>> some of these authors have appeared on booktv and you can watch them online at booktv.org. >> booktv on c-span2 this labor day weekend, watch top nonfiction books and authors.

>> watch booktv this labor day weekend on c-span2 and be sure to watch the all virtual 2020s national book festival live saturday september 26 on booktv. >> good afternoon. i'm jane harman, the president and ceo, like me you are probably suffering from zoom 50. however, to in here. this is a very important event and i'm excited. this is one of the zooms i'm really looking forward to. because we are celebrating a new book, an important book by our very own nina janke waits who has done stellar work at the wilson center disinformation fellow, the coolest title ever. since last october. before that she was a scholar

with our institute on russia and ukraine and how to lose information war, russia, fake news and the future of congress. it's an amazing title and is essential reading for everyone on this call and zoom in all your friends. we remember russia successful campaign in 2016 to so distrust and confusion in years ahead of the presidential election but in order to win the information war as nina would say, we need to understand what this information is. i heard her on this topic before, and what it is not. this is false list -- that's different from misinformation which can also be harmful but lacks the maligned intent. it also has broader goals and propaganda which involves the promotion of the nation's worldview. as nina wright quote unlike soviet propaganda which sought

to promote the specific communist centric worldview, the kremlin today divides population around the world with one goal in mind, the destruction of western democracy as we know it, unquote. our democracy, no surprise to anyone on this symptom continues to face tremendous threats of disinformation. issue we face not only another election but also a pandemic which nina will tell us has read shadow pandemic of disinformation of coronavirus. we've done programming on it and washes writing the book nina like the rest of us have no clue the coronavirus was working around the corner but she's done an excellent job keeping up with the changes of disinformation affects more and more of the media lansky. i would like to say her job is to spread information in the world of disinformation and in a book she has an engaging

journalistic writing style with the rigorous look about this spreads virtue draws on the critics. in ukraine which he received fulbright grant to advise ukrainian government on strategic communications. most importantly she does what the wilson center does best, which is to offer clearheaded policy recommendations to the united states and other governments this challenge. joining gene on today's panel are matthew rojansky as well as asha rangappa, former fbi counterintelligence agency, agent who is now senior lecturer at yale university jackson institute for global affairs. please note if you have questions for the panel you can e-mail them to cannon at wilsoncenter.org. or mention us on twitter at the

wilson center. to kick off the discussion now, and it's my delight to recognize matthew rojansky and nina, kudos and bravo, you would are a treasure of the wilson center and write a book in addition to all the of the good work you do for us is just magical come very exciting. over to you, matt. >> thank you so much. i'm going to start things off and going to do that by thinking you enable at the wilson center so much for your support over the past three years, this process was a three-year long process from conception living in ukraine to today from office and it wouldn't of been able to do it without the support of the kennan institute. matt and the kennan institute saw the work of this project was in its infancy and supported it and help give me the room and space to development and, of course, the program shepherded t

to the end. i'm so grateful for your support and i'm thrilled to be with you here today. i thought i would read a little bit from the conclusion of the book which i wrote about this time last year, the end of july, early august when i i was tryig to imagine what this topic future say would look like for the united states if we did not begin to push back against disinformation. not just -- but the domestic valley which is begin to infect our discourse at a really alarming rate recently. again this topic future think you'll find some of the elements are hitting a little bit closer to him than i imagined when i wrote them. imagine if july 2020 and another u.s. presidential election is fast approaching talk in most americans you wouldn't know it. turnout has been on a steady decline since 2020 when a

nationwide democratic party organize social media manipulation campaign sprint. after election day came and went, trump easily won a second term at a ukrainian journalist uncovered this manipulation story was fabricated. it originated from a trial account-based and sochi russia were another troll factory had been operating quietly for years. the story alleged the leadership of the democratic national committee itself had been using russia style social media tactics, with a well-timed tweet from an authentic account in sochi to rudy giuliani, the rumor got its legs and with a single retweet the former new york mayor turned the entire twitter sphere rabbit. and it crossed party lines. it was no matter story was complete hearsay. no one ever reduce the shred of concrete evidence about the whole affair but after the dnc had been hacked and its email plastered across the internet during the 2016 election it lost members and more importantly unaffiliated swing voters.

they were fed by nonstop. in a vicious unending circle the news media reported on the new allegations despite a lack of evidence. it was what voters candidates and parties were discussing. how could believe it untouched? doubt and integrity of the american electoral process bloom. technical difficulties with electronic voting machines were perceived as potential vote hacking, and the lack of investment in the security and improvement of american election infrastructures since 2016 made that theory seem possible. doubt, despite four years of organizing against trump youth turnout reached its lowest levels ever. young people were to disillusion with the corrupt system to participate in. chomps base ever lived turned out in droves. he won reelection and the decoration of the american information ecosystem continued apace.

his administration slashed funding for the public broadcasting station national public radio and fed us-born broadcasters on a path to extinction. this is the ideal outcome for moscow, american democracy once a shining city on a hill is is weakened crumbling in 2028. the debate, dissent and protest in which the u.s. was founded are increasingly foreign concepts. corruption once kept in check by an active media that engaged electorate reaches the highest levels of government. consumed by problems at home, viewers is less engaged abroad and the criminal points to the failings of our democratic system to justify repressions and abroad embrace of authoritarianism inside and outside its borders. this scenario shouldn't seem far-fetched. the united states along with some of the country profile in my book and venerated european democracies were all on our way to a factory version of democracy like, which the tenets of the democratic process participation and protests are under attack.

my book "how to lose the information war" lays at how to avert this scenario and laser how to rebuild our discourse reporting from five countries on the frontlines of the information war, estonia, georgia, holden, the czech republic in ukraine i introduce readers to the people who fought russian disinformation, such as sessa, some muscle the lessons they've learned. the most important one is that people need to be at the heart of the response to disinformation. tech platforms can come with comfortableness, none of them can fact check their way out of the crisis we face but if we educate our citizens and repair the crack in our democracies that allowed troll farms to influence them in the first place, we might have a shot at averting disaster. if we don't i feel our efforts will become another cautionary tale and another example of how to lose the information worker now i'm going to turn it over to matt. >> thank you so much.

thank you jane and asha. nina said exactly right. we at the kennan institute were enormously pleased to have found nina. really it wasn't as supporting nina but her work supporting the mission at a really difficult time for talking and thinking seriously about russia, ukraine, former soviet region issues and anything that had a whiff of election interference. you all know very well, i can imagine england on this call hasn't noticed you can't open your mouth and have a conversation about what's happening in that part of the world without it becoming about american politics. nina comes along with just a doggedly i would say clear commitment to the idea that you can work on this topic and not have it just american domestic

politics or some other kind of political agenda. i want to offer a few further thoughts about why this book is so worthwhile to pick up and read. i have read it and really enjoyed and benefited from it, why the kennan institute was so important to support nina and her work. first is that there's something almost metaphorically perfect about the fact that nina again as a canon fell and was seem like ancient history back in 2017 and is ended up now still wonderfully with us at the wilson senate but in the science, technology and information program as a disinformation philip reeker sounds like a thank you may have on a desktop but it's not that. it's a cool new opportunity that didn't exist back in 2017 but it's not only that incident. it's the fact when you start to unpack a lot of the dysfunctional dangers dynamics and russia's conflict with the

west, disinformation being only one of them, you find yourself quickly when you get to the essence of the issues you find yourself in place that's not so much about russia or u.s.-russian relations. almost something bigger, , globl in nature, something fundamentally human, something about who we are, how we define ourselves, , the conflicts to me the world go round. it's very fitting nina's research model that path was well and i'll come to this in just a moment that i think her final recommendations are just exactly on point in that respect. as opposed to so much of what we see in washington. let me say word about the regional case but use this in the book is organized potentially -- [inaudible] i read a lot of books about the former soviet space. a lot of them are organized in country or regional chapters and a lot of them are not worth your time for that reason. they treat each of these cases

as interchangeable. they will apply the same tired methodologies. they will shoehorn individual players into the same which my call typecast role. who was the champion of democracy in this country who was the kremlin agent in this country? we all know these narratives. nina doesn't do that. these are rich, i think changes the term almost journalistically very well narrated retelling of her own expenses on the grant in these countries to give a rich slice of what it's like to be engaged and public debate in which disinformation features prominently in countries that are by and large in the border region bordering kaliningrad and, of course, the czech republic not what bearing a legacy of comet is nonetheless an quite a bit influence. there's an element much bigger than russia. there's an element that is very

specific to the region, the country, the time it and place. all of that is of great value. then there's the big question race and hope we come to the standard discussion and that's the question of incentives. this is something we as americans need to be thinking very hard about now. we have i would argue one of the most, jingling of free will, rigid two-party systems in the world where the incentives if you are coming from the outside or from the fringe, have vacated you have an id that is not mainstream. if someone is apparently healthy, if someone is stirring up dispute, discussion, debate, chaos that brings more attention to your cause it's very hard in the face of that monolithic mainstream machine to decline that help or distance yourself from it. it's vital that nina phrases in the book as we watch really dangerous fringe elements gain

traction to disinformation in her case studies but how do we address these and the united states in a context where who's to say out of the gate that damages are not needed in our debate? finally i just want to echo her own concluding words in her excerpt that it's about people, it's about education, about democracy and i would introduce the term resiliency. to complete the thought i opened earlier, one of the most exhaustively written about anything also exhausting ineffectiveness policy lane is that of punishing bad guys. we have been in search for a quarter century or more of tools that will work to punish bad guys, whether that bad guy is vladimir putin or kim jong-un or al-qaeda, and we go back

and forth between overuse of sanctions on overuse of drones and overuse of kind of diplomatic finger wagging. what is the normalcy refreshing if i may say so fundamentally cannon about what nina has written is it looks inward. it is self-critical about the way that we are not resilient in the face of challenges that are going to be there, whether there's a vladimir putin behind in order isn't. i find it very refreshing. it is an unfortunate description of an unfortunate reality but it is in that sense very refreshing. i want to give the floor to asha and then we'll have conversation and pipit to questions from jane and from our audience out there. so, please. >> thank you, matt. i wanted to just pick up where you left off in terms of why this book is really important to

america's understanding of this problem, which i think is stymied for three main reasons i would say, and this book actually addresses all three of those. the first is that as nina points out in her book, this is not americans first rodeo with disinformation coming from russia. this was kgb's m.o., the house had curious about this in 1982. we have looked at this, but largely with the fall of the soviet union we thought it was all over. and i think that what nina's book does is it goes through, starting soon after putin comes to power and how methodically the kgb's tactics and methods have been practiced, we find,

incorporated new technologies, and basically as we stood by they have been practicing and finding ways to make this more and more effective as it has crept closer and closer to the united states, and literally caught us unaware because we stop seeing russia as a serious threat. in 2008 i think obama even made fun -- or 2012 obama made fun of romney for saying that russia was a threat. i think what nina shows also with this kind of, our blinders being on and with what she mentioned about russia not being constrained by an ideology is bad it actually gets russia much more flexibility in terms of putting it chemicals into american society, , which is something that was very constraining for it during the cold war.

we have a natural prophylactic because were in an ideological struggle. there were only really fringe elements which could be receptive to time his efforts were as now we see they have made inroads into the right and the left. it's of this kind of global federation, the practicing of all these methods and we could see in each of these case studies elements that are shown up in the united states. in each of these countries there some aspect that is manifested here. it's an important lesson for us. the second thing and this goes along with why we had our blinders on is about americans -- well i guess i will put it here. i went into the fbi in 2002 right after 9/11. it has been all terrorism all the time. we don't think of a threat, if it doesn't involve blowing

things up and dead bodies and somebody trying to light the a e on fire on an airplane. that's when you start taking drastic measures. this i think for americans we are very naïve about this. it's hard for americans to get the mind around, and i think this is just also partly about the american psyche. because we haven't been practiced upon waking these case studies where the developed a certain understanding of it, americans fundamentally don't get it. we think of war -- we are very clear economies in america. war is terrorism or no threat or something like that it with these very clear ideas, and this really, the information warfare really turns this on its head. and i think that these case

studies help show why this is very dangerous, why this is a threat even if you don't see something blowup, or it's not an explosion or something like that. related to that, the third thing i i also think americans are very naïve about the idea of information as a weapon. this i think it's partly a good thing and it's because our first amendment, our constitution offers so much robust, so much space for robust disagreement. our food of the press. we have been conditioned as americans to think of the speech and information as a net positive, and the way that marketplace of ideas come the way you combat bad speech with good speech. we haven't fully understood how the marketplace of ideas doesn't necessarily translate into the

digital space. this whole idea of information as a weapon is what is something we're our mind around. nina does a fantastic job of explaining why this is dangerous and why this can translate. i think the flash mode peace you describe in your first chapter about how information can translate into behavior where people can become puppets and then act out on the beliefs that they are consuming. i think it's a very, very important lesson for an american audience to understand. i think you kind of hit all of these blind spots, these places of victories that i think american audiences have when it comes to this issue, nina. and i hope we touch on all of these because it can be hard to get your mind around. it's easy to say, you know,

yeah, i can check my sources, what's the big deal? why is this really a a probleme should address? thank you for that. i learned a lot from your book and i will admit i am not a person who is an expert at eastern europe and also someone who is affiliated with the media, our media does that do a good job also of focusing on what is happening abroad. we are incredibly ignorant of what's happening abroad so i think that you shine a light on why that is important to us and what's happening now. >> great, thank you, asha. the goal if we can for the next 15 minutes or so is to give people a bit of taste of some of the important takeaways of the book. the single most important one to start with is from all of these case studies and from the history that asha refer to is nothing new, what is it that we can learn that we should of known as early as 2060 but

really that we should know in 2020 and maybe before 2028. >> there are three things that stand out among these case studies and they were not necessarily things that i knew i was going to encounter when i was out there doing the interviews, doing the reporting period the first is a homegrown element to all of the operations that i detail. often americans talk about fake news as if it is stuff that is just purely cut and dry think. i had a conversation with my editor but the subtitle because i didn't love the fake news was in it. but it is a signpost for people. the terminology is wrong. the best disinformation that is grounded in real feelings of the most successful operation to use these homegrown actors in order to get them out there. in estonia in 2007 russia was able to manipulate the russian ethnic population in estonia in

order to foment unrest in order to cure at cyber attacks from abroad on estonia and in order to undermine this newly transatlantic countries future in the block. little did russia know that this would become a stone use brand as defendant of cyberspace. that was flipped on its head. and all of the other case studies come in poland using the 2010 plane crash that killed their president in the czech republic using anti-muslim sentiment in order to foment discord, and in the netherlands in 2016 when the netherlands voting on a referendum for ukraine's association agreement, using the dutch kind of eu skepticism, euro skepticism against ukraine not only to undermine eu unity of undermine ukraine's support in the euro atlantic community. all of these things are

pre-existing fissures and they are brought forth by homegrown actors and also touched upon the example in the first chapter of the book which is published as an exit by "politico" magazines this past weekend. anyone who wants to get a taste of it can look that up. it's about a flash mob that was a musical, joe to flash mob in front of the white house in 20 stenting when a left-leaning group had been supported by russian actors took what and do this flash mob and get a large amount of attendees through facebook advertising. so homegrown actors is a a huge part of it. but all of these countries that have a somewhat successful response, as i noted in the efforts and to accept a register, all address people participation in this equation. the address education, journalism and the media as a public good, and they are investing in these long-term and generational solutions to help people navigate the information environment they are in, the information ecosystem that is

now rapidly degrading. rather than just playing whack-a-mole and trying to a limited fake accounts and bad actors online. and then the 13 i think is we cannot fight disinformation coming from abroad when we we'e using it ourselves. i saw this playing out in georgia last summer when i was there during the protests that broke out after a russian parliamentarian appeared in georgian parliament during a french kind of orthodox conference they were having their and the georgian people not having that, and yet the ruling party was using disinformation in order to spread a different narrative about what had happened. it is happening in poland. we are seeing this in the lead up to their election this week it and it's happening here in the united states as for the our national security doctrine with people i know across the federal government, many folks on both sides of the aisle on capitol hill really believe this is an issue that is a threat, yet all

of that could work is undermined by things happening unfortunately in the executive branch and narratives that are being spread from the white house itself sometimes. that is very disturbing to me. we cannot fight disinformation coming from abroad and not only from russia by china and iran and venezuela, if we are creating it and using it on her own people. that is the biggest one for me as we head into this election cycle. >> lets stop for just a man under last point there, and want to bring in asha as well. first i am curious can you give a broader across-the-board assessment of where i trended is maybe successful? the picture sounds pretty bleak. are there any areas where we do a good job as a matter of policy? on the other side of the equation, yeah, it may very well be true that the government shoots itself in the foot in terms of the response that there is not enough political level what about the heirs of which may be just the phenomenon of

the government is the problem, is not, people distrust government and that can't be about the current political moment that that movement has been around for 30 years. people feel there's an elite cabal of people to address their agenda and national security terms here in washington to try to control everything and, therefore, the opposite of what they say has a good chance of being true, the conspiracy crowd if you will. .. ironically, i think the government is ill-placed to solve the problem even if there were political will, as nina

noted. when i was in the fbi i worked perception management cases and these are foreign intelligence operations that are trying to engage in propaganda and disinformation and they're very difficult to work, because there's no punishment that you can really put-- you can't censoh them. what russia takes advantage of is open society and free press. and what is lack of technological savvy among congress. they're very-- they're older and they're not necessarily using these technologies or they don't fully understand the model so they're very-- they're not going to be in a great place to regulate them and even regulation can't keep up with the pace of

technological place and become obsolete. what i'll say about government response is that, you know, as an intelligence operations the way that you neutralize disinformation is through exposure. in other words, disinformation can only work if you're duped into believing the information is coming from, say, an organic source, a fellow america. it's a flash mob their fellow progressives putting it together. when you know the source of it, it ceases to have the same power and in this way, i think that this book, i think things like the special council indictment of the rush shup nationals and the companies that were engaging in the social media influence operations, the exposure is very important because that breaks down really the entire power of the operation. that's what i would say.

i think the government is-- and i think you addressed this in your conclusion, nina. we are-- if we're expecting the government to save us, it's not going to happen. i mean, the government can engage in strong deterrent tactics as a foreign policy response against putin, but as far as stopping the disinformation, that isn't going to happen. this is about equipping the populous and matt, you mention add important thing that i hope we get to. there needs to be a rebuilding of social trust among americans that will then also act as a prophylactic, i think in countries, i think that japan would be a very difficult country to infiltrate with disinformation. it's a country with strong trust among its citizens so i would say, i'm sure you have more to add. >> a great jumping off point to me and i'll get to some of the

investments i think we should be making in kind of citizens' oriented space as i call it, but the place that i think is doing a good job in awareness raising and kind of exposure elements that asha was talking about it the department of homeland security cyber infrastructure, i think they had a campaign how disinformation works relative to pineapple on pizza and pits people people against other whether they like pineapple on pizza and it shows how discord is created on-line. it's not about changing votes. it's distracting and discord. and i hope they get funding not only for those campaigns, but the infrastructure and that's one of their main jobs. other parts of the government, i think, are suffering from being a bit siloed and having

too small a mandate essentially and so the global engagement center at the state department had some fantastic people there, some real experts, but they are focused on programming abroad, which is great. but we're not repairing the fissures in our own society when we're just projecting outward and that's something we really have not invested in yet. there are several bills stuck in congress unfortunately because they have been politicized that deal not only with transparency on social media, such as the honest ads act. but about education and awareness building. and senator klobuchar has an education bill stuck in committee as well. and i hope to see more investments in that area and of course, it's difficult with the way our federal education system works. you can't tell states what to do, but you can give them grants, right, to develop this curriculum together with experts, to implement it, not only through our schools, but through voting age populations as well through things like

libraries, as well as civil society organizations that are locally based in states. so, that's something that i would really love to see. and more investments in public media. one of the reasons i decided to read that excerpt today is not just to pat myself on the back and say, look how prescient i was, but because today we had news that the u.s. agency for global media with overseas voice of america and radio-free europe is cracking down even more on kind of the freedom that the journalists there were enjoying and there was news that the foreign journalists who work for those agencies won't get their visas, renewed at the end of their visas, which i think is a shame. and these are two vectors in our region, matt that i think have a huge positive impact. a really good brand association, in our region, and the fact that the government is trying to dismantle them at this moment is something that i feel really, really strongly about and i think it's a real

mistake, so i would caution that for anyone who might be listening is dealing with that policy to revert back because i think those are jewels in the crown. they are established. i know matt and i have both gone on voice of america programs very recently and we do that because we know that it's worth investing in. nina-- >> go ahead, please. i want to ask nina her first point two responses ago about russia exploiting fissures in each-- in these countries. and one of the things that struck me about when i was reading your book is, you know, how in the weeds russia is about, you know, with knowing, knowing its enemy, right? it understands that, you know, poland is indifferent than

astona and knows what gold good old to tweak and i was especially struck by your case study of poland and after the plane crash, you mentioned that one of the things that russia did, it was a very simple move, but it was so effective was that they wouldn't provide any-- they wouldn't provide the wreckage from the plane or anything and i saw this as an example after flex of control. right. they just withheld this and knew what happened, it would foster conspiracy theories because you withhold the information and that we'd just take on and so, you you don't mention reflexive control directly, but it's something they're able to do and they do it because they know exactly how their enemy will respond to the smallest action and i'm just wondering, if you could

comment on that generally, that they are very methodical in that way, in a way that i don't think our intelligence agencies, quite frankly, and also, how do we protect against that? i don't know-- it's almost like, i mean, we're complicit in the manipulation because we kind of advertise exactly what will push our buttons, i guess. >> if i can-- >> yeah, go ahead. >> and the question as well, asha, thank you for bringing this up. this is our hobby horse as the three years running the world's leading-- you know, think tank for regional studies and certainly the leading institution in the united states for that is that one. things that has always characterized the russia, they pay really close attention to what's going on in foreign countries, discourse about themselves. and i've got to ask you all, and i know you don't necessarily work on this every day, but do you really think that your cross-sectional

american government person can tell you how russians see themselves, that they could maybe name like one russian, vladimir putin, that's pretty much what we've got and it's like unilateral disarmament. sorry, i just have to-- >> a great way to put it. >> i'm glad you jumped in matthew, i was going to invite you to. i think that regional studies is something we should be investing more in. and the fact that i ended up at the kennon institute at my first appointment is not a coincidence and i did two areas of studies. and acknowledged something that russia invested in and they invested not only in near and abroad, but in the united states as well. the fissures that they're manipulating here are on all sides of the political spectrum and they get down you to some wonky, weird little cleavages in our society and we need investment in all of these regional studies, area studies,

programs, i think it's extraordinarily important, but again, i think it's also about building a broader knowledge base and really, really responsible coverage in the media, which i'm not sure we have had over the past four years. i really cringe every time i see, you know, the cathedral as the kremlin or bad cyrillics and present russia as our foes. and we're going to have to cooperate, one day i hope that will happen. right now that isn't necessarily possible, but we need broader understanding, not only of russia, but of all of our adversaries, the same way they're doing to us. that would be my answer there, i know it's not satisfying to a lot of people that we want to play a larger version of whack

a troll and sanctions and holding countries to their agreements is important and we need the step that's making us more in the long-term and that's what the book tries to get to. >> i would just add in there i think it's also a consequence of our sense of military superiority. understanding your enemy at a cultural level is really, you know, it's the poor man's work warfare, from our plan of view, oh, if push comes to shove we'll just bomb them, i think that's how we've always approached it and i think it's-- it really puts us in this imbalanced situation because it just makes us an easier adversary because we're really just approaching the issue from just completely different planes and i think you talk about that, the whole idea of

hybrid warfare and how we just don't get our mind around it at all from the western point of view. >> i'm sorry, matt, go ahead. >> i was just going to pivot us to some of the many questions we've gotten from the audience and starting with the question, but i just want to echo what you've said. and to me it's an exceptionally important point. we continue to find ourselves, shocked, shocked by what is being done to us in the world and the reality is because it's been complacent. i don't mean we haven't been tough enough, but too confident in being the predominant in the world and we tell how it will be and they ask how high do we jump. when they want to push back, they'll push back asymmetrically. this is a symmetric and jane, if you're with us, i want to

get to the question first. jane, are you with us? unmute, please. >> there we go, i don't know how we got out. never mind, modern technology, everybody. nina i've got to tell you how proud we are of you and the contribution you make and the passion you have for the scholarship and for improving the world and it's all stuff that i rest nane with and just love that. >> thank you. >> and the whole conversation couldn't be better. so i'm channelling david petraeus who most of you know is a famous american retired general who always asked, how does this end? he answered that wars. this is a war of sorts. how does this end or does this ever end? i mean, for example, we teach artificial artificial intelligence and i

don't think that ai ever ends. i think we find the way to ride the tiger and all that. is that what this is, too? is this not ever going to be defeated? i know you said resilience is a huge part of the strategy, i get that. but is this always going to be with us? >> well, i think to some extent, especially when you look at the historical examples not only from the soviet period, but you can go back to ancient greece and certainly to the period of yellow journalism in the united states for certain examples. what's changed about today is the tools and tactics and the speed at way the information spreads. right? so part of this is not only building resilience, but we have to get the regulatory frame work in place. so that we can respond more effectively. he i know, we've done work on this in february, and we had senator warner addressing us-- well, not at my room, but at

the wilson center in a past life when we were discussing how to bring about positive democratic based and it's where the united states is advocating leadership right now. not only for our own citizens, but for the governments that have a lot less visibility with social media platforms that are dealing with genocides starting on their platforms like in burma or onslaught of adversaries like in the ukraine. i think that progress will allow us to stem the flow, but i don't think it's ever going to fully change. one thing that will help, the politicians are going to start holding themselves to a higher standard. i know matt was really interested in discussing this question about how do you incentivize the fact that it helps politicians and parties to do this very sort of cheap manipulation of the information space and my answer to him when we were discussing this earlier

was with regulation. we have to have these regulations about campaign finance, about jn line transparency for political ads, et cetera. they need to be in place and the fact that we haven't gotten that done over the past three and a half four years leaves us way more vulnerable not only to foreign manipulation, but to manipulation within as well. >> that's such a hugely important point, nina and i wish it were as easy as knowing we need regulation and passing it. as we've seen, very right to bring up examples of campaign finance and jane knows this very well. it's because both side or arguably all side in complex multi-player game see potential advantage when the gray money or whatever it can, would work to their advantage and asking people to be the bigger person in that kind of a zero sum, winner takes all context, it seems like a fool's errand and i just -- one very small point

here as regional studies person, i really felt the differences between very small and relatively tight knit societies like astona, or even georgia, although there's a fractiousness and chaos in your chapter, versus the united states. we're never going to have an astona type response. that's like asking us to be singapore and it ain't going to happen. again, read the book because you'll draw your own conclusions. look, i want to if we can take a few questions here and also invite you to comment as well. we have a couple that are grouped around this sort of policy relative to education and quickly read them. curt in institute of world politics asks, if nina can elaborate on education as an antidote for disinformation, what kind of education is needed and so on. and then colonel jason who is with us at kennon institute our

army sworn officer fellow in the region asks for nina to comment on idea for digital and media literacy to combat disinformation akin to what estonia has done. talk about education as an antidote. >> sure, so i think both of those can be together. it's not just that education and media literacy or digital literacy have to be separate and i'll bring up ukraine as a good case where this has had an impact in a short period of time. the organization, i think there are a few on the call from what i saw from the attendee list, i bring up their program, learn to discern which trained a bunch of first librarians who went out and trained people in all of ukraine's regions and they've done an interesting study. a follow-on study how the skills were retained over a period of a year and a half, i think. and they're positive results.

what i love about this program, it's not politicized. it teaches people how to recognize emotional manipulation. it teaches them how to do basic kind of source evaluation and about the media environment and ukraine and it teaches them about hate speech. these are the tenants of a program that i would love to see. how do we deliver that? again, i mention libraries and civil societies before. i think there's room for the social media platforms to do this work as well. these are billion dollar corporations with ubiquitous access to people's lives and the fact that they think that somehow placing an ad in the wall street journal the new york times that said 10 times to fox news, attempt to reach out to users and educate them about the stuff i think is laughable and one idea i've been bringing up a lot recently and i hope that someone takes it on or fund something like this is a fake news or disinformation museum. so rather than just taking down all this bad content when the

platforms are playing whack-a-troll, i would love people to get a notification that they have interacted with content that's been removed. here is why it's been removed and interact with it in the eco system that it exists in, understanding how many engagements it got. understanding what the network was, how it all connects. so often especially with facebook, a big takedown especially in ukraine. they give us snippets and we have to trust their narrative and so many people who don't understand the broader fabric how disinformation works. that's a way to educate the people interested in learning that. not everyone is going to be, but for those who are making that interesting user friend had i experience could be a way to do that and asha, if you have anything to add i'd pass it over to you. >> i would add civic education. >> of course, yes. >> you know, i think one of the vulnerabilities that russia exploits is just as the

fragmenttation that exists because we have increasingly lost sight about common civic values. things like rule of law. the importance of a free press, you know, why we don't like dictators. those kinds of things, you know, as some of us greg up, we kind of got those through entertainment, say, i showed my class when i teach disinformation, schoolhouse rock, for example. you know, no more kings. and i think in some ways, hamilton is kind of able to convey some of that, but we need that on a larger scale. i think only nine states in the country require a full year of civic education. so we're increasingly getting a population that can fall prey to things like there must be a deep state because they don't really understand how the government works. so i would just say civic education and i think i echo your idea of social media platforms being a vehicle. i think that could, for

traditional literacy that's something that could be regulated. where there's some required content that these platforms have to convey or make sure their users interface with that are going to teach them these skills because i think, and we haven't gotten-- this is a whole other topic, but the economic model that these media platforms are built on are not incentivized to encourage digital literacy. you know, they want you to be addicted. they want you to get the most extreme, you know, content because that creates more clicks and it makes them more money so you have to find a way to get them out of that. and i think they're basically the equivalent of spako. they're not good for everybody, but their interests are not aligned with that of the public and that's where regulation should come in. >> speaking of popular culture

for a source of our commonly held, i want to blame "star trek" and-- that sorry, this is a nerd joke. you don't interfere with the development of an alien civilization and when you brought up the idea of a museum i'm seriously thinking, no, no, no, they wouldn't do this and studying a splendid petry dish of chaos. look, we have a lot more questions. let me ask a couple of them quickly and we can just go through that way. and this one from curt cloon, what is the difference in the marketplace of ideas on the cyber platform from disinformation in more traditional, say, for instance, tv, radio and sort of this line that you engaged with earlier, isn't truth and debate in the marketplace of ideas the best antidote to manipulation. and i would ask does it make a

difference if it's happening in cyber space where everyone is equal and everyone in cyber space can put in their two cents, versus if you have a walter cronkite. >> i think another big difference is the way that this information is incentivize which oculus is getting at. i wouldn't say there's a normal equitable debate on social media platforms. i've been looking a lot at facebook, and talk about filter bubbles. that's like a filter concrete bunker. i mean, there's no way into some of these groups. that are secret or closed. they don't include people. anybody who is a dissenting voice gets booted and not only that, the platforms are incentivizing people to join similar groups and they get notifications when people are posting content there because they want to keep them engaged. and they like to say it's not even the digital public square, it's your digital living room

and i said no, no, no, it's a digital creepy basement where you go to talk about things you shouldn't be talking about in the public square, right? and they're incentivizing that. so that's a real problem right now. and asha, i don't know if you have anything to add. >> i would completely agree with you. it's not only your digital creepy basement, but even if your real digital creepy basement, you wouldn't have fake people there. you're only limited to actual human beings, and i think this is another way to the marketplace of ideas gets distorted. because if you're in true public square, the vicadvice-- voices are limited to ones there. and the sphere there's artificial amplification of particular ideas and so it's cheating. it's cheating in the marketplace of ideas and the digital platforms can't find an effective way to remove the fake voices, the trolls, the bots. you're not aproximating the

true public square, i would say. >> i love that digital creepy basement. we've got four minutes left here. what i'm going to do is weave together two questions, one from robert in hershey, pennsylvania and one from the ohio state university and ask essentially, you know, if we were in a disinformation war with russia, are we still or is it the case that basically home grown forces have learned the lessons from russian tactics and others may have as well and russians can walk away from that and they can declare the truth and the problem doesn't go away. to the extent a that may be the case, what do we do going forward? >> i would say we're in a disinformation war with russia. we have not imposed costs on russia to extent that's been a necessary deterrent. our government, parts of our government, the executive branch has openly accepted

foreign assistance in terms of interference related to the election. and not only that, the social media companies also have not closed off all of the avenues that the foreign at-- adversaries are using. and no reason they would stop, it's quite effective. in terms of evidence for that. even in 2017, the flash mop story that i told before. that was after the election, we heard about russian interference in the mid term elections and everyone was looking for troll accounts they weren't necessarily there. instead, what's happening, is these vectors of domestic disinformation are somewhat manipulated by bad actors who are information laundering. so, rather than creating a fake account and using that to amplify certain narratives, a narrative is introduced and

through an authentic american voice and difficult to push back for that although it's politically kryptonite. i wouldn't necessarily point to this all the time, but a great example of that is the ukraine impeachment narrative what we heard demeeted during the impeachment proceedings and the narrative that zilinski was a trump enemy. and all this have was laundered through foreign actors and we don't know just connected to ukraine or russian influence with folks working with rudy giuliani and ended up as part of the congressional record during a con cluesive impeachment proceeding so that's an example of narrative laundering. it's still happening, it's very difficult to track and prove, but i don't think there's any reason for any bad actors to stop and russia is one of the most adept at that. >> asha, any final comments on this or anything you want to add? >> yeah, i think that's one of

the biggest lessons of nina's book. one these tactics get adapted by domestic actors you're in dangerous territory. i think that india is an example of a domestic government-sponsored ap rparatu is helping to bolster an authoritarian regime and a lot of sectarian violence. the only thing standing in between you is the free press. the last thing, the press is it going to have to accommodate this new arena because there's a way in which i think the press still tries to grapple with neutrality and objectivity and in many ways inwittingly helps amplify disinformation, so you have to call a lie a lie, i guess and kind of crossing that little line is very difficult, i think, from a

journalistic ethics point of view and something we grapple with. >> we've got to end. and let me preface by saying you can get nina's book by everywhere where books are sold. you have the real thing. the all right, all right, you win. thank you all so much and thanks to both of you and jane for joining our discussion and thank you for tuning in and for your questions and congratulations, again, to you, nina, and buy the book. >> thank you. and thanks everyone. >> thank you. >> you're watching book tv on c-span2 with top nonfiction books and tv. television for serious readers. tonight, at 8 p.m. eastern on c-span former white house chiefs of staff to the past four president, on how they dealt with crises during their respective administrations.

>> the processing of information, while always important to a president or any leader becomes extraordinarily important when you're dealing with crises and you have to stick to the process the chief has created and hopefully the president has empowered to make sure that the president is getting all of the information they need to make the right decision. >> tonight, at 8 p.m. eastern, on c-span. >> homeland security officials, including christopher crabbes speaks at an annual security summit and others from amazon, booz allen hamilton, raytheon, and cisco. live coverage beginning on c-span2. >> welcome, thank you for joining us. we have folks from philadelphia, chicago, the bronx, brazil,