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5:30 p.m. eastern all on c-span2. today nasa administrator jim bridenstein and to two nasa administrators talk about the space program on the 60th anniversary of the agency. from the center for strategic and international studies, live coverage starts at 1:00 p.m. eastern on c-span3, online at cspan.org and on the free c-span radio act. supreme court nominee brett kavanaugh continues to meet with senators on capitol hill. follow the confirmation process on c-span leading up to the senate confirmation hearings and the vote. watch live on c-span, watch any time on cspan.org or listen with the c-span radio app. and now a discussion on

russia's interference in the 2016 election. hosted by the atlantic council. this is just over an hour. we had a wonderful session with senator john warner. i run the atlantic council. we put together today's events at the ask of senator warner. senator warner and senator rubio gave you a -- we have excellent panel, you have bios in front of you. i'm going to ask ilene who is a cyber expert to frame the problem for the global perspective. i lean over to you. >> first off, i want to join in thanking the atlantic council

and the transatlantic commission on election integrity for the exquisite timing. i will say, it is surreal, it is like we are anticipating some smooth that should be really unbelievable and yet it is very real. and i would say following from the panel, from the center as we just heard, this really is a moment of truth for democracy writ large. maligned foreign actors are hacking our democracy, undermining confidence in the integrity of the outcome, undermining confidence in the feasibility of adhering to democratic values and protecting our society. and the big game is actually to win the narrative that democratic governance is not really feasible. the hard part, i would say, one of the hard parts, is this conversation is so unwielding. even for those of us who spend our days thinking about this completely absorbed, we are

fielding input from all over the place on lots of different realms. and so it is hard to get your hands around the topic and it is hard to break through with the public. and so what i like to do is try to break it down, do some diagnostics. develop a simple frame of understanding that hopefully can help yield some actionable solutions. so i sort of see this problem as breaking into three big buckets. the first is infrastructure, almost the cyber security type problem. the second bucket, the vector of attack, is the hack of discourse. undermining the integrity of the information ecosystem. and undermining the quality of discourse.

this is -- the feasibility of adhering to our values and protecting ourselves. these categories sort of bleed into each other as we'll see, but it's also useful to tease them apart. on cyber security, on the other hand, as senator warner and senator rubio said, it is kind of shocking how vulnerable we are in this regard. we have systemic society-wide digital insecurity. and it is showing up in our critical collection infrastructure. so this problem we can see but solving it is going to take a massive amount of political will. we brought up the hack of the vote. actually, it wasn't a hack of the vote. the hack of the infrastructure. hacking into the machine and the

vote. and it did the work. it showed the power to infiltrate. and that was almost the goal. similarly, the hack of john podesta's e-mail, the dnc, i think what is interesting about that case is that it shows how hacking of data and information leads into hacking of discourse and disruption of the information ecosystem. and here i would basically say that traditional media failed us in this regard. and they themselves were somewhat hacked by becoming unwitting participants in this information operation by getting fooled into thinking they had to report on every recipe in john podesta's e-mail as though it was news. and they, too, got manipulated. so that is how these categories bleed into each other. more on the hack of discourse, though, is again, very complex

multi-parts. this could be the category that's the hardest to get our heads around in democracies because information and discourse, it's supposed to be the life blood of democracy, free of expression, access to information. and here information is being weaponized against ourself. all of us are cyber security experts and national security experts. though cyber security is morphing before our eyes. i will just mention a few parts to the disinformation info op approach of the russians. obviously, fabrication of personnas, which mixed in with authentic, organic civic discourse. and i will note that much of this fabrication is the content of it that was not illegal and not even technically false.

but it was misleading and manipulative. also, you've got inauthentic mechanisms, amplification tools, again, it's not about the content but about the mechanisms of manipulation. and third is the microtargeting tools. exquisite targeting of voters where it mattered. very potent. and you put those things together. and it ends up changing the discourse around the elections. and the third big bucket i'll just say a couple words about. in some ways, this is the hardest to believe that it is possible, that our confidence in democratic governance is really being undermined. the core belief that our values, our openness, are part of our

security, is being hacked. i'm going to mention two things here that are somewhat channeling. obviously, it already came up, the hack of the rhetoric of the american president where the media is being called fake news. you know, the media is supposed to be the watchdog in democracy and is being targeted as an enemy. our ally, our transatlantic alliances, g7, nato, all being criticized, undermined. so, you know, it's sort of as though this is happening before our eyes. his rhetoric is being hacked. and i would also raise another very challenging point in light of our relationship with the european partners and the wonderful conversation we had earlier at lunch. i have to admit there's a part of me as an american that observes the confidence of some european governments has also been hacked in the sense that

the approach to combatting disinformation belies a loss of confidence in our ability to adhere to democratic values. i see this as kind of an effort to regulate content in the way authoritarian governments might. and i see it somewhat as a 20th century concept being applied to a 20th century solution. and i don't think that's the way to go. i think the focus should be on the mechanisms of manipulation. i don't think we want to get in the business of regulating content in an expansive way. as authoritarian governments do. so bottom line, hacked in every category, we have had machines, campaigns, civic discourse, the media, the rhetoric of our president and the confidence of democratic governments. and i think we really need to roll up our sleeves and get to work on this. and i hope the rest of the our

conversation gets to solutions. >> well, you raised many interesting points. and i will come back to them. i want everyone in the panel first to have a chance to speak. dami damian, you frame this in very large concepts. how do you see russian efforts in this? >> so the most specific area of the russian involvement in britain has been around brexit. and i agree with what was said on the previous panel they think the objectives in russia getting involved in the brexit referendum may not necessarily be influencing the outcome of the election. but to save massive amounts of discourse, if the referendum had gone a different way, you saw continued involvement around the result. making people believe it had been stolen in the establishment. so undermining people's confidence in public institutions and the rule of law

and mainstream media. the involvement in brexit, they could be -- it could be the same as russian involvement in america, too. it's like in "the wizard of oz" when the curtain is pulled back and to realize that it is just a man behind the curtain. we have somehow stumbled into this world. we have recognized there's the capability of former powers to target both disformational boxes without people actually really realizing or understanding that it was going on. and, at the same time, i think this is certainly a story about the data breach of facebook, is i think what people have noticed is, you freely give away enormous amounts of data about ourselves. and there are big tech companies. they take more than we know and they can't keep it safe. and it could easily end up in

the hands of bad actors. and without -- so we never would have given our consent to that data to have ended up there. so i think we have this moment where we stumbled into this new reality. and we are trying to cope with and understand what is going on. i think very specifically in the u.k., we have seen the russian interference follow a similar pattern to what you're familiar with in the united states. there is some but much more limited facebook advertising that we know of. paid for advertising in the similar way to what was paid for in america, but i agree with senator warner, that's really the tip of the iceberg. the issue is really about the wake in which fake accounts could be used to distribute content, relentlessly target people, on whether there could have been collusion on doing that as well. so i think the reason i am here at the tech companies is to look at fake accounts. you have to say from the market's point of view, it is a point of misselling to allow

fake accounts on your platforms. when you're selling the fake accounts to advertisers. and you know that most of the problems are on your platform caused by fake accounts, not by ones that lead to a real person. i think it was also -- i also think it is not wrong for us to say to the tech companies and the way we talk to a bank, if a bank is suspicious about money laundering, it has the responsibility to check out what is going on. we have international laws to govern that. i think that's wrong. they have the capability. facebook and the checking team should have spotted the ads running political campaigns in britain and in the usa and they didn't. and they didn't spot it at the time or for every year afterwards. and they only spotted it when they begrudgingly were asked to do it and reluctantly asked to do it. they have not conducted it at the possibility of russian involvement in politics and other countries being run

through the platforms in other ways as well. again, the default position seems to be, we can look for it. we shouldn't also underestimate the power of the official russian state news agencies pumping propaganda out. there was a study done in the u.k. during the brexit referendum that suggested that our team sputnik may have had a bigger voice on twitter than the official lead campaigns did. if you looked at the poisoning and searched for stories about that poisoning, the top ten results you would probably get two, probably the two most popular bbc reports on it. after that, the top ten, most of the search returns on facebook's news team would be from r.t. or sputnik. and what they are doing is amplifying the russian version of the story to sell confusion and doubt. they don't have to convince you that russia's argument about the poisoning is correct.

they just have to pose enough question that is the british can't answer to make you disbelieve what the mainstream media are telling you. and you see that. so i think we have to recognize that for the russians, there's a multilayered approach to spreading disinformation, causing doubt. undermining public confidence in institutions. and back to the russian referendum, what they were talking about? it is a similar pattern to what you saw in america as well. it is aggressive issues on very sensitive subjects like immigration, like race relations, being used to both encourage people to support one particular side, but also as a tactic of voter suppression as well. and i think what we have is the responsibility to lay out what is going on so the people are aware. and i agree whether tech companies have a responsibility here is where they can clearly see wrongdoing happening, they should act, stop it, and they should do that proactively. and i think this developing tools themselves to do that. what we are considering about in

europe is certainly on the most harmful of content. they have harmful forms of disinformation, that category. i think what they say is to true, this problem will get worse as the techniques and tactics of disinformation get more sophisticated. we are going to need the tech companies to interfere here. and the question in europe is, if they won't interfeern against the harmful content and the campaigns that could influence the outcome of an election, what sort of liability should there be for failing to act? and i think that's sort of the discussion happening in europe. >> thank you. you've also raised a couple important themes that we'll come back to, but first i want to give natalie a chance to talk about the russians heading up to you crain. >> so i stepped back from this conversation to say at some point in the not-to-distant past, the kremlin identified the national order established post world war ii was a direct threat to their existence and the system they would like to

maintain. and so all of this is about destroying that liberal international order in every form that it takes, most importantly, our democracies, our elections and values. ukraine is a critical element of that liberal international order established post world war ii because ukraine is an example of the success that the liberal international order or the values have over the minds of people who are free. people in ukraine have shown their desire over 25 years to live by those values and to live by those norms, the responsibilities. and for that reason, amongst others, the kremlin interviewed in free choice from day one in the politics n the elections, and the more clear it became over the past 25 years is the you yaneukranian people were willing to die for those values and it became more important to

intervene. it started by the political forces to be sure of political interest, maybe in the south, maybe in the east, then in the security services, maybe in the military. often it was financed by corruption until my government stepped in in 2014 and ended the use of intermediaries in gas trade. the russians enabled billions of dollars in the gas trade to go through intermediaries and finance further their interests within ukraine an politics. that is what helped their political interests. in 2004, our orange revolution, their influence was challenged by a candidate who clearly stated that it embodied the western values and the western vision. and russia provided political consultants, hundreds of millions of dollars. ultimately poisoned the candidate and this was a foreshadowing, i fear, of what we now hear is happening unfortunately, much too often, whether it be in the u.k. or elsewhere. and it accomplished their strategy for the moment. and they created fear, they

showed that with vengeance they -- as ukraine continued to embrace the liberal international order. when it came in 2014, ukraine almost entered into an association agreement with the european union and the trade agreement. russia unleashed all the tools it had at its disposal at that time to stop ukraine from moving forward and still failed with the revolution of dignity. when the ukrainian people insisted on maintaining that route open, even a $15 billion offered bribe was not enough to stop ukraine from moving forward with the association agreement in trade agreement. so russia moved to other tools and other ek sneak -- techniques. the war in the east, the war has led to tens of thousands of

lives being lost. 2 million internally displaced people in the territory of europe. 60 political prisoners. loss of an indigenous homeland for the cry meimea tartars, and los of 300 million civilians. absolutely innocent civilians. every single tool has been used. and while i was minister of finance, we had a cyber attack on the electrical grid. massive misuse of information. all along, the bulk of the information was looked in ukraine as being a unique information as being historical patterns and historical closeness. yet i guess my point is this, it has nothing to do with that. that may be an element of why it's so strong and physical geography helps, but this is an important testing ground for russia in its attempts throughout the liberal international order. and for this reason alone, i think that the actions of russia and the upcoming march elections

for president and then autumn elections for parliament in ukraine need to be watched very closely. and the trend is the commission on transatlantic commission on election integrity together with the atlantic council will be working with the specific task force in realtime to identify the thing that is occur in these elections so we can try to stop them, so we can identify them for the populations so that perhaps their vote will not be removed from their hands and even more importantly so that we can learn from it in an international context because this is not about ukraine, this is not about russian/ukrainian rests. relations. cyber attacks that will create chaos and disruption, kinetic operations of all kinds, ratcheting up and down the war of using the war to create more pain, to create more economic dissidence. for example, recently the actions of the russian military have blocked many ships and

interfered with shipping into eastern ukraine. select assassinations, which have occurred in ukraine over the last few years and elsewhere will continue to be a tool. bottom line is, to stabilize ukraine and promote a more lead. that's what's important for ukraine to watch for. for all of us in the world, ignoring these examples outside united states create enormous and grave consequences. and therefore, i think, they have to be used instead as lessons to be learned from. >> natalie, thank you. that was wonderful. i would like to particularly thank you for bringing up the international liberal order. because while eileen did not mention it, in a sense, your discussion of hacking, very broad discussion of hacking, was also about the russians pulling out the vulnerabilities of the international liberal order. you know, some very smart people have written that ultimately advanced civilized society depends on something called

trust. everyone knows it depends upon the rule of law. what law is required in the extreme instance, trust is required for everyday activity. and what the kremlin has been doing very effectively is cutting at the trust of the international liberal order. so, i'd like, eileen, for you to comment on that. >> i completely agree. i'm really glad, natalie, you said it explicitly. i should have because we should all be underscoring. that is the big game. it is the erosion of confidence in the post-world war ii liberal democratic. i like to focus on this concept of algorithms of democracy. sometimes we use that term to point to the responsibility and duty of the private sector, which is a really important part of this conversation. but it really also gets to the responsibility of democratic governments, that we are able to protect freedom and security and democratic processes all under

the rule of law. and that ability is really being called into question. and i really think that democratic governments have to step up to the plate and figure out how to provide liberty, security and democratic process in our globalized, digitized, ecosystem. that is the name of the game here. but we have to do it. i mean, protecting democracy has always been hard. it is still hard. it's peculiarly hard in this new globalized, digitized ecosystem. the threats are somewhat overwhelming. but that's -- that's what we have to do. and i like to point back to the international human rights framework as part of that liberal democratic order and a very important part of it that we cannot throw under the bus in the name of protecting democracy. i think the human rights

framework provides a universal basis for protecting citizens' liberty and security and we should turn to it. it is peculiarly well suited for our globalized, digitized ecosystem and i think that should be our starting place. >> okay, thank you. damian, you raised a couple things, which i will come back to in a little bit, but right now i want to pick up on one point which plays off what natalie said and buttressed by ee line. what we've seen russia do in ukraine is not only about, principally about ukraine, it's about the broader community of democracies. this is something completely not understood in 2014 in europe. would you say it's understood today in britain? >> to some extent. i think it sfendepends on which countries you look at. i think in ukraine it would be. again, you go back to the russian invasion of ukraine. you have politicians on the right and british politicians

saying quite extraordinary things. and during the brexit debate as well, almost saying the u.n. provoked russia into doing this. it was within russia's right to stop this ukraine encroachment. and, you know, fondly enough, the sorts of people that were saying those sorts of things are the people who now have closer links to russia than known at the time. there is this undercurrent sympathy with nationalist politics that some politicians on the right and british politics have. and the allies they seek across europe. we're seeing the most extraordinary wave of political change across europe at the moment. and i think we -- i think for me, as we embarked on this inquiry as a committee, the thing that really -- that is really important to us to understand -- the problems we

think are a 2016 problem are a lot longer established in the baltic states, former soviet republicans, in the front-line countries in eastern europe where they have been dealing with this problem for many years. and to understand the nature of that problem and what you have to do to combat this. it was interesting that the -- people in spain have been analyzing the catalonian independence where there's evidence of russia interference there. they believed they exploited it with agencies in venezuela, focused back at spain. there are concerns whether they could be directed towards mexico and the hispanic community in america as well. there's a growing understand of the widespread nature of the problem. beyond the sort of countries like ukraine, i think that knowledge has been limited. >> the atlantic council has been leading the charge against kremlin revisionism for four years. this is not just to give us a

plug, but i want to pick up on a point you just made. talking about this problem, talking about kremlin disinformation, we considered spain to be largely hostile territory. until catalonia. and that opened up window for us, which we then jumped through. we did an event in madrid. ambassador was a star of that event. now we have -- the same was true of greece. and now we've seen reports that the greeks have declared, a couple russian diplomats. now greece is opening i was up to this. would you say this phenomenon to opening understanding of europe is growing? >> it is growing. in some countries you're fighting against quite an entrenched position the russians have already started and maintained for sympathy towards them.

russia hadz the multilateral world. hates continental europe being united as a single bloc and they'll be able to rebutt and withstand russian pressure on ng policy or whatever it is. if you can unpick that, and make countries doubt the value of that alliance and seek to come to their own terms and agreements with russia, independent of eu from a position of weakness, that fits russia. the established narrative they have is to undermine public confidence in the institutions that we've created in the post world war and say those institutions are responsible for their unhappiness and, therefore -- maybe even see russia as a friendly force because it is one that challenges those institutions as well. >> thank you. natalie, you offered a really interesting insight, which i think stems from the fact that you're both american and ukrainian. you talked about moscow having to use all of its tools to prevent ukraine from making the

choice any free people would make to embrace the values of the west. i think so that was spot on but not well understood. here's my question. you know, i was working on the post soviet space 20-plus years ago, when we thought we could have a good relationship with russia. and russian policy 20 years ago, 25 years ago, was not bad in most areas with the important exception of its neighborhood. the question that struck some of us at the time was, why does russia have no soft power in its neighborhood? in other words, why didn't it have the option of pulling ukraine or georgia or even armenia to itself by the power of attraction? your thoughts. and why, therefore, they had to move towards the hard power option. >> i think that the -- the way

the kremlin has managed post-soviet economic history has not provided for people to have hope in the future in terms of their economic wherewithal. you don't see the kind of growth in the russian economy that the russian people would like and deserve. they certainly don't have the same types of freedoms that i think the russian people got a taste of and it was taken away. you know, the illegality now of most ngos, the restriction on freedom of media. they certainly aren't enjoying, as an example, you know, visa-free travel, which ukrainian citizens are enjoying in the european union because they've met several -- over 400 different conditions needed to be met to get that eu visa-free travel opportunity. i think when you look at young ukrainians who were at the core of the -- at the very beginning of the revolution of dignity,

they were being given a choice whether or not to push at the time to continue down the path of eu association, those values, those opportunities and/or look north to what was happening in russia and their colleagues there, their generation didn't have those opportunities. i think russia can't offer that with the current economic structure the kremlin has put in place. i don't think it was an absolute that had to happen but i do believe that is the system that's currently in place and currently, unfortunately, did not offer a future. i think this also is not just for -- an issue for the people of russia but even for the leadership of russia. they can't outspend the united states on military. if this is simply -- the soviet union thought they could for some reason, and failed. senator warner mentioned our budget versus their budget on military. if you can't win in military spending and you can't win with soft power, your ideas, they're no longer going around the world

as the soviet union was selling marxist ideas to this democracy and capitalism. they're not able to sell what they have at home so they need to protect it from being infill straighted by those ideas and the strength of those systems. >> thank you. eileen, you wanted to -- >> yes. i feel like this is -- this conversation points to how confusing the threat of disinformation is to our framework of understanding this. you started by talking about hard power versus soft power. and that they lack the ability to attract through soft power. well, disinformation isn't attracting to them, but it is the means through which we used to think of soft power working, which is attraction to ideas and values. so -- i don't know if people heard about the work done by chris walker at n.e.d. on shark

power. we also need a different framework for understanding how disinformation works and it didn't just fit into that binary framing. >> thank you. damian, in your initial statement you spoke about the problem of social media stepping up to its responsibilities. what can be done not just in britain but perhaps by an international group, a transatlantic group, to encourage social media to step up? >> well, i think having some sort of common charter or set of principles that we would ask the tech companies to work to would be a good start. different countries, maybe underpinned by legislation or not, could be easier or harder, depending on the politics and the constitutional arrangements of those countries. but i think some of that embraces things the tech companies already said they're going to do, which is to bring in transparency, where messages are coming from, where pages are administered from. i understand that couldn't be done at a local level because in

some countries there could be good reason why they wanted anonymity, speaking out against an oppressive regime. a community page that talks about where you live is being run by someone in your country and not by someone from overseas. in that transparency there, i think to be responsible, i think there's a question as well, in the facebook news feed, during the regulated period of an election, the short-pert campaign in the uk, you should be a registered organization to run political advertising during that period of time. so, there's full transparnscy and traceability as to who you are and what message you're running. i think we should look at the ethics of individuals being sold by facebook. i think it's one thing to target

message when you know who they are and you might send them a piece of direct mail but to go to facebook and say, i have a group of people i know, my supporters, i want you to find me another group of people who like them or say i have a group of people really worried about immigration. i want you to find other people worried about immigration. i want to buy that as an audience. . for political messaging, i think we should seriously question the ethics of some of these techniques. and i think that's a dialogue we need to have with them. there's a clear debate in the uk at the moment about harmful forms of content, legal content and if companies don't stop it going up or take it down when it's referred to them, they should have some liability for that. it's interesting in germany. i'm not saying whole-heartedly follow the german method, but they will follow the hate speech laws. if you don't follow them, you, the facebook company, will face massive fines.

i think that does -- it's like one in six, fact-checkers, work for facebook in germany. it's up to me is whether or not you go down the legal route the germans have gone down is the companies don't invest anything they should, considering what they make, monitoring the site. >> natalie, you want to jump in? >> i'm searching, i'm listening to the experts on what the solutions are for social media but i worry about it at the same time. i've seen ukrainian activists on facebook are routinely removed by facebook for being hate speech when they do anything that's anti-russian. there's recently been a large campaign, as you can imagine, during the world cup to remind everyone of the number of political prisonerss and/or the number of people who died during the war during that period, whatever the messaging has been, each one has routinely been taken off. i worry about how we leave these companies to their own judicious

sense of what's right and wrong and what that means for freedom of speech. i know we need a solution. but i'm still not confident leaving it in their hands and the person doing that at facebook just happens to be of russian heritage, that's another issue, but, you know, it's a question that i find still, you know, we're going to be talking about how much speech should be free. i'm worried about who we let make that decision. >> you anticipated, natalie, what i was going to say. because what we've seen in this part of the disinformation war, the russians have been proactive and effective. in germany, in the netherlands, and more broadly, internationally. they've been quick to bring charges of anti-russian sentiment to shut down legitimate points, which are in no sense anti-russian. me may be anti-aggression but not anti-russian. do you have something on this? >> i would say i really

appreciate the efforts of german government, other governments in europe to be very proactive and concerned about the quality of the discourse. i do think especially in the german case, they've gone after the wrong target. in fact, you referenced all those resources that facebook is now putting out there to get after the content of the discourse rather than bringing their attention to the manipulation of the discourse. and i think that's a very important divide. the second big problem with the german law is that it is basically handed over a judicial function to the private sector that is not democratically accountable for a law promulgated by the government. i think that's really problematic. and the third piece that goboths me is we do not want to encourage a more expansive definition of what kind of speech is illegal. most of the russian

disinformation was not false or illegal. i think it's the wrong target. >> i think there are two important categories within that. one is there is some information, which i think is harmful and is clearly lies. probably the pizzagate story. someone could have committed a criminal act on the basis of false information that was maliciously spread. that is what an example of content that could be genuinely harmful. based on fact, it's based on fact. that's less about regulating. that's more about transparency so people understand, where is that information coming from? i think there is this category of where you've got very hard campaigns of disinformation, you can identify people doing it and that can be harmful in an election period. it's clear this is malicious

material. self-policing that works in public sector already. there is around incentive to keep it within the guidelines. >> damian, in your initial comments you spoke about, in effect, the effectiveness of official russia media and pushing out memes that become a major part of the public discussion. your sense as to how this issue might be resolved or at least managed. >> yeah. this is difficult. because they're not -- they're not hiding the fact they're doing it. legitimate news organizations, i do think sometimes with rt in particular we should look more closely about whether they are -- they're operating under the terms of the practicaling

license. they have to operate in the uk in terms of partiality and balance in broadcasting and not misleading their viewers. that is about a necessity for other news organizations and political organizations to engage more readily through social media as well. to make it harder for those companies to dominate the space in facebook as they currently do. senator warner said earlier half americans get their news by facebook. it was said in the referendum that 7 out of 10 people that hadn't decided how they were going to vote principally they got their news from facebook. in is why the tech companies do have some responsibility towards the way content is shared on their platform. it's not a totally organic space because what you see on the news feed is not what your friend has

posted. it's targeted and they're arranged in that way. they do have some responsibility for the way their site works. >> i'm going to add three years ago when i was minister, up on the hill talking about issues in ukraine, i can tell you more than half of the congressional representatives we met with did not rt represented russia today. that may have changed in the past three years because what's happened in the united states. but a couple years ago people were not aware that was a russian official broadcast network. we need to educate people as to that. they can choose to watch it. there's not an issue. but they need to know what they're watching. we need to educate our own media when they're sourcing information from those networks, to source it and clearly say what they're doing. that's how it then gets into the algorithm and facebook. it doesn't necessarily get in there through the attribution of rt. it's already come through three or four restatements of the news originally taken from them. part of it has to be following

that track but making everyone aware of what that track is. >> i want to add, i don't think any serious person thinks the private sector has no responsibility. and i actually do think the private sector has woken up to their responsibility. i admit they were not on it, just like nobody else was on it. but i think just as though we do not want government to be arbitrators of truth in a democracy, with he don't want the private sector to. what we do want is then to focus on manipulation of their platforms, fabricated personas that are part of that, and they are embracing this concept of quality, the quality of discourse, necessary to sustain democracy. the quality of discourse on their platforms. the quality of information shared. it's a subtle different but the way i see it is, it's not about the content. it's about the manipulative

effect of the whole system. >> i don't agree with that but i think there will be some hard areas of content you have to confront. if you see the home office in uk commissioned a british company to identify jihadi rekrument videos with 99% accuracy. the only various is where the program identified a news report about the film rather than the film itself. the challenge from the british company to say to youtube, if this company can do this, you can, too. this is not about think news, this is about information that's inciting people to commit offenses. so, where -- the responsibility there is harder for them to do more to gain that content. >> that's a fair point. >> so, i think you make the right distinction. insightment to violence is one category. disinformation is a challenge that democracies have faced for

generations. those two types of content should be handled differently. >> i agree with that. that's why i said there's a distinctions. the company's responsibility is to give the citizens the tools they need to weigh up whether they trust the information or not. there's another category -- the jihadi recruitment videos is the hard end of that. you know this news organization is making powerful fake films about politicians. they say, it should be their responsibility to identify who's doing that and maybe do something about it. >> damian, you raised a very good point about the jihadi recruitment, incitement.

a case can be made that's incitement to violence. would this fit in your description of possibly prescribed activity or want? >> that's an interesting point. we've seen things with russia around terror attacks in uk, particularly in london last year. i think it depends on the nature. if it is inciting someone to join a terror group on the back of seeing a terror attack being committed, that would fall into that category of hard, offensive content. if it's misreporting of the information -- >> it'ses confusion, hatred and whatever follows there from. >> that's difficult. if we say the disinformation is about who's spreading the information, that will include some information people find offensive as well. we have to be wary about saying, we decide qul a story should run or not. >> do people understand the people disseminating it are

agents of the russian government rather than concerned citizens? if we make that clear, they may put less weight on the content they say. >> it's the opposite in the united states, two groups identify with black lives matter and the other at all was not local. being able to identify if it's a member of your community having that view, just identifying the source could be extraordinarily helpful. >> that's what's so insidious about these examples. it's causing democratic governments confused whether they can adhere to their democratic values. i think the point here is the transparency and identified of who is behind these messages rather than the content itself is what really matters. >> none of you would find some restriction on free media a requirement, you might say the sourcing of any message would be there? in other words, based on the

geographical location? >> take the elections in uk -- >> that's not a statement. that's a question. >> for election material, election periods, if it's paid for. if it's an advert, there has to be a legal -- it has to tell you who that piece of communication is there to promote and who paid for it. >> the paid for is the least of our problems at this point. i mean, i think -- >> i agree on that. >> on the extremes, i think there's broad agreement. incitement of violence and terrorism you can regulate. preelection period, paid advertisele or paid advertising in general, political advertising. i think where the really difficult parts are, where we couldn't agree on an example by example is the nonpaid, just disinformation -- not even disinformation. the creation of dissidence. stoking the fires of differences

in society. but there's also the challenge -- a lot is done through fake accounts which is then -- facebook will say it's against their policy to have fake accounts. they say in their sort of financial reporting that they think there's about 3% to 4% of accounts on fake. what if it was much bigger than that? there are interesting things. what should you do to make them police what goes on on their platform more effectively? >> is restricting bots restricting free speech? >> no, not necessarily. >> free speech is the right of a human being. >> let me probe a little more on this. some people might argue a person who happened to be a billionaire has the ability to project his or her voice far more broadly than a person who's not. is restricting money a restriction on free speech? >> no. we should have massive party financing rules. >> so, you're -- you're saying

restricting bots is like restricting money? >> yes. >> okay. i would put a finer point on it. i think that bots have obviously been a massive part of the problem and the manipulation. i think a blanket rule that you cannot have bots online doesn't make sense because there are applications of bots to do any kind of real-time updating, you know, whether, news. there are positive applications of bots. it's not blanket banning. it is bots that are fabricating personas and manipulating the discourse. >> we'll never get to that level of detail. if we have to error on the side of caution, give up our weather news for the bots doing damage. >> actually, i think, eileen, you're the only one on this panel who's truly technically competent in this area. no offense. is it easy to distinguish

between good bats and and bad bots? >> you mean under the surface before they're out there? in other words, you can make a distinction -- >> and police it, is what i'm saying. >> yes. so, we all have heard this idea that technology can be used for good or for ill. that's how you evaluate it. whether you can police it under the surface, i can't answer that question. >> but you get into the same issue of judgment, aren't you? >> natalie gave your -- >> aren't we going to get into the same question of judgment to determine if the bots or good or bad? it's going to be unfortunately determining whether the fake information is good or bad. >> here's the distinction. it's not the content. it's the maptinipulative effect. >> i reckon you could do it very easily, if you want to. these companies are built on running ads, the uses. they understand at a microlevel the details of the accounts on

their platform so they can help people advertise, too. i cannot believe if they wanted to, they couldn't easily identify more of the bad acts of problematic people. there's a bot in my constitutecy that tweets the weather every day. i follow that. what it doesn't do is send a thousand tweets about trump in two hours. that is the distinction i would draw. >> i think we've come close to exhausting this topic, so i want to raise something else which our folks here would find interesting. we've had many unusual things happen over the past week on the international scene. one of those was president trump's slamming the germans for north stream 2. now, i kind of found that -- i saw some advantage and disadvantage of that. i'm opposed to north stream 2. was that a positive contribution

to the goal of stopping north stream 2 or is that a negative factor? i offer that to any of our panel members. >> so, i'm thrilled that president trump has taken that position because i also am against north stream 2, but it does come from a whole different place. i think it comes from a place for president trump where he's interested in the competitiveness of the u.s. market and having that pipeline in place is a negative element of that competitive strength that the united states has to ship lng going forward to europe. i don't think we should read into it a foreign policy position. i think it's a very clear economic policy decision on the part of the president. i think, though, in germany, unfortunately or fortunately, depending on what side you're on, what president trump says tends to have the opposite effect. >> that's why i asked. >> so i fear president trump coming out strongly against north stream 2, in fact, has the effect of strengthing it to go

forward. in the press conference today it was very interesting this came up. president putin used it to show, you know, we're good competitors. we're not foes or enemies. i'm competing are to it the gas market. you're competing for the gas market. may the best man win. i found that dispiriting to find something, a strategic foreign policy issue to be a competition between two soft drink brands. >> they would be happy to have trump have a go. there's something slightly ironic about him criticizing other countries about their closeness of relations with russia, given his own -- given his own statements today and his willingness to believe russian advisers over his own administration. so, i think -- but i do think there is an issue about the

growing soft influence that russia has over politicians and decision makers in eu. >> i would also just add the overlay that the real import of that comment was to embarrass angela merkel. going back to the idea of undermining our transatlantic alliance, undermining nato, undermining the post world war ii international order. that's what it was really about. >> i agree with that. and i would point out that the reaction in russia was several kinds. on one hand it was a visceral criticism of it, but then putin's reaction was actually the smart play. to turn it from a geopolitical matter to merelily a commercial matter among friends. which is the line he's trying to sell. >> which misses the entire point of north stream 2. >> you look at this last week and say, the ability of the president to pick up a phone to

a leader in europe and say, i think you should do this, has been diminished by his behavior this week. >> sad but true. we have like seven minutes left. if anyone in the audience has a question, i think we have a microphone -- we do have a microphone. we'll do questions over here. we'll do one, two, three. >> hi suspect susan spalding. i was under-secretary at homeland security. i am now with the center for strategic and international studies where i am looking at leading a project to look at all the ways in which what russia is doing undermines public trust and confidence in a fundamental pillar of democracy, namely the judicial system, the justice system. we know, as ul of you said, that what we see here has been going

on for quite some time elsewhere. particularly ukraine has been a proving ground, sadly, for techniques against the u.s. i'm wondering if you saw similar measures targeting the judici y judiciary. we are seeing them in hungary and poland and elsewhere. >> i can't say i have. i think the judicial system in ukraine has been, unfortunately, most affected by corruption. kru corruption and lack of follow-through with law. i will allow the russians to share the blame in terms of being often much of the source much the crux. in ukraine. but they're not responsible for corruption. ukraine is responsible for that. i think the judicial system, i think the biggest risk to it has been that not direct russian interference. >> thank you. >> michael martel, cyber

researcher at national archive. folks have been talking about transparency on the location of posts. it's fairly easy to spoof location online using vpns. at a certain point to make this effective, we would have to target vpns used by human rights. >> you would have to do what this is. >> target vpns used in places like russia, china, iran. at times with american encouragement, to be able to practice free speech of our own. at what point do we decide that tradeoff is worth it for the west. >> anyone want to comment on that? that's a good question. >> it really is a tradeoff. there are costs to doing that. even though there are benefits, just as with the bot question. that's what democratic governments are to do. they're supposed to address the hard questions, freedom,

security, democratic process and the rule of law. i don't have a complete answer to that particular technical question, but that's what we have to do. we can't throw one thing under the bus in the name of protecting democracy. i lean towards saying we have to save the democratic system first so i would lean towards, unfortunately, dealing with the vpns. i've seen in many of the arab awakenings, people were targeted even though they were using vpns. it wasn't the ultimate protection of their -- of them in those situations. i guess i would say, again, on balance. >> another question over here. >> hi, my name is lee block. i'm a student at american university. my question as follows -- i'm curious how multilateral

institutions, so, say the eu, world trailed organization, can counter -- can counter russia as it uses corruption as a method of soft power in its foreign policy. and -- yeah, sorry. that's my question. >> well, i think there's a lot more we can do to call out russian corruption than we do. we've had some changes on the law in uk to institute wealth orders of people who suddenly come into a lot of money in the uk, being uk citizens or from elsewhere. another multilateral organization you could mention is fifa, because football is -- soccer, i should say, is very open to money laundering and supporting the strategic responsibility of many wealthy people around the world.

no surprise the fbi are investigating money laundering in the caribbean. the question is whether you can get consensus among these multilateral organizations and, sadly, some people take it more seriously than others. >> transparency, transparency, transparency. imf has a rule in each country they work in to insist on, promote and make sure there are effective transparency rules in those countries. whether that's auditing state-owned companies in ukraine, whether that's putting the treasury of the country online. you can do that throughout the countries working with the imf. you can have more and more transparency in the united states, in the so-called advanced countries with regard to the source of cash that's being used, especially in real estate markets. i said this earlier today. in london and the united states, the ability to buy through coercions, through companies that have been set up yesterday,

real estate property transferred hundreds of millions of dollars into these countries is a major source of lack of transparency. we need to practice what we preach. i'm not suggesting the imf tell this to countries having economic troubles. we need to do it ourselves. but i think a lot could be resolved with transparency. >> question over here? >> thank you very much. ukrainian liberal group. i would like to comment on your question why russia doesn't use soft power. >> one minute. >> yeah, yeah. there are a number of reasons. the main reason -- the main reason is corruption. money which can go for soft power goes to the pockets of russian bure accuracy.

>> thank you. one more question. right there. then this is it. >> i'm amy mckenna from "foreign policy magazine." i have a question for mr. collins. the u.s. in the wake of russian interference elections, we've seen the mueller investigation, there's been indictments, arrests. in the uk it's only recently coming to light the extent of connections between banks and the russian embassy. >> there are several investigations. my committee, part of the committee leading parliamentary investigation started looking at fake news and come to look at issues with russian interference as a consequence of looking at those issues. it is also something the russia commission is -- she said, for example, there are data scraped

from facebook and followed by people in russia to get a data trail. with regards to errant banks, that's come out with investigative journalists to getting it into the public domain is an important role. i know the people involved have shared that information with a national crime agency so they have the information to conduct their own investigations. the agencies in uk are less forward with what they're doing. that's would i think my position, and the most important thing we can do is put in the public domain to encourage the agencies to do more. >> thank you. i'd like to thank you for being here this afternoon. i would make two more points. one, the program we'll be