were to strike us now when we are unprotected, millions of americans would die. look what's happening in puerto rico now and what the consequences of a emp attack would be. they've been without extra electricity a few weeks and many are in fear for their lives. imagine in puerto rico where there was no us government to come to the rescue and they were on their own for a year. you would have most of the population of the island parish if we were there to come in and help. that's what would happen to the united states in the event of a nuclear emp attack which they could do today. and with a single weapon. the intelligence community, the emp commission has been virtually alone and having a more accurate measure of the threat from north korea then the intelligence community

has had over these years. this summer should have had unbelievable experience for those who want to dismiss or minimize the threat. six months ago, many people were arguing that north korea only had as many as 30 nuclear weapons. now the intelligence community estimates they have 60. they were thought to have icbms capable of the united states. now we estimate they can reach all of the united states. the intelligence community haven't had a good record on this. the emp commission however have been right. north korea released a technical report accurately describing that they have super emp weapons at work which would generate emp fields more powerful than that of the h-bomb they successfully tested. when we think of nuclear weapons in the united states we think north korea would never cross the nuclear line.

that deep dark red line that we would very reluctantly cross but those north koreans don't think that way about emp, neither does russia or china or iran . in their military doctrine, emp is part of a combined cyber warfare campaign. the likelihood of an attack is exactly the same as the likelihood of getting into war with north korea. if we get in a war where they feel their regime is at risk, they will use everything in their power including a nuclear emp attack to prevail. how likely is a nuclear war with north korea? it's not just us, it's also a to the north koreans themselves and they are capable of miscalculation. last, i'd like to point in terms of what should we be doing mark we are going in the wrong direction in terms of our preparations for emp. two weeks ago, a senior official at the department of

homeland security described the emp threat as theoretical and something we needed to study a lot longer.that's the plan the us government is on now with their department of homeland security. they want to spend millions of dollars continuing to study the emp threat out to 2020 and beyond. when the emp commission has been years studying the threat has told congress this is a real threat, here and now and we now know how to protect against it. that is all true. i hope that the project called the louisiana project that the emp project started with the homeland security will survive the depth of the emp commission. in this project we have been working with the state of louisiana to prove that we can protect a state electric grid very cost-effectively. people would be surprised if it's allowed to go forward at how little it would cost and it would provide a paradigm for all other states to model. thank you for hearing me out to gentlemen.

i got to try to figure out what we're going to do here quick. -- for quick ... >> .... this is what we are going to do since votes have been called. it's for my question because i am going to come back. i'm going going to go to

mister duncan, mister correa and when the time is up i'm going to leave, we are going to vote and at least you know i am going to come back, if mister higgins or anybody from the other side wants to come back, we will have the option and i hope you guys can stickaround but this is how things work here. with that i will recognize mister duncan . >> thanked the chairman for that and i think the panel for being here. it's been very informative. doctor fry, i'm going to skip north korea for a second. because of your past experience with russian arms treaty verification, could you touch on how difficult it is in iran as opposed to a society and government for our arms treaty folks in the iaea there to do inspection and i'm going to do a follow-up about emp's, i'd love to get your take on that. >> iran has actually practically told us they are

cheating on the iran nuclear deal. there's a military textbook called passive defense that is a major textbook taught at general staff economies that describes an admiring terms soviet successful cheating on arms control treaties during the cold war and how they managed to fool us in terms of the number of weapons, quality of weapons and it's a paradigm to follow for iran. it's there in black and white. congressman franks has a copy of the book which is not unclassified but it's for official use only for government officials but in effect, they have told us in their military doctrine black and white that they plan to cheat on agreements in order to get nuclear weapons. in terms ofthe difficulty, i've written a number of articles on this.there's one of these military bases , there's a photograph that

available unclassified satellite imagery that shows for high-energy polygon lot lines, each one carrying 750,000 volts going underground into a facility. something is goingon in one of thoseunderground military facilities . >> these are the military installations . >> the ieaa has never looked at, it requires millions, that could be running a uranium centrifuge that they have that have not been declared, that could be running something like a chrysler 26. the soviet union had a whole nuclear reactor hidden underground so that they could cheat arms control treaties and make plutonium and uranium for nuclear weapons and cheat on the treaties. something that needs to be declassified is under president reagan, there was a

general advisory committee report on arms control compliance from 1959 to i think it was 1983. which the state department has never allowed to be declassified. it goes through all the major arms control treaties we had with the soviet union, demonstrate how they cheated on every one. we have a long history of bad guys cheating on these treaties , and at least half the problem is our own unwillingness to acknowledge that. because there are interests in this town that are in favor of notfacing reality, that arms control doesn't work . just like there were people around neville chamberlain that didn't want to acknowledge that the nazis and japanese were cheating on the washington naval treaty and others armscontrol agreements that existed before world war ii .>> i'd like to thank the gentlemen and the witness,the chair recognizes the ranking member . >> mister rugiero, very

quickly you talk about some of the things that we can do, failed policies. a question for you and some of the others. have we gone after the bank accounts of north korean generals, business folks? you hit them in the pocketbook at anindividual level, that would get a reaction. have we ever attempted to do that, have we done that ? they lose a couple billion in a swiss bank account and it gets your attention. >> certainly that would be useful. on leadership funds, there's a question of where that money is. you made a good recommendation there that there are countries in europe that have bank secrecy. in 2005, the united states went after the bank of delta asia which was successful but since that time, more

recently we've started to go after north koreans. the issue here is in a lot of ways this money is held in china. chinese banks , they're in the name of chinese companies and ask why it's importantnow to go after chinese companies . >> essentially we like to acknowledge that knowledge and figure out howto get there . >> they're starting to do that now. since may the trump ministration has taken six actions . >> if i can interrupt you. new testing 11 years ago, rocket testing 20 years ago. they should be preparing for that even before that and it's just now that we are fearing this out? >> certainly, it's very quick. >> thank you doctor fry, you talk about peoples not being theoretical but potentially clear and present situation. ask why we reacted to it as a country, is this a question of politics? or is this a question of cost, if the answer is this

is a threat here, we'regoing to have to invest a lot of money in partner systems . >> this is chiefly a question of cost, you can protect against emts effectively, the commission estimated $2 billion, we could protect the electric grid and that's whatwe get away every year . >> i think it's a complex question as to why we haven't entered yet, politics is mostly what have to do it. the electric utilities in this country are not controlled by the federal government. there's 3000 in the ability, no agency in the us government including the us regulatory commission has the authority, has the power to order them to protect others. aspect vast amounts in each effort lobbying against emp. not just emp. >> that's what we're doing through cyber security. >> exactly. >> private sector, so both want to step up and some

don't. agencies, some are there and some are not. in the center, we propose this, the great northeast blackout of 2003, age reread a high power voltage live in ohio and put americans, bathe them to come up with a plan to avoid each tree branch in the future. we can't have 50 million americans, statement 10 years, with the better. >>. >> the chair thanked the gentleman and the chair recognizes . >>. >> mister chairman, in the interest of time, i like to declare my question. >> the chair recognizes ms. rice. >> thank you mister chairman. >> is a question i would put to any of you on the panel, what in fact when presidential certified year-end nuclear deal on the

essential diplomatic solution to the north korean situation? >> i would say that the north koreans are not waiting by the phone to have negotiated settlements. the second is that from my perspective, it's the iranians that are looking for north korea as being there has to a nuclear weapon. the concern i have is there are many people who are suggesting we should stayin the air and deal . and many people are saying we can accept the threat from north korea right now and just deter them. i think that's the wrong message to iran. i think when we are looking at north korea, we have to make sure we underscore that our policy is due nuclear is asian so the iranians don't see in 20 years that they are past the nuclear weapon. >> if i could make a comment on this. >> we have this summer been surprised by the advancement of the missile and nuclear weapons threat.

>> i think the next big surprise that's going to face us is around because we have grossly underestimated the iranian threat. it's the one reads the 2014 international atomic agency report, while they did not come to the conclusion, but members, commission and former members of the clinton and reagan administration, they look at that report, there are indicators, indicators that are already as a weapon, that they may have had a bomb in 2003. for 2003 they were manufacturing required detonators and trying to initiators, that they had conducted implosion scenarios in the end man project while the united states wasn't that illogical phase, we were three months into the atomic bomb. these were things they were doing before 2003. it's been going on in those military facilities. i think they've already got bomb and we will be surprised like we have about north

korea. >> anyone else? >> chairman recognizes ms. marion. >> while i'm looking for my questions i want to do a quick follow-up. read a lot of people who have opined on the iran deal and a lot of folks who did not support the bill are still coming out publicly, even though this, the manner in which the president wants to do it, the risk. >> does anybody have any thoughts on the, on the interim which is being done? >> i'll just leave it at that? >> i like to volunteer my opinion on. >> i think the biggest risk is remaining, and i see it in

the press, i see it from the defenders of the iran nuclear deal describing it as it has constrained the nuclear threat. that is contained the nuclear threat.that's not a fact. if there's no evidence that his has contained and there's plenty of evidence that it hasn't contained the threat, that we have deluded ourselves in this deal into thinking we contained a threat when actually. >> i want to respectfully, do you think the process inwhich the president is following is the right approach ? x yes. >> anything that gets us out of that ideal is going to be in the interest of our survival. >> i want to go ahead and follow up on, just in the last few days between attacking the press and the first amendment, and blaming puerto ricans for the disaster caused by north korea, the president tweeted

the following. our country has been unsuccessful in dealing with north korea for 25 years, giving billions and getting nothing. the policy doesn't work. the president and their administration have been talking to north korea 25 years. the agreements made a massive amount of money has work and agreements violated, making fools of us negotiators. sorry, only one thing will work. >> next week, just heard foreign minister saint when he goes little rock men will be around much longer. >> lastly, we can't allow this dictatorship to threaten our nation and our allies with unimaginable loss of life. he said meeting with top military officers. and finally, we will do what we must do prevent that from happening and it will be done as necessary, believe me. dream, how would you characterize this administration strategy and what are the locations of presidents this policy by 30 foreign policy, especially

considering the risk between the president and his secretary of state, rex keller said to mark. >> i decided expert here, unfortunately i'm not qualified to talk on the merits or lack there of, i'm not capable of responding to that. >> does anybody on the panel believed that the president, his diplomacy by tweeting is the proper way to go, yes, sir no? >> yes. >> mister rugiero? >> i think that's tough to answer yes, sir no. there's a lot in there in the north korean policy. i think the president is right when he talks about diplomacyhas not worked . >> don't you think there's a

threat of us getting into a nuclear war because the president made to something to set off the other side? >> that was going to be my next point which is essentially when you're talking about deterrence it's important to telegraph to the other side will the consequences will be and i think the us and north korea have done that but on both eyes have gone too far. i think there's evidence of miscalculation and it can. >> i have onemore question . >> the gentle lady yields until we come back, i apologize but i want to adjourn this committee this time for recess. a vote has been called on the house, the committee will recess until 10 minutes after the last vote . >> --

>> ... as you heard, the subcommittee is taking a break and heading to the house chamber for a series of books. members are voting on a three 6 and a half billion dollar appropriations bill for disaster relief that includes money for hurricane relief, get really or national flood insurance and wildfire recovery. we see the house live on our companion network c-span as those folks are being tallied. >> the committee is great, i'll show you a portion of today's washington journal looking at the future of the iran nuclear agreements. >> back our table, commerce and david sykes, congressman, the iran nuclear deal. what do you expect to hear from the president in the reporting that the announcement of what they decided will come tomorrow? >> i'm afraid i expect that there's been a lot of news

coverage in advance that he will decline to certify but everybody goes these things through, but that you ran as provided by the terms of the deal. >> why you say and what elements evidence do you have that iran has invited by the deal?>> every body that has looked at this starting with the ieaa, all our allies, there's no evidence that iran has violatednuclear deal because it hasn't . >> what about some technical views that have gone on, whether you heard about? >> there was a technical issue involving a exceeding of the limit with respect to heavy water, that was immediately corrected. the inspections are daily, the inspections are interested. if we want to go, inspectors want to go to places they suspect activities going on,

bar low access to those places so the deal is working as intended. the question is, does the us live up to its obligations. and that's ironic that this country that we view as an international outlier .all of a sudden, the roles are reversed and it's the us is breaking faith, it's the us that not upholding its end of the bargain, it's the us that's breaking with our allies, it's the us making a sympathetic country. that's quite a feat and the president needs to think hard before he makes this decision. i think this is what being predicted, i hope the president to certify as he should, as every objective observer and inspector says that he should. >>

>> guest: into having trying to have both ways. unthankful those more prudent observers or advisors are arouno him. there is this law in place, the iran agreement to review act which does involve congress and it was first put in place to make sure that president obama stayed in line. now it might have the effect would president trump of my passing the worst consequences of his decision. i hope so. i think it's still a very, very risky decision. >> host: how does the law allow himns, es to bypass

decertification? >> guest: here's how it works. it's his obligation to certify. as i said there were all kinds of reasons he should certify. very, very risky not to do what the evidence suggests is he should do. but if he chooses to go againste the evidence and to decertify, then congress does have 60 days under this law to make the decision about whether tos reimpose sanctions. and the president may advise that we not reimpose sanctions, but it's a roll of the dice and it's not one that a responsible commander-in-chief should make. >> host: if he were to revise to not reimpose sanctions what does that mean for the nuclear agreement? >> guest: well, the agreement in place.ffect remain in other words, none of our negotiating partners, we're talking here about china,

russia, as well as britain and france and germany, none of these partners agree with the decertification. they'll think that president trump should do what the pack says, it dictates what he should do. if he goes the other way cannot going to go with them. they are not going to break the deal. they are not going to reimpose sanctions. and so that isolate us bite it also means iran might have strong incentives to stay in the deal. to continue to obey the terms of the deal and to essentially continue working with the other partners. that is what i believe the president advisors hope and expect might occur. >> host: the president the pres said when he wasch campaigning that he didn't think he was a good deal, that the obama administration struck with iran and these otheroo countries, because they believed the deal should also include human rights violations and the proxy wars

that iran wages with hezbollah and yemen and other areas around the world. is there something congress continue to pressure iran onhe those issues? >> guest: we have repeatedly. never about the nonnuclear issues. the negotiators will tell you if they had brought those other issues in and there is plenty of bad behavior on iran's part to worry about, but if they brought those other issues in, the blister missile testing, has the lowest support and so on, then they would have had to give on the nuclear points -- has both support. in other words, that's way it works. you don't entirely get your way. their decision, the right decision, was to make the nuclear deal as tight as possible, to make it as stringent as possible. and really these other issues to do with. they're still a whole raft of sanctions that apply to the nonnuclear violations. american businesses are not doing business with iran,

believe me. because other sanction remain in place and the sanctions as you know, a few be scuba with aston villa put sanctions on russia, north korea and iran, there are many ways that we can deal with this bad behavior. and we need to do that but that has nothing to do with the nuclear deal and that was very, very clear from the beginning. the nuclear deal is as strong as it is because it was focused like a laser being on nuclear behavior. there is not thing iran i is dog that would not be far more serious if they had a nuclear weapon or moving rapidly toward the. >> host: let's hear from billy in miami. >> caller: good morning. i'd like to take this back even before that. i'm 67, and on sunday mornings i go to a coffee club and a small

cement and my age. the conversation we're having now is that we remember how they paraded our embassy personnel out with blindfolds and they were in our embassy and they're going to papers and that. my question is, did iran not invade the united states by invading our embassy which is considered land owned by the united states? it's a small portion of our country is in iran. we all agree on both nine to ten that they invaded our embassy, game over. never given them their money back. that was a dealbreaker in diplomacy and that's why we have intimacy in that. we are so angry, well, moderately angry, that we gave them that money back. that should not have even been on the table. the last thing i wanted to say

is when you see laserbeam, isn't that kind of blindfolded, like when you put on the horse so they can always see forward, they can't see what's going on around them? i'll take my comments off the light and thank you so much for the discussion. >> host: gom. ahead. >> guest: will, the laserbeam analogy i think is quite accurate. the nuclear negotiators wanted to do with the nuclear threat. that was quite clear. you negotiate with your adversaries, not with your friends. so there's going to be some shortfalls from our point of view forie me agreement we make. if we weren't ready to accept that we would never make any agreement. i think the decision was correct to make this nuclear agreement as tight as it is and is the most intrusive, the tightest agreement of this got mes anywhere. and you recount the history with iran. yes, very, veryan negative history. a lot of memories that you bring back, and that makes it all the

more remarkable that we were able to get this international coalition together which included china and russia by the way. it's just a remarkable diplomatic achievement and we need to uphold it and not slide back. now, the question about the frozen assets, these were frozen assets that iran did get back by virtue of abiding by the deal. but what happened to the front end was a basic dismantling of iran's nuclear program. they didn't get a a tiny back until they'd reduce their nuclear stockpile by 97%, until they had dismantled their high-end centrifuges, till unty poured concrete into the center of the arak heavywater reactor. until they did a bunch of things that basically basically took their t nuclear capacity to a

non-weapons grade and also admitted the inspectors, admitted the whole regime that would make sure that it stayed that way. only then,ha only then when the assets return and those were iranian funds that had been frozen by virtue of earlier conflict. >> host: melvin in georgia, democrats. >> yes, i have questions. my question is this. what effect would decertification have on the north korea negotiation? keep in mind also the fact that the north korean also -- moamer gadhafi in terms of what he agreed his program what they did with them. and. then third, what is in the next iranian election they have produced another lead a look at the new agreement that the trump administration, if they were new agreement say suppose we don't like the agreement there can be the rais come disablement say we want to

negotiate a different agreement, a different arrangement, framework, one the previous administration got was a horrible agreement, the same trump is expressing the previous administration got horrible agreement with them? >> guest: very good points. we talked earlier about why president trump is taking a big risk if he refuses to certify or decertified because there is no material evidence of a breach at all the validator to agree on that. number two, breaking faith with allies are partners in this advent our caller brings up the thirdd major point, why would ay country including north korea ever trust us again? is this the way we deal with our international obligations and our international agreements? don't take my word for it. let me read what former prime minister of israel, former defense minister barak said

yesterday about this korea problem. the lessons of a a broken deal would not b be lost on north korea's leader. kim jong-un, and i'm quoting, they will say it makes no sense to go change with the americans. if they can pullwi out of a deal that is been signed unilaterally if they can pull out unilaterally after deal that's been signed after a relatively short time. that's pretty good authority, and it's absolutely right. that's a major consideration. we have one rogue nation involved in nuclear activity, and now this could produce a second one. why on earth would we want to do that? whatever kind of challenges we are going to face ten, 15, 20 down the road, we certainly have protection in the medium-term and it's worth maintaining. it should be maintained. moreover,, if we break this or violate the terms, then we

really damagerm our ability i think to make an agreement with anybody else, including north korea. >> host: you covered the discussed briefly with the "washington post" and senator bob corker, the chairman of the foreign relations committee where the senator said he has been advising the president, this is a few weeks ago before the feud between the two of them, but that he had been advising the president that if you do not certify the iran deal, you are then making it look, you are making iran sympathetic because they have not violated any part of this deal. >> guest: that's my point. exactly right. >> host: what you make of that advice coming from a republican on au deal drafted by president obama? >> guest: i think it's very good advice. i think it's honest, straightforward advice and he essentially got the same advice from the republican chairman of the house foreign affairs

committee. what's going on here, the president seems to need to discredit the works of his predecessor. he seems to need to say he could've made a better deal, and so on, but the overwhelming advice from people like bob corker and from the president's own advisors has been do not, do not put america in the situation of breaking ourtu word, of being the one who violates this deal. now, the president is looking ii think to have it both ways perhaps, but he still has time. i hope that he will reconsider. the most straightforward, most honest, most honorable thing to do would be to certify what everybody agrees to be the case, that iran is not in violation of the agreement. then we can get to work as we

have already. we can get a c to work on the or issues of diplomacy and abilities with iran and other nations. but there's none of this that will be made easier if we are messing up the nuclear deal. the nuclear deal is absolutely basic. >> host: kelly in kentucky, republican. >> caller: i just wanted to say a few things about, well, i respect our president and i like the fact that he wants america strong, america to be feared. and i agree with that completely. i think our government has forgotten other people here that pay their salaries and pay for an awful lot in the world. and i am supporting our president, presidentd trump, because he is looking out for us to honestly, why do we have to be the good all the time? everybody goes against us pick everybody turns their back. everybody has their hand out but they don't respect us from what

i'm going to leave it at the point and have congressmen respond to that question. why do we always have to be the good guy? >> guest: is in our national interest to become the international outlier? look, this notion that engaging in diplomacy or engaging in anything i suppose other than warfare is somehow a sign of weakness. no, this irans deal is a major asset to our country. this iran deal, to have iran nuclear capacity, not just frozen but degraded, that is, that is a win for america that is a win for america. this is an extraordinary agreement. not perfect, no agreement possiblyly be perfect because it is an okay sheet agreement but is is an extraordinary strong agreement. we took the leadership in this. that looks like strength to me to lead, not just britain,, germany, france but to lead

russia and china in that tough sanctions regime that brought iran to the table. and then to hammer out this strong deal. so the way to put america first, if that's what you want to put it, is to continue to lead, and delete honorably and delete in ways that will have others follow. and the one of iran's respect. i can imagine any realistic analysis through american strength or interest that would say president trump should abrogate this deal. >> host: let's go to butler indiana walter, republican purdue on the air. >> caller: thank you for taking my call. i just heard you say that we're concerned with how iran views the united states. my head is hurting just listening to this go on. i'm sorry, and anat ex-military and so i'm not a war monger whatsoever but me out if you

would. >> guest: hackley didn't say thatut but i do think iran needs to view the united states as tough and determined and honest -- actually. >> caller: you also didh, say, also you would think that would be important that iran, if we stay in the deal that that would build respect iran would respect is putting weight, if i can just go to the major points here. it you have a country that signed an agreement with the united states and thea day ther sign it, thousands of people are chanting with their leaders death to america, remember that? death to america. and then we give given hundredd hundreds of millions of dollars back. what do you think they're going to do with that money? you think they will have a charity in the street? and the next question is, is the united states consider iran a state sponsor ofst terror? if you believe that they are state sponsor of terror, if you hear and take their words

solemnly death to america, if you believe andr know that they have american hostages today, and we never got them back, i do not understand for the life of me why you would a thin, given back money, a piece of them. the reason these other countries like russia and china are agreeing with is you don't hear them say death to china, death to russia. they are a totalitarian dishes, brutal regime that throw gay men off the buildings, that make their women subservient. their goal isf to destroy isral and the united states. >> host: i want to have congressmen, given the chance to respond. >> guest: that's quite a list, and you are of course right that this is a a country that is a determined adversary of ours and of israel's. you don't negotiate withae your friends. you negotiate with your adversaries and you negotiate on terms that serve america's

interest and serve the interests of our allies and of these european powers that have joined with us. it is in our interest, just make no mistake about it, this isn't appeasement. this isn't doing something nice for iran. it is in our interest for iran to dismantle its nuclear capacity and to be far distance from any kind of breakout capacity. when this agreement was negotiated they were two or three months away from having an operational weapon. we need to remember that. that was unacceptable, and the agreement was designed to not just contained that but to degraded. before they got a dime back they had taken that 97% reduction in their uranium stockpile. they hadad poured concrete in their heavywater reactor. they had dismantled those centrifuges, and so on. so there frozen assets were released at that point.

that was only after the nuclear capacity had been degraded. let's forget the business about kind of sentimentality towards other country. this was a hard-nosed du. there was no spirit of the deer. the deal was focused very sharply on nuclear behavior, and if other things had flowed from in terms of better relationship that would've been good but as you say that as my large not happen. there was that you were some hostages were released. but basically we still are faced with numerous challenges with iran inre terms of their sponsorship of terrorism and other bad behavior. we have sanctions in place that at this moment are dealing with that and we'll deal with it in the future. we and our allies will. but make no mistake about it, this agreement is in america's interest. that's why we did it.

>> host: on the domestic front the "washington post" with the story about your colleague al green of texas putting forth an impeachment resolution on the floor. it was not brought to a vote, he did not take that next that because of pressure from the democratic leadership. it but had been called for a vote how would you have voted? >> guest: well, i think this president is on very thin ice in a couple of areas. this may be something that any future our institution needs to deal with because the it.titution requires but this rush investigation is ongoing. of course that needs to be completed. we need to know what the evidence is in terms of russian interference in our election and the collusion of thece president or his people in that. we need to know what the russians have on this president, and then there's the area of conflict of interest which is very, very serious, the

emoluments clause of the constitution and the comforts e of interest the president and his family. this is territory where we are going to have to get the facts and understand what our obligations are. in my opinion, congressman the greens resolution was anticipating some of this but was premature in terms of the vote yesterday. >> host: do you thinker it's premature for a billionaire who has donated democrats to demand a party pledge to impeach president trump ahead of the 2010 midterm election? that's the headline in the "new york times" this morning. >> guest: i think for anything like that to succeed of course there has to be buy-in and acceptance of their responsibility from the majority party. we are not seeing that yet. that will depend on what the evidence compels us to do. and that is why we need to

gather the full evidence before no trend what another question for politics, and that is your colleague linda sanchez, -- democrat from california, she said it was time to pass the torch for nancy pelosi and other democratic leaders, to a new generation of democrats like herself and others. do you agree? >> guest: iee agree that we always have to be cultivating new leadership but i disagree and am puzzled by her bring this up in this critical turnaround year when i'm confident we're going to take the house back and we're going to take the house back because the american people outraged with what they see going on in washington with the president but also with the republican leadership of our institution. i have never seen in my whole type in politics the kind of passion, the kind of determination that a see in these ten meetings and then just virtually every encounter i

have.s so there is a great deal of determination i think to turn things around, and our leaders in the house, our group of leaders including linda sanchez are presumably focus on that task. soso to be speculating about future leadership i don't think it's particularly helpful at this point. >> host: harvey who is in virginia, independent. you are on the air with congressman david price. >> caller: good morning. i appreciate you taking my call, and i have a question. did you personally see this concrete poured into the nuclear reactorea in iran? >> guest: no, i didn't happen to ben there but i have on good authority that it occurred and that's the authority of the iaea which is the international inspectionan agency which has a very, very solid track record and actually has beefed up its

capacities considerably to deal with this most intrusive inspection and enforcement regime in history. >> host: congressman david price, thank you very much for your time this morning. appreciate the conversation. >> guest: sure thing. >> again we been bring you live coverage of a house subcommittee looking at the threats by north korea. we are in a break right now as members are attending a series of votes in the house. as a metaphoric members are voting on a $36.5 billion appropriations bill billion dollars appropriations bill for disaster relief. this would be the second bill that includes money for fema hurricane relief debt relief for national flood insurance of wildfire recovery. we expect members to be returning to the subcommittee hearing on north korea in just a couple of moments. while we have a moment a couple

of news stories to pass on. there's been another personnel change in the trump white house. you'll writing about it today. president trump announcing he will nominate deputy chief of staff kiersten nielsen to lead the department of homeland security quote i will call upon the city to confirm this tremendous a qualified and talented nominee. the president said during a ceremony in the east room of the white house. read the rest of that story in the hill.com. also from fox news, they directly to become an american woman and her family from afghanistan where they were held captive by a taliban affiliated group appeared to write a snag today with official told foxnews the woman's husband is refusing to board a plane out of the middle east. caitlin coleman was 32, seven months pregnant when she and her husband josh when were abducted in afghanistan in 2012 by the haqqani network. the couple in the three children also were born in captivity were freed today and negotiate release according to an official from fox news but mr. boyle

refusing to board an american military plane in pakistan fearing he will be arrested and that's according to a a u.s. official. some officials say mr. roberts is fearful of perhaps being sent to guantánamo. the canadian born was 15 at 2002 when he tossed a grenade in a firefight a firefight the killed u.s. army sergeants first class christopher speer, a special forces medic. read the rest of that story from fox news today. aydin waiting for house subcommittee to return to talk about security threats posed by north korea. that he expected to resume and a couple of minutes while we have time we will take you back to this mornings "washington journal" for discussion of the trump administration tax reform. >> joining us at her table as cognitive and bill johnson republican of ohio, a member of the budgeted to talk about a couple of issues and we'll start with tax reform. the president was pitching tax

reform in pennsylvania yesterday. what do you like about the proposal you have heardg so far and where are some provisions that you are not crazy about? >> guest: i can't think of anything that i don't like. there's a lot to like in this tax reform package. about it for a second, makingg america competitive on the global economicic stage, bringing our corporate tax rate down to 20% lower than the average for the industrialized world. that's going to put american businesses back to work. but more importantly this tax reform, i don't like the word tax reform as much as i like tax relief, this is a low income middle-class america improving quality of life, job creating package.

it is really, really going to be good for the american people. >> host: what do you make a bad luck in the los angeles times, the trump promises big tax cuts but gop led congress is thinking about scaling back. this conversations happening on capitolbo hill. the president wanted 15% picky compromised at 20 picky think it's a mistake to possibly go to 22, 23%? >> guest: i'm with the president on this. i started out at 15. i would've loved to have seen us to 15. that puts us in the driver seat where we rightfully 1 should be. where the largest economy on the planet. the bulk of t the global econom. i would love to see us go to 15. i don't see the president by jean very easily off of that

20%. >> host: why do you think some not wantolleagues do to go: as low as 20, they are trying to argue for 22, 23%? >> guest: i'm not really sure what their argument would be. we've got trillions of dollars right now oversees that are sittingt: there. because corporations will not bring that money back into america because they are not going to pay the federal government 35 cents on the dollar to bring it back. i think it'sth very important tt we get the corporate rate as low as it possibly can. remember, budget director mick mulvaney and the president and members of the house, we want to see our growth rate, our economic growth rate get into that three to 5% of gdp rather than the anemic 1.6-1.9 we've been hovering at now for the last eight to ten years. we've got to get america's economic flywheel back in motion and i believe this corporate tax rate getting it as low as it possibly can is part of the

formula to do that. >> host: what you say to republican colleagues who are resisting 20% because they want to preserve deductions and dimples that were targeted for elimination under the white house plan in order to pay for reducing the rate on 35 to 20%? >> guest: i would say the medical back and listen to ronald reagan and what he said in 1986 when he got his taxi from package done. i don't know if remember that speech or not he said look, it all of this effort, i'm paraphrasing, and all that we've done, lawmakers, policymakers, we forgot about one of the most critical factors in the formula, and that's the americanit peopl. i would challenge my colleagues. go talk to the american people for dependent on the jobs that will be created. remember who pays these corporatehe taxes. we oftentimes think of this is big business but to face these corporate taxes? it's the consumers that buy the products that these corporations make. that's who is paying the taxes.

>> host: lets you what ourra viewers have to say. joe up first, republican from colorado. >> caller: first of all, we really need this tax reform. it's going to do an awful lot for regular americans to everybody keeps ranting on the media about how it's going to benefit helped everybody else but right now what we need, we need real tax relief. we don't have it. we needed. we need a terribly. >> host: so far from what you have heard what you think will benefit you and other middle-class americans? >> caller: first of all, the bottom line tax deduction, we don't have, we can't come it doesn't affect, if i take and i tried vital the interest on my home loan, i can't write it off. okay, so that standardized deduction is going to help that because otherwise i got to go through this big itemization process. the whole package helps regular americans like me.

i'm a rancher and i do want to sit there and worked my whole life and pay my taxes and then turn around and p when i go to leave my ranch to say my child, i don't want it, for him to after treatment and pay and pay for halfdo of that of the work i've done all my whole life again, trying to keep t it. >> host: the estate tax appeals to come repealing the estate tax. >> caller: absolutely. >> guest: joe, first of all, i assume you pay your taxes on your ranch as a passive entity like a subchapter s or an llc may become sole proprietorship. one of the benefits of this tax relief package that we put forward is doing exactly what you said, bringing that affected tax rate of 40% down to 25%. we've lowered and our proposal we lowered the tax rate for both

corporations and individual small businesses about 15%. that's big on the global scale. it's going to empower you to put money back into your ranch, to invest in your operations and important like you said you were going to protect what you work for your entire life because we're going to repeal the death tax, the estate taxr in this plan. you have said everything i agree with, my friend. >> host: out in missouri, a democrat. morning.: good he needs to stop and tell what he sang a song. they need to save medicaid before the do anything. if they put all that money back in to that social security and medicaid, then work with the people that were like reagan did in 86, reagan took the social security and medicaid away from us, put it in to k '09.

if you retire like i did, i do pay all that back security. but reagan done in 86. so do not -- rate of what you're doing. you going to take the money from medicaid and social security and pay for your taxes. tell me the truth is that in there because i read it. thank you. >> guest: that'syo not true. that's not true, , alan. i can say i've got an 85-year-old mother. the first telephone call that i got when i was elected in 2010 was not to say congratulations, bill. what to say okay, son, what you going to do now to make sure that washington does not mess with my social security and medicare? because if they do oncoming to live withgt you. of course my second phone call was for my wife is said you better do what your mother said. i'm with you, alan. i believe those are investment at the american people had made into their retirements. you can't roll back the clock and make different retirement

plans at this pointfe in your life. i believe thes federal governmt absolute has a responsibility to honor the pledge and the promise for your social security and medicare just like my mother and millions of other seniors that are within the retirement window. minute taking money out of social security and medicare to pay for this tax program. that's a part of the plan, i would like to ask your guest how they keep saying ronald reagan cut taxes andli raise revenue. his revenue raises was because the following tax cut, i mean as far as his first tax cut was $33 billion on the income tax. the following year he raised taxes $90 billion. and on this death tax, you don't pay death tax until after

$5 million. so howow does this affect averae americans? thank you tragic number one, i don't care how big your family operation is. you've got a lot of family businesses in america that exceed that cap you talking about. i don't think anybody in america, no matter who you are, should work your entire life to build a family business and then you have to pay that off to the federal government when you pass it on to your children. i don't think that's right. look, i can tell you this. what we know is that when you let the american people keep more of what they earn and pay less in taxes where the federal government takes less from the american people, throughout american history we have seen the effects of that come out gets the economy going, how people gain confidence and they invest and they save and to put money back into their businesses.

it createses opportunities for them and their families and their children. i represent a part of the country, appellation, where the average income in my district is summer between 30 and $35,000 a year -- appellation this tax cut will be queued for the people in my district. and i'm retired military guy. and so i can relate to how important these tax cuts are. >> host: what about the impact ofts tax cuts on the debt? beazer cbo numbers, tax cuts that reduce the debt. publicly held debt rose as a share of gdpbl after reagan tax cuts and 81, number one, and bush cut them in 2001. here is the debt as it prices along with tax cuts. >> guest: i think what is missed in the calculation is the effects of economic growth in the formula. that's the same cbo that

estimated that 25 million young people were going to buy into obamacare. they didn't. only about 10 million did. i missed the estimate by half. so i think when you are using static scoring versus dynamic scoring, if you just look at the tax side comee the expense side of the ledger without considering how basis ofse going to grow, how companies are going to bring money back from overseas and invest it in america, the tax base is going to grow. there's going to be more tax generated as a result of that economic growth. i think that's what people are missing. >> host: lets your phone speak e in missouri was a democrat. >> caller: thank you for taking my call and you look nice this morning. first of all, this is the same playbook over and over again. tax cuts will not bring back the jobs. the way you get the jobs to come back is you threaten them with

tax evasion charges. you threaten to put them in jail friday the money overseas, and make them pay their taxes. you know, we are such a corrupt government we got an attorney joe attorney general that is lie to congress twice. why hasn't heen been charged wih whatever that charge is for lying to congress? that's the way you bring back jobs because they are getting slave labor overseas figure hiding their money overseas and they're not paying their taxes. this is nothing but a big scam and we've heard this over and over again. >> host: lets have a congressman responded to that idea. >> guest: steve, i understand your concern but i can tell you this much, and i mentioned it to credit a few minutes ago. it's those companies, how did he earn the money to pay those taxes in the first place? it's the consumer in america that by the products that they offer. that's who provides the money that those taxes are paid from. between regulatory burden, right

now government regulations take about $2 trillion out of our economy every year. that's just the cost of doing business in america. we've made the regulatory burden. we've made america a very business unfriendly place to do business. we are trying to change that it really can change and at beginning of this presidency. we will continue that work we've already taken some regulations off the books. we will be taking others. that simply are not working. not talked about regulations that protect the private, the protect public safety that provide for national security. i am talking about regulations just for the sake of regulating because there are a lot of them out there. when you combine that with tax reform come you going to get companies that are going to invest, that will create opportunities, they will hire more people. this is a real job growth and quality of life improving tax relief package. i i think you'll see at the endf

the day that that is going to y different than the status quo because we're not just trying to do the same thing that's been done over and over and over again. >> host: how to respond to democrats, house budget committee, democrats on the committee putting out a a statement saying the republicans tax reform plan is step one of the gop's three steps to get into the region making american family pay for it. step one, claim economic growth will pay for. step two, pretend to be shocked when the deficit explodes guest: i totally disagree with that statement, greta. that is an easy thing to say. it is not such an easy thing to prove. >> caller: . >> guest: we look what's happening lapsing the seven tax brackets down to three, look at that bottom tax bracket that

goes from ten to zero. doubling the standard deduction is going to mean that millions of americans will not pay any taxes at the end of the day because of those tax bracket is going to be 12%. millions will not pay any taxes as a result of doubling the standard deduction. when you combine all of the benefits of this tax relief package, this is something that's going to be good for low income and middle-class americans. i have a lotca of those in my district. they are telling me get this done. we like what we see. they have seen the postcard sized individual tax filing form. theyhe like it. >> host: what about limiting state andey local taxes? >> guest: i get that and i live in the state, ohio is the state that does have state taxes and local taxes, and i pay a lot of them as to the people that a represent. i i understand that concern and there's a discussion going on about that.

we will have to see how that plays out. >> host: for our viewers who don't know, explain what it is that is being debated. >> guest: what's beingwh debated is in the new tax package at least the way that it stands right now, the deduction that you typically get for state income tax that you pay, or local income tax that you pay, that deduction goes away. keep in mind, , remember where doubling the standard deduction. many people that doubling of the standard deduction is going to more than compensate because you got a look at everything in the balance of it. but for some states that have high state taxes, high local taxes, that's a big, big deal. states like florida, texas, others that don't have state income tax are not so worried about it. i understand that concern and that is a discussion that's ongoing. >> host: do you think the goes away, to eliminate the deduction for state and

local taxes? otherwise you members of new york and california, big states, large numbers of lawmakers who might not be on board? >> guest: i get that. you've got to the cat in the balance. the doubling of the standard deduction, how does that affect the overall, the overall formula in the individual tax category and where do they fall in those tax brackets? there's a lot to consider, and is not just one item. you have to look at the tax relief package in its entirety. >> host: john is init florida. you on the air with the congressman. >> caller: it you want a pro-growth tax policy you need a graduate of corporate business carrot stick application. employee or citizens of high wages, benefits and training, only purchase products manufactured infi u.s., create w chainocator supply infrastructure, conduct

activities which net positive u.s. trade surplus, create including repatriate new jobs for u.s. citizens, noting middle-class and poor u.s. citizen income has a positive u.s. economic multiplier effect going almost complete into local economic stimulation due to the necessity of life expenditures and are 70% consumer driven economy. if you have tax cuts for the rich that in some having a trade deficit. look at nafta. negotiated contract of that in union representation in the post-nafta deals, the southan korean deal, no union, no employee representation. look, we have almost $700 billion annual trade deficit. that's got to be solved. you can't cut taxes on wealthy that don't do pro-growth. a special and wealthy hordes of where trillions of dollars they reported that are not pro-growth and we got trillions of dollars sent overseas. thank you.

>> guest: that was a mouthful. he said a lot and i'm not sure i heard a question in there but let me just say this. this is not a tax cut for the wealthy. anyone who says that it is really has not looked in detail at what this tax relief package does. we go from seven tax brackets down to three with the doubling of the standard deduction, millions of americans who currently pay in the 10% tax bracket. they will not pay anything at the end of the day. that's going to be good for low income and middle-class families. a corporate tax rate coming down to 20%, that's going to be a job created because they will be bringing that money back from overseas now, bringing it back, investing in america, growing their businesses, , indicating again. let me say this. we oftentimes forget this particular kathy 100 year time frame from the end of the civil

war -- >> thank you all for your indulgence and your patients. the subcommittee on oversight and management efficiency will come to order. so the chair without recognized himself for five minutes of questioning and just be a price went back to the five-minute schedule since we don't have boats in pending. let me see if i can get my head in the game quickly. 6000 hackers employed in china and southeast asia. i want to talk you about that a little bit and the indicators and intelligence prep of the battlefield is to get your mind frame. so these hackers that are employed in china and southeast asia and maybe i should also include mr. greene because maybe this is some of this lazarus

folks, i don't know. but do become obvious it'll topper for us to track these people in china. we track them at all? if not china, southeast asia seems like it would be more opportune intelligence target for us. do we track them? do the coaches, the host countries where their operating know that they are there such that we could impose a sanction or some kind of financial penalty or some kind of penalty on that host country that is hosting these individuals? is that a possibility? >> mr. chairman i think that's an excellent question. to clarify, the 6000 is not exclusively those operating overseas but a vast majority are many of them actually do. but it do think you raise a great question, and that's finding levers and points of leverage that we can have with other, concluding allies by the way, where we can apply greater

physical pressure in addition to cyber needs. if you look, if you take, if you look at a photo, a satellite photo of the koreas at night, south korea is lit up like a christmas tree. north korea is dark. so there's very little connectivity there. obviously when we look at some of her own capabilities and capacities, retaliation in kind will have minimal effect and impact because they don't have a whole lot to take down. so when you start looking at these outposts that they do have, i think we do have opportunities to apply new means of pressure and to do think that many of these countries are unwitting to some of these operatives. so i think that is a path that should be pursued and we should light them up. >> and what about the indicators? when you say essentially ipv and these are indicators, talk about

standalone, , the broader campan and then indicators, for instance, keeping with dr. pry, if we were to be, and i think we should be rightly concerned about emp as a method or any of the other things, but let's stick with emp, for example. with the be specific indicators in cyber that would clue us into impending testing, utilization, et cetera? >> i think dr. pry rightfully framed the issue that at the end of the day it's not the modality. it's a question of whether or not they get into the gaping if they get to the game they will, in wholesale if they feel threatened. i think the indicators are significant in terms of potential target selection. but i'm not necessarily sure there would be any specific to emp, other than they're going after the grid.

if there's one critical infrastructure that every other critical infrastructure depend upon, all the lifeline sectors, it is electric, it is of the grid and they could come at that to cyber me obviously catastrophically speedy i can see bluecoat around to some going to try to limit my comments but mr. greene, i would get to you. just hang on a bit but of what you stay with mr. cilluffo. you mention injury marks the targeting of u.s. energy companies. have they done that? do we have the indicators that they have done? can we put that at this point that is known information to us? >> this is now known information yes. there have been action reports put out but information sharing and analysis centers for industrial control systems and for the energy sector in particular. there was a news report that just popped earlier this week specifically about a particular energy comp that was breached, and that's based on information

that speedy and it was breached by the north koreans or we believe that? >> allegedly that's what the attempted. >> i think one thing to notify, to keep in mind in addition to idb where it could signal targets, it could signal intentions, it's also worth noting that you can exploit, you can also attack. in other words, if you're in the system, you're in the system. it all hinges around intentions and if they have a foothold in the system and their intention is to attack, they can also attack. >> ongoing to you at this time of recognize the gentleman from louisiana. >> thank you, mr. chairman. dr. pry, my question to be addressed at you, and for that you can get your head wrapped around where i'm going with this. i'm specifically did asking about north korea satellite program and their so-called space program. in the ksm for satellite launched a of this year.

i read your entire testimony as, assessing, quite informative. he referred to massive intelligence failures, grossly underestimated north korea's long-range missile capabilities, a number of nuclear weapons, war miniaturization, the development of an h-bomb, et cetera. do you stand by the statement? >> absolutely, as does the chairman of our commission. >> moving on, 2004 come you stated to russian generals both being the experts warn the emp commission that the design for russia's super emp warhead capable of generating high intensity emp fields was transferred to north korea. not long after that in 2006, north korea nuclear test

indicated yields that were consistent with the size of a super emp weapon. the timing and indicators of that illegal nuclear test were reflective of warnings as stated by the two russian experts is that correct? >> yes, that's correct. >> a in a super hippie weapon according to your testimony, can be relatively small and lightweight and can fit inside north korea's k ms three or k ms for satellites. these two satellites specifically referring to ksm before because of its in this year, presently orbit the united states and over every other nation on earth through the southern polar trajectory. the south polar trajectory

evades u.s. ballistic missile early warning radars and national missile defenses which also resembles a russian secret weapon developed during the cold war. is that correct? >> yes, that's correct. >> to experts cited in your testimony stated similar concerns one confirming that current ballistic missile defense systems are not arranged to defend against even a single icbm or satellite that approaches the united states from the south polar region. another expert stated that north korea might use a satellite to carry a small nuclear warhead into orbit and then detonate it over the united states for an emp strike. considering the fact that it appears that north korea has had access to a design for super emp

warhead, for over a decade now, according to the russian experts, they were accurate in their predictions of north korean nuclear test two years later and the indicators of the test that would suggest that it was a detonation of a super emp device. would you concur that it's possible or even probable that ksm-4 is currently super emp arm? arm. >> as we are concerned about that. we don't know if there nuclear armed or not but we know kim jong-un is a high risk player. and we think the threat is intolerable to pose an existential threat to our society the passes over the country several times a day and is recommended that the satellites be shot down over a broad ocean area, or over the arctic region so just in case they are used for emp they would go off over an area that would limit the damage to humanity.

but yes, we are very concerned about that. >> would you assess that the emp threat is significant enough, the existing emp threat specifically with regards to ksm-4 would you assess that threat is significant enough to warrant legislation out over this body and suggested to the subcommittee mandating the hardening of our grid and the shooting of our grid as you mentioned earlier in your testimony? >> absolutely. even before the north koreans launched the satellites back in 2008 that was the recommendation the emp commission because we feared exactly this kind of development. and there are two satellites currently in all become one launched in 2012. what i think, they may launch them into future. what the peer to be tried try s create a constellation so that they will in the near term always have satellite in close proximity to north america. it we don't act to defend

ourselves and/or take out the satellites, eventually we will be in a situation where we can't easily take the satellites out without the united states being at risk. >> thank you for your testimony. mr. chairman, thank you for indulging my time and i yield back. >> the chairman thanks the gentleman, deviates from protocol in the interest of time, recognizes the ranking member for the beginning of the second round. >> question, mr. green come in terms of fiber, , north korean cyber attack, motivation undermining the u.s., do you think what's higher probability, then going after crystal infrastructure or stealing intellectual property from us? >> so with the lazarus group which of the link by the fbi to north korea it's hard to say because a of not showing any limitations on what they're willing to do. that got after critical infrastructure. they have gone after financial. they have gone after

intellectual property. a recent report that trend i is talking about is concerned because it shows his probing of the efforts to try to get their way into electric systems. we had a report not lazarus, a different actor just a couple of weeks ago about compromise is of control systems at energy facilities. previously we've seen this actor working on the backend management systems and the two years after that they moved on to the control system. there clearly is an effort. the group that was reported publicly this week has been consistent with the lazarus group. so to see the movie into the electric grid and a public reporting on it suggests to me a renewed interest which is worrisome. keeping of what how come they want you would get better political outcome by going after the grid that you are by going after intellectual property. >> following up on that, train of thought, you go after sony, if you go after bank accounts,

you may be doing it out of a hotel room in japan or maybe somewhere in china, or not based on the fact russian owned company is now working with north korea, you can have those kinds of staffs directly, indirectly. kind of vague in terms of who did it and what smoking gun is. but after you go after our power grid and you shut it down, that's a little more direct of an attack. i mean, that's kind of a declaration. >> if you're trying to track back technically look at who's doing it is going to be the same technical me to see where the attack is coming from. you really see the last hop to an attack actually come from the bad actor. it will called my some else's computer. a lot of the tax that happened in the u.s. database from overseas, the attacking computer is in the u.s. but it's compromised. it's a bot. from that standpoint it could come from anywhere.

and again in terms of the motivations, we've seen the lazarus group over the last couple of years focus on financial gain that has coincided with when the sanctions have gotten worse. the ransomware, wannacry, there was some speculation as to whether the really trying to get money out of wannacry. there's been a robust debate in the media circle that i spend my days in but what we saw in wannacry it was originally miscoded to collect ransom. within i played 13 hours they released a new version when they realize they were not collecting ransom. that suggests to me that actually was an effort to get money and again that coincides with the increase in the sanctions the same thing with the attacks on the bangladesh bank. >> there's a uptick and never to get money. at the same time that was soon after the sony tax i guess what i'm saying perhaps artfully is this group works on multiple different attacks, multiple different goals. >> let me ask you, you seen

those coordinated attacks coming. his art response worldwide been a coordinated defense just like a was we got the ransomware just recently where most of the world reacted quickly? do we had that kind of a coordinated response to north korea? are they part of the folks that we're looking at to make sure they don't surprise us with these kind of attacks? >> with respect to the main actor, lazarus group, there's good corporation to the wannacry response of pop be the best public-private partnership i've ever seen. we were on the phone with dhs and the white house friday night throughout the weekend connecting of our experts. they were sending us indicators of compromise for analysis to worsening the back. so there is a growing at the three to coordinate in cyber response that it's kind of like the snowball going down the hill over the past -- >> i imagine the key to the coordinated cyber response is

time. you have to do it almost instantly, within split seconds. >> when i first heard reports of wannacry i confirmed with our expert that this is really i got almost any response as we have expert talking and exchanging in a matter of minutes. that was very strong. the concern i would have is still somewhat relationship a. >> we need to have that happening that because is a folk i know what they know. it has to be something more structured in place. >> thank you, mr. chair. >> bacher that you think such om and i will start the second round which looks like going to be me because -- are you leaving? >> no comment. >> okay, all right. so it would just be us. we will have a good time together. let me just start with united states and finish where we were headed. the targeting of the united states energy indicators, do you know whether we, the federal government homeland security and

related agencies are aware of the indicators and are monitoring the indicators developing that intelligence, so to speak? >> you know, in general terms, mr. chairman, they are and we recently, federal government recently stood up the counterterrorism, the cyber threat integration and intelligence center underneath the office of the director of national intelligence which is meant to provide the situational awareness of all the overseas intelligence we may have. and including that and combining that with what we may have domestically. >> who was lacking domestically? >> fbi would have different indicators, but the private sector. they are the owners and operators, the want to have better insight into their own critical infrastructures come into the data and in particular breaches. it really is, we talk public-private partnerships and i've been critical saying long noun, short on verbs. we've been taught about it forever admiring the problem but

we're starting to see some genuine solutions. i think this gets to the bigger set of questions. at the end of the day, the private sector is on the front lines of this battle and very few companies when you do business thinking they have to defend themselves against foreign militaries or foreign intelligence services. it's not a level playing field. how can the federal government provide information but the flipside, the private sector provide some of the solutions. it's in weather to come together that the magic is. >> ..

it seems like it should be one of ours. >> i think you should have a specific tiger team set up to deal with the north korean threat in particular. we talk about fiber and cyber deterrence. you don't deter cyber, you deter actors from engaging in certain activity. i do think there's an opportunity to build a team. >> there's nothing currently that you know of. >> i may be unaware but hopefully there's some activity inside the federal government, but is it as whole and wholesome as it needs to be? probably not. >> okay. fair enough. i noticed, please tell me how you pronounce your name. i want to get it right. >> ruggiero. >> okay. thank you.

you said they must be publishing a vessel list regarding north korea. we say they have 40 but you say it's up to 140. it seems to me a bit odd, so it might be out of place, is this the department of homeland responsibility? should it be the responsibility? , and under what kind of authority, and i want to talk to about this 180 day grace period regarding sanctions to get the list. i'm not sure i understand that. >> sure. in a sanctions law that was signed by the president in august, there are some authorities for the department of homeland security. you'd probably have to work with the treasury department in terms of vessel list. the issue with north korea now is it's easy to identify vessels that have the north korea flag for the ones that visit north korea, but they are very good at deceptive

practices where they use chinese and hong kong and other front companies, and we believe that as some of what they are doing in the shipping sector which makes it harder. that is where the delta comes from and that's why we use the phrase at least. there are other less much higher than that. this is an area where my experience comes on the iran side when we targeted their shipping sector and it was very successful. that's an area now were not doing enough on north korea, and i think homeland security could help. the treasury department, state department and tiger team, we don't see that and the u.s. government going out sanctions in this way. i think there is some focus but there needs to be more. >> and there's a prohibition or restriction regarding the sanctions regime. >> when the department of homeland security, that's a requirement when they have to

make decisions. you can do it earlier than 180 days. >> okay, do we know the sale of nuclear materials, and i'm not sure for talking about equipmen equipment, et cetera, do you have any examples we need to be aware of that were maybe not aware of on the committee. >> in terms of nuclear, the biggest case was in 2007 when israel destroyed a nuclear reactor near syria. there were rumors that north korea exchanged nuclear material with libya in that same timeframe. on the chemical weapon side, i detail briefly in my testimony about the syria connections which are not linked to the more recent ones, but talking about chemical weapons, suits and other items, these are relationships that are very strong. >> so at least there's a documented history, maybe it's not updated or current from a

known fact but that might just be because we don't know. >> given my experience, north korea will sell anything to anyone who is willing to pay and there was a time we thought nuclear was aligned in they were willing to cross it but they proved they are willing to do that. >> excuse me. [inaudible conversations] >> i know you have been, you're almost exhausted with your participation here. blister and nerve agents, and i think the world at least fundamentally believes that it was used on his half brother in malaysia.

i have a little military experience as well, my chief of staff is a chemical officer, and with that those eventualities were very concerning to anybody who has any idea what they're seeing there. first of all, let me ask you this. i don't know what your background is but i want to get for the record, conventional artillery. so i think we've assessed that the north koreans have as many as 10000 conventional tubes pointed out the 25 million people living in seoul korea. nerve and blister agent or chemical agents art deliverable by conventional artillery, are they not. >> yeyes, sir.

>> do you know, and can you comment on whether or not ou conventional artillery all require electronics or electricity to operate? >> not all of their tube artillery would. >> so that's just pulling the lanyard. they have sufficient stockpiles according to your testimony? or at least what i read that. >> south korean ministry of defense estimates between 2,505,000 metric tons. >> so that is certainly enough for first-round exchange. what about deliverable for a long distance. you mentioned rock or ballistic missiles but this is literally something, let's take the x, deliverable by ballistic missile? >> they could deliver muster blister agent by scuds, most likely targets would be places.

[inaudible] they would stop force flow. >> but were not talking about those being used against land by icbm. >> not united states or united states territory. >> at least from that delivery system. if they chose to package that up and put it on a ship and somehow deliver it to the west and use some other methodology , as you note it's incredibly pervasive, it only takes a little bit to go a long way, they could use that if they desired in some kind of attack. >> correct. >> mr. green, back to this grou group, do you know how they were identified, and we track them? how do we know, do they

identify themselves or claim responsibility for certain things? what's the story on these folks. >> if they don't claim responsibility, what we do is we see hundreds and thousands of attacks every day and we classify them and analyze them and are able to compare snippets of code, the technique, ip address, different techniques and we can group certain attacks. based on that, the first grouping is 2009, they were reported as being behind some service attacks so moving forward, what we see is code reuse or other techniques and other tools that are reused. >> that's how you identify them. >> correct. >> and then do they call them lazarus group or is that our common terminology. >> that's our name and there are other names but it is a large group that encompasses virtually all of the activity that's been attributed north korea. >> and because you're attributing those actions to different techniques and the

markers that you very discussed, we don't know them by name, individual persons or locations or can we glean that at some point from the work they're doing? >> it's getting harder. often times you can determine back to a location, we can often find with some high level of confidence, a city or a time zone where something is coming from that that's for a variety of means, sometimes we can tell they leave timestamps or they were 95 or they take certain holidays off, they've gotten better at hiding that. would we as a technology company have a hard time doing is saying who's sitting behind a computer. we may know there in a particular eastern european country, but what you see an overlap, sometimes you have criminals working or the work for the government or the moonlight as criminals or you have these groups that will work for the government or be duped into doing it. we leave that to the intelligence committee, that

last mile of attribution of the intent from a technical standpoint is not something we can. >> are these countries, are they typically countries that are not necessarily openly hostile to the united states but not necessarily welcoming as allies in the fight against terrorism or otherwise? can you characterize that either way? >> with the lazarus group, i have to go back, i'm not sure how well we have defined the actual origination point of the attack or the code. we are relying on the u.s. government to tell us if this is a north korean actor. what we can tell is that a certain set of attacks are the same. for instance, when want to cry came out, we knew relatively quickly this was lazarus. we didn't know that initially came from north korea that we knew this was the same actors for a bunch of different

reasons and that became more certain over time. i don't know, and i could get back to you to tell you specifically, i'm quite confidently, nazareth no one really knows who outbreak one was or even what the initial entry point was. that's one that spread atomically on its own once he got one. >> you are a private entity and you report your findings and work with the federal government, the various agencie agencies, whether it's intelligence agencies or otherwise, regarding your findings but you don't really know whether they go the last mile or not? do they ever report that to you? do you get any feedback regarding your input to know if they were ever resolved? or how does that work. >> with respect to attribution to a nationstate, very rarely i can think of where we didn't

find out by picking up the paper or seeing that it has attribute attributed. we do get feedback on the quality of the work we do any assistance we provided, going back to want to cry because it's fresh in my mind, we got a lot of feedback saying this was helpful, what you think about that. that was the uk also. we were working with other countries as well. when it comes to, we were sharing our thoughts on where we thought this was coming from in terms of a connection but we didn't get to your right, we agree with you, we just passed at a long. >> you don't know whether treasury or any other federal government agency has pursued these individuals for prosecution or the host countries for notification/apprehension, you don't know any of that. >> i know they've indicted chinese hackers, the expedited some from ukraine but with

respect to lazarus, we don't know anything. >> okay. we might ask you to, further off the record in an effort to determine what can be done from your viewpoint. it's one thing to identify them, but in my mind, obviously there's a reason to identify them, but if you skip the next series of steps were you go get them or deter them from the host country that may even be victims as well, but if we know when we don't take the next steps, we've spent the energy in the time and the money and then were moving on to the next threat which is coming momentarily. >> from our perspective as a company looking to protect ourselves, were more focused on the house in the who. the who sometimes, there's one

thing you might find interesting. there was a group of security companies who got together a couple years ago for something we called operation blockbuster which was a joint effort to try to degrade their efforts, sharing the telemetry and that's the kind of thing that they're talking about. you see a lot of security companies who are competitors but were all working toward the same ends. to some degree of success it is the proverbial marathon, not the sprint. >> and while you're looking more methodology than the what opposed to the who, i think the federal government has to look at both and were glad you're looking, and your expertise might be in the what , but we have to be interested in the who. you can't be but the federal government is. doctor prior, why did i write louisiana projects on my notepad? >> probably because that's a

project that the commission launched in cooperation with the department of homeland security to develop a plan to protect louisiana electric grid. we don't know if it's going to survive, but our argument has been that we don't have to keep studying the problem for years and years. we know how to protect the grid now, we can do it in a cost-effective way, and the people of louisiana are the people who took the initiative to the public service commission to asset or terry kelly who was then the secretary of homeland security to help them come up with a plan to protect the louisiana electric grid and dhs is currently doing that. they've already done some good work. what we want to end up with is a detailed blueprint that they could actually implement in a cost-effective way that will prove to those who differ disagree that we can do the job now, we can do it with current technology and it can be done cost-effectively and

we don't have the detailed blueprint at this time. >> not yet. >> what will it take to complete it? >> it will take some time, for one thing. right now dhs, the people who would normally be working on the plan are helping out in puerto rico right now. so that delayed it. it will take, once they are over that and they can focus on this plan, it will take three or four months and dhs has been putting 300k into it. it would have been good to have another hundred $70000. the emp commission was gonna kick that in but now are out of business so we weren't able to do that. for less than, it can probably be done for the 300k. >> so you said it's a matter of months, understanding and agreeing we get past the situation and the disaster in puerto rico and less than $200,000 for something like that. why is the emp commission out of business. >> well, we were scheduled

legislatively, that's a good question and complicated, but under our charter, commissions typically last about 18 months. we reached the end of our life and no one asked its be extended. >> did that take legislative action as far as you know or is that something that can be done from a regulatory side. >> it would take legislative action to continue the commission or it could be done by a chairman of the committee, for example chairman johnston has the power to basically continue or establish a commission. he would be able to pay for it on his own. he would have to have the cooperation of the chairman of the senate appropriations committee if it was defunded. however they been working for 17 years. commissioners do not get paid.

i will suspend my questions and i'll come back to you. >> mr. chairman, thank you. thank you for yielding to me, this is a very important discussion, i wish i could spend the time that the chairman has now spent, but i know i appreciate you for that. let me go directly to ms. green and pursue recent reports about north korea's capacity for attacking the grid. we understand, those of us on the committee and shared the transportation infrastructure committee so i've seen all of the nuances of homeland

security and national security and we now have a new hurdle and i think one of the most difficult and challenging parts is that 85% plus of our critical infrastructure is in the hands of private sector. so what, what capacity does north korea have in the attack on the critical infrastructure , what would be their inclination, what i suspect they would say, let me drop my other options and this looks like this is either more fun or more devastating or far-reaching impact, i can readily see how the impact is, what's your assessment on that what's your assessment on our protection against it and on our steps to address something like that. >> i would say the report that came out in the past week has

been about the first steps of an operation to implicate the grid, and the reports i saw were by the group we call lazarus, spearfishing e-mail attempts to get a bridgehead on control system, just any system that these energy facilities, most reports have been successful. when there's one there's usually a lot. that suggests there's a lot of other activity going on and cyber is one of those things where you really are subject to the weakest link theory. eventually they will find a way onto some system and that goes also to your question about the preparation of the grid, generally there's a lot of companies who have taken significant steps in recent years, new york took a very long time to get some relations out but the problem is you do have over 3000 different utilities and you

don't need to compromise the biggest have some kind of impact. in terms of whether we are the area, i haven't seen any evidence to suggest they've gotten onto the control systems, we've seen that with different actors but not yet with lazarus. it doesn't mean they're not trying. one thing that may be in our favor is 6000 sound like a big number of cyber warriors, but it is not as big as some other countries and control system knowledge, the ability to compromise control systems is fairly specialized. i don't know whether they have that, they could be trying to develop that but there's a lot of hurdles to go through as with the product class we see nuclear and elsewhere, it won't stop them from trying. >> do you think we are a year away, months away, years away in terms of their capacity to hack a very vital network here in the united states?

we are sophisticated, we are dependent on technology, our power grid is invariant states of repair or disrepair and technology is questionable in light of the private-sector ownership as to whether the sufficient firewalls are there. you mentioned the concept of breaching someone's technological wall in that there is that kind of activity going on. where do we need to be in terms of the government? i believe we shouldn't be in a voluntary mode of getting the private-sector to be required to document that their systems are secure. we don't have a requirement of secure documentation, and to take down our grid is

weaponry. how far away are they from that? >> i don't know the specifics of their capabilities, but i can draw an analogy to this dragonfly group, even extremely sophisticated, we saw them take about two years to go from management systems, backend systems to control systems. we detected them on their systems earlier this year so depending on their level of expertise, it could take them, it also depends on luck. if they find the right vulnerable system and the right human frailty, they could get on sooner. there is a level of understanding that just being on the system wouldn't be enough. you have to have a certain level of knowledge of the energy grid. i suspect what we sought earlier this week is the proverbial tip of the iceberg. >> you believe there is a well and they're making away, meaning they would be

interested in doing this. this is one of the things they would find attractive or any other country there at odds with. >> i think they're not alone in that there are other nationstate actors. the question becomes the intense and the implications of doing it. with respect to dragonfly, we have reported there are no technical limitations for them to be able to cause impacts to energy operators. the bridge they would have to cross is a willingness to do it and understand the implications to themselves and their own potential retaliation. >> do you think russia would have any retaliation on this since they would engage with power attacks on ukraine. >> i just don't have any knowledge on that. i'm sorry. >> as i see it going on, do i

have it almost right. >> close enough. it's hard to read it from this distance. this is something i think i'm beginning to believe that there are some elements and business choices and the respect we have for the capitalistic system that requires our very keen study, and one of them is the infrastructure of cyber that in the private sector, and what firewalls have an overwhelming impact. i yield to you and i want to go to mr. jarrell. firstly, not all critical infrastructures are equally critical. those that affect the lifeline

sectors and economic security, i don't care how robust everything else is. they are a unique set of entities heard on the russia side, what they demonstrated in 2015 and 2016, a rubicon was crossed in that case. we all thought, could've, should've, would've that these were intentional threats but they all signaled a capability and they followed up the disruptive attack. basically an in-your-face response for the first response. the reason i jumped into this fray, obviously north korea is dependent upon china for much of its support and the like.

you are slowly starting to see russia fill that breach. it is a russian company that moved in to provide internet access service to north korea since the chinese capabilities have been minimalized to have backend capability. i do think you've got a bigger set of issues here. this comes to a point that you brought up earlier. one of the most texting challenges is there are digital safe havens. the vast majority are playing in china and russia and they lack treaties with both of these and we have to be able to extradite them where the

u.s. does have cooperative relationship. this issue ha as complex as it as it is, the cyber issue also has to be seen, it can be seen in isolation of all of these other matters because it really is about the safe haven and russia and china are there , and i think russia is filling the breach that china has been abrogating in north korea. >> i'm not going to look at his direction because his gavel might be moving. i think you should give us, may be in writing our marching orders. don't think that i'm trying to be presumptuous. i'd like to get maybe five points for the message. you can say the safe havens, i'm concerned about the vastness of the private-sector and these critical areas that we've talked about and the firewall that we have, if in the private-sector, if you call us we can come. what more can we do that

strengthens their protection? if in fact their own internal systems are not where they need to be. this is national security issues when another customer dealing with research, it's very important. >> is that question for me to follow up on? >> give me one because i'm going to go to the professor. >> quite honestly, i'm not sure we will ever firewall our way out of this problem. by that i mean the initiative remains with the attacker. if you think of it in the traditional red blue military environment, we have to shape the environment so it's in our best interest. it's not to abrogate all the cyber security responsibilities, but the initiative will always be with

the attacker. the attack surface is growing exponentially. it grows and security still tends to be an afterthought when we start thinking of the internet of things and the network devices that are coming on board. were never going to simply firewall our way out. i actually feel the private-sector has been given an unfair, they're defending against nationstates so we have to level the playing field, and without going into a totally different direction, i think we need to be a little more proactive in shaping the environment so it's in our best interest. >> thank you. i just need to be pursued among other lines. i probably have a different view but i thank you for that view and the safe haven is something we need to ascertain. mr. trial, i want to get to the question of north korea's dange danger, to the homeland. maybe get you, let me say i am a proponent of the non-

nuclear agreement with iran and you might offered, on the idea, that doesn't mean you do not look at the compliance and other elements that may need to be of concern. that is not a blanket, that is a vigilant on the other, propping up assad and other things. when you look to the agreement, you have to look to the four pointers of it. whether or not there is compliance and whether or not at this point they have been negated. i think the point that i make, please forgive me, but i'd like to hear it, where north korea is in their capacity. they can get to whatever their

head of government chooses to say but you are ascertaining that he is where he is even though the country is in the likelihood of his efforts, if you will. that would be helpful. >> with respect to the difference between iran and north korea, very quickly, we have to deal with every country and every threat in a unique situation that that threat exists in. so, approaching each one tailored to that threat is important. where north korea sets with their willingness and ability to attack the homeland today, using chemical weapons, the nuclear program, he has an ability to employ nuclear weapons today.

it's a matter of where can he employ them and when and why would he employ them. understanding north korean rationale, they are extremely rational actor from their perspective. they do things that are in their national interest in solidifying his security as the head of state, in solidifying his security within the region, and he has a population surrounding him that almost nobody remembers a time when the kim family was not in charge. for 67 years, they have all been told, everything that is wrong and north korea is the americans fault. when pushed into a corner, he will have reason from his perspective, he can create irrationality to attack. if he feels he needs to. he is going to try to deter us because he still has two

operational regional objectives to try to accomplish. the family has always said unification of the korean peninsula is important. can you do that in such a way where you can keep the united states from not supporting both korea and japan and keep japan out of a war. can he do this or if you can't unify, he can he reach a peace treaty that solidifies his position because in solidifying his position with just a peace treaty, you can say i have finished what my grandfather started and he sets himself up for long-term control and north korea which is why the global campaign pressure that cuts off funding from the outside cuts off support, we can set position

so the challenge becomes, can he attack us? yes. can he attack us effectively yet? he's almost there. the north koreans have also demonstrated they are not nearly as interested in the actual precision that we may be interested in. if he can attack seattle, does he care if he can attack directly at and hit directly on top of the space needle? no, but if he can hit seattle he can hit seattle. his threshold of use may be lower than ours. we may not be there tonight, we may not be there next month but we are at the point where he will have the ability to attack the united states and with an attend of killing americans. just hurting us a little bit

isn't as important. they remember the campaign during the korean war was if there's sent to break stacked on top of each other, the u.s. will start those two bricks. they will want to inflict as much damage as they possibly can if they attack. >> the gentle lady yields. i have a hard stop. >> i'd be happy to yield. is he allowed to say is one action. >> what is our action. >> if he sees other options being abandoned, we certainly don't have diplomacy. go ahead. the overall means, we are at this point where we have to continue the campaign pressure, we have to demonstrate our resolve and we have to be able to talk to them. it may not be a negotiated

solution but over the entire course of the cold war in deterrence with russia, we talked to the russians, we talked to the soviets. they understood our message, we understood their message. we have to have those means of being able to talk to them so we can have an effective deterrent while we get to a soap solution that hopefully does not include going to war. >> i think the gentleman. >> i just want to finish up, i too am concerned and interested in the satellite array and the capabilities there with north korea, can they launch an emp device from one of those satellites and is it something that's launched, does it come out of orbit, how does that wor work.

>> we are concerned because the satellites, the trajectory, the purpose of this resembles the secret weapon the soviets came up with. that means the satellite has a nuclear weapon inside of it. you orbit the satellite so it's at the optimum altitude. >> you're saying it's currently there right now. >> it is. it passes over a several times a day at that place. all you have to do is detonate it. we don't have interceptors facing south, we are defenseless from that direction which is why it's not a south polar orbit. now that i have two of them there, i find we might've actually seen a dry run of a north korean total information warfare during the 2013 nuclear crisis after the third nuclear test.

that was april 16, 2013 and it coincided with lots of cyber activity attacks but that was the day of the metcalf transformer shooting. we don't know who did that, but when the trained seals when in there, they thought this was a nationstate operation. this was done the way the seals would've done it. in terms of all the techniques on that very day is the day the camas to passed over washington d.c. in new york city. you have events that threaten the western grid and the eastern grid simultaneously on that day. we don't know if it was north korea that did metcalf. >> the two satellites they have now, one passes over new york city, washington d.c. and the other one, they pass about every time they do in orbit they pass another 90 miles to

the east. there are times when it's right over the center and passes over the eastern. >> there are times there are none, but your testimony indicates they would like to fill. they used to be she would basically have to wait 90 minutes. >> we don't know what's in the satellite. >> no we don't. according to the north koreans official position it's in earth observation satellite for peaceful purposes, but kim jong-un a north korean press have actually included it in their descriptions as part of their nuclear deterrent. there are quotations of them from edifact. they've also described it as a

peaceful satellite, but why they would be interested i suspect they would consider disruption, removal, whatever you want to call it that satellite or any of the satellites as an act of aggression. >> sure, but they were -- they were supposed to be launching. one of the requirements that make them illegal? was the remedy. >> i think the only remedy will be to shoot the satellites down. >> why hasn't been done yet. >> i don't know.

>> gentleman you been very gracious with your time. we appreciate your testimony and your diligence of being here and waiting the extra time and then staying after. maybe we will see you again. we hope we have better news or at least improved news the next time we get together. at this time they think the witnesses for the valuable testimony and the members for the questions, members may have additional questions for the witnesses and we will ask you to respond to these in writing, pursuant to rule seven delta the hearing record will remain open for ten days without objection we stand adjourned.

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> president trump will attend the value summit tomorrow. they've been meeting for the past 12 years to hear about key issues.

c-span2 will begin live coverage at 8:45 a.m. eastern with the president's remarks later in the morning. coverage moves to c-span in the afternoon at 2:00 p.m. as alabama senate candidate roy moore and steve scalise will address the conference. sunday night on "after words", historian craig shirley on the life and political career of newt gingrich with his book citizen new, the making of a reagan conservative. he is interviewed by former virginia congressman tom davis. >> this is an era before cable television. cable television was prominent but cable news was not there. was before us cnn and msn. was just little pockets of cable here and there but mostly reruns of i love lucy. there's no talk radio to speak of, just the big media and c-span.

he quickly realizes the potency of giving special orders every afternoon, a five minute speech because it was then being carried over cable 100,000 homes in the country. these to say, gingrich would say, dick, would you go give a speech to 100,000 people and they said of course he would. but that's what you're doing with c-span, with special orders every afternoon. c-span became, he quickly becomes a cult political leader and he's giving 700 letters a week for people around the country to backbench a junior member from georgia who is a member of a minority party. he's already achieving a national following. >> watch "after words" sunday night at 9:00 p.m. eastern on c-span to book tv.

former president bill clinton talked with former canadian prime minister about u.s. canada relations. they share their experiences as heads of state and they looked at nafta. the trump administration is currently re- negotiating that agreement. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> hello,