>> tonight retiring supreme court justice anthony kennedy discusses his legacy on the high court it's from the annual ninth circuit judicial conference in anaheim california you could see it tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. >> supreme court nominee brett cavanaugh continues to meet with senators on capitol hill, follow the confirmation process on c-span leading up to the senate confirmation hearing and the vote. watch live on c-span, watch any time on c-span.org or listen with the c-span radio app. >> next, the discussion on russian meddling in the elections in the u.s., ukraine, and other countries. from the atlantic council, this

is over an hour. >> we had a wonderful session with senator warner, i run the hearing here at the united council. we are going to put together an event at the request of senator warner. we give you a strong perspective from washington. this takes a broader international scope. we have an excellent panel, i would like to ask eileen who is a cyber expert on what they are up to displaying the problem from a global perspective.>> great, i would like to join in thinking the atlantic council and the commission i will say it's kind of surreal,

participating in some kind of a cool that should be really unbelievable and yet it's very real. i would say following the panel for the center, this really is a moment of truth for democracy. live foreign actors are hacking our democracy and undermining conference in the integrity of outcomes, undermining confidence in the ability -- feasibility of hearing democratic values and protecting our society and the big game to win narrative that the democratic governance isn't feasible. the hard part i would say, one of the hard parts is, this

conversation is so on wielding. 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's hard to get your hands around the process and breakthrough with the public. and so what i like to do is kind of break this down and do some diagnostics and develop a simple frame of understanding that hopefully could help you with some actionable solutions. i sort of see this problem, breaking it into 3 big buckets. the first of which is, hacking of machines, infrastructure data. traditional cyber security types of problems. the second big buckets, the vector of attacks, the hack of discourse. undermining the integrity of the information echo system. and undermining the quality of discourse. necessary to sustain democracy. the third big bucket is really a hack on our confidence. in democratic governance itself.

the feasibility of the hearing of the core values and protecting ourselves. these categories bleed into each other as you'll see. it's useful to keep them apart. on the hacking of machines front, on one hand it's traditional cyber security issue but on the other hand, as senator warner and senator rubio said, it's kind of sloppy how vulnerable we are given this regard. we have systemic societywide security that showing up in our election infrastructure. so, the problem is something we could see but it's going to take a massive amount of political will. you brought the hack of the vote up and it wasn't the hack of the vote but the hack of the infrastructure, hacking into the machine without actually hacking the vote and it sowed the power to infiltrate.

similarly the hack of the emails at the dnc. what is interesting about that piece, it shows how the hacking of data and information bleeds into hacking of discourse and the disruption of the information echo system -- ecosystem. i think digital media failed us in this regard and they themselves, were somewhat hacked by the coming unwitting participants in the information operation by getting fooled into thinking that they had to report on every email as though it was news. they too were manipulated. so that is how these categories bleed into each other. more on the hack of discourse, again, very complex. this might be the category that is hardest to get our heads around and democracy because

information and discourse, it's supposed to be the lifeblood of democracy. free and fresh access to information. and here information is being weapon eyes against us and we were caught flat footed in defending ourselves. all of us, our cyber security experts, our national security experts. it's as though the subject of security, cyber security, is morphing before our very eyes. i'll mention a few parts of this information and the approach of the russians, obviously fabrication of personas, mixed in with authentic organic discourse. i will note that much of this fabrication, the content of it wasn't illegal and not even technically false. but it was misleading and manipulative and you've got

inauthentic mega mechanisms -- mechanisms and innovation tools. it's not about the content but about the mechanisms of manipulation. third is these tools, targeting of voters where it mattered. very potent. you put those things together and it ends up changing the discourse around the election. the third big bucket, i will say just a few words about, this is the hardest to believe, if it's possible, our confidence in democratic governance, it's being undermined. the core belief that our values and our openness are part of

our security and it's being hacked. i will mention two things here that are somewhat challenging, obviously this came up. the hack of the rhetoric of the american president where the media is being called fake news, media is supposed to be the watchdog of democracy and its being targeted as an enemy. our allies, our transatlantic alliance, e- seven, nato, all are criticized and undermined. it's as though this is happening before our eyes, this rhetoric is being hacked. i would raise another very challenging point in light of this relationship with our european partners and the wonderful conversation that we had earlier, but i have to admit there's part of me as an american, i think that the confidence of some european governments have also been hacked. as opposed to combating this information, there's been the

reliance of the loss of confidence in our ability to adhere to democratic values. i see this as an effort to regulate content in a way that authoritarian governments might. i see this is as 20th century concepts applied to a 21st- century solution. i think the focus should be on the mechanisms of manipulation and i don't think we want to get into this regulating of content in the expansive way as an authoritarian government. so the bottom line, the hack is every category. campaign, civic discourse, the media and the rhetoric of our president. and even the confidence of democratic government. so i think we really need to -- we we really need to roll up the sleeves to get to the solutions.>> you raise an interesting point.

eileen did a wonderful job framing this story for the very long context. >> the specific area of interest of russian involvement has been around and i agree with a lot of what was said on the previous panel that i think the objectives in russia getting involved in this referendum may not necessarily be interested in the outcome of the election but just the massive amount of discord but i think whatever way the referendum goes in any different way you've seen the involvement around the underlying governments as a result so i think that very -- there's an interest in undermining governments through mainstream media. and leaving people seemingly confused. the involvement in what

happened here, it could be the same as russia's involvement with america as well. it feels a bit like the wizard of oz to realize that the great and powerful oz is the man behind the curtain and we've somehow stumbled into this world and we recognize that there's this capability of power, there's this disinformation. without of are people really realizing what's happening or that this is going on. yet at the same time, we told you the story about the data breach with facebook, it's a bit of a wake-up call. we really give away enormous mass of data and then at the hands of these bigger companies but then they take more than we know and they can't keep it safe. they leave it in the hands of bad actors which is something we never would have given had

we known it would have ended up there. but we've stumbled into this new reality and we are trying to understand what's going on specifically in the uk, we are seeing this follow a similar passage familiar with these things. we are much more limited in our facebook advertising as we know of. the pay for advertising in a similar way and i agree with jennifer warner, this is really only the tip of the iceberg. going about the way that these fake accounts were used to pass off false content. i think there is interference regarding this. you have to look at this from the market point of view, when you're selling this fake accounts and you know that most of the public is a platform

based off of fake accounts, i think it was also, it's not wrong for us to say. if the bank has suspicions about money laundering, they check out what's going on but we've got special laws and the government to protect these companies without any obligation to become -- to be forthcoming with this. the facebook ad checking same has google ads running in the campaigns during the u.s. they didn't spotted for over -- spotted for over a year after. and finally and very reluctantly they agreed to it and then we got a wider look at these possibilities of russian involvement in politics in other countries being run through these platforms and again with this position you see what's happening

>> we should also not underestimate how involved the official russian fake news is with pumping propaganda out. there was a study done that suggested that they had a bigger share of this than the official lead campaign did. and if you look to the involvement, and he searched for stories about that, the top 10 results which show the top two popular cdc reports on it. in the top 10 most, -- supplying the russian version. if they depose enough questions , they could make you disbelieve what the made does

make the mainstream media is telling you. but with the russians, it's a multilayered approach, spreading disinformation and causing doubt. it's able to actually infect the referendum. what were they talking about? this was a similar pattern to what we saw in america as well. like immigration, being encouraged on one particular side as well. i think what we have responded to regarding the layouts that people are aware, i think we have certain responsibilities. i think they should act proactively. they need to get some tools themselves to do that. i think this is a harmful form

of information. it's probably going to get worse and this information is getting more so. we need help from the tech companies and the medias. it's very serious. what sort of liability should there be? i think that is a specific discussion we need to have here. it's raised some important things. >> i stepped back from this conversation to say that at some point, kremlin's identified this liberal order establishing world war ii, is a direct threat to their existence and the system they would like to see. all of this is about restoring the international order in the forms that it takes and our

democracies and our elections and our values. ukraine is a critical element of that order and establishment because ukraine is an example of the success of the liberal international order and those values over those minds of those who are free. people in ukraine have shown that is our -- desire to live by these values and to live by those norms and responsibilities and for that amongst others, the kremlin has intervened from day one against politics and elections in the clear that it became over the past 25 years, ukrainian people were yearning for european western values and willing to fight and willing to die to see those values that the civilization -- that the civilization played and it was more important to ever -- even more important to intervene. perhaps in the south or maybe

the east and then insecurity services making it of the military, often financed by corruption so the government stepped in 2014 and ended the intermediary a gap rate. financing further their interest within ukrainian politics. that is what helps their political interest. in 2004, our evolution, there is a sound by candidates that clearly states the embodied western values and european values, hundreds of millions of dollars, this was a foreshadowing idea of what we now here is happening unfortunately, whether it's in the u.s. or elsewhere and it accomplished the strategy for this moment. they showed that they could control individuals and ideas. from 2004-2014, gas trades,

fake news, creating dissonance between different portions of society, ukraine continue to embrace international liberal order and when this happened in 2014, ukraine centering into a indication agreement with the european union and the trade agreement, to stop ukraine for moving forward and they still failed with the revolution of dignity. when they insisted on maintaining that, the $16 billion offers revised. it wasn't enough to stop ukraine from going forward with the association agreement and trade agreement. so unless we move other tools and things, a legal annexation and obligation of crimea, the war in the east, it led to tens of thousands of lives being lost, 2 million people displaced on the territory in

europe. loss of an indigenous homeland. in four years tomorrow, the lost of 300 civilians. the anniversary is tomorrow. absolutely innocent civilians. every single tool. we had a cyber attack. a massive use of disinformation. the international community is looking at this as being a unique situation based on ukrainian-russian historic approaches. my point is, it has nothing to do with that, that might be an element of why it's so strong but this is an important testing ground for russia throughout the international liberal order. for this reason alone i think that the absence of russia and the upcoming march election for president and the auto election for parliament needs to be

watched carefully. i'm proud of the transatlantic commission as the council will work with a specific task force to identify that which has occurred in these elections to try to stop them and identify them for the populations and perhaps their vote won't be for moved -- removed from their hand. this is not about ukraine or about russian ukrainian relations. it is a globally prep does make a global preparation for the rollout. this is a massive use of social disinformation. it create chaos and disruption operations of all kind using the word to create more pain and create more economic dissonance for example, the actions of the russian military and the many ships. less assassinations which have occurred over the past year

will continue to be a source and the bottom line is, stabilize ukraine, remote and more amiable leadership and it's something important for us to watch for and ignoring these examples outside of the united states creates enormous and grave consequences so i think we have to use this as a weapon that we learn from.>> that is wonderful i would like to thank you for bringing up the international order. in a sense, your conversation about russian hacking is a broad concept. pulling at those vulnerabilities of the international liberal order some very smart people have written and ultimately an advanced civilized society depends on trust. everyone knows the rule of law, it's applied for every day

activities. what the kremlin has been doing effectively is cutting at the trust of the international liberal order so i would like a few comments on that.>> i'm completely -- i completely agree. the underscoring is the big thing. the erosion of confidence in the post-world war ii liberal democratic order. i like to focus on the concept of algorithms of democracy to use that term to point to the responsibility within the private sector which is really important for this conversation and it really also gets the responsibility of democratic governments that we are able to protect freedom and security for the democratic processes under the rule of law and that ability is really being called

into question and i really think that the democratic government has to step up to the plate to figure out how to provide liberty, security and democratic process in our global and digital echo system. that's the name of the game here. we have to do it. protecting democracy has always been hard. it is so hard and it's really hard and this globalized digitized ecosystem, the threat is overwhelming. but that's what we've got to do. i would like to point back into the international human rights framework as part of that liberal democratic order and a very important part of it that we can't throw under the bus in the name of protecting democracy. the human rights framework provides a universal basis for protecting citizens, liberties and their security and we

should hold to it. it's well-suited for our globalized and digitized echo system which should be our starting place.>> thank you. you raised a couple of things i will come back to in a little bit but i would like to take about 1 point -- to talk about 1 point that plays off of natalie's points. what we've seen russia do in ukraine is not only about or physically about ukraine but about the board of the community of democracy. something that we didn't understand until 2014 in europe. would you say that it's currently understood today?>> to some extent. in ukraine it might be because you go back to the russian invasion of ukraine overlooking these portions of politics. entering the debate as well

saying that the u.s. provoked russia. rather than saying, ukraine is an independent european country and has the right to direct its own future. the sort of people that say these sorts of things, there is you know, this undercurrent of specificity with international quality with politicians on the rise in british politics i think it's some of that too. we are seeing them most ordinary way of -- extraordinary way. i think what we need is the inquiry of the community. this is an important thing to understand. they are a lot longer established in the front-line

countries and they've been dealing with this for many years and i'm not sure i understand the nature of what this comment means. it's interesting given the state of analyzing the referendum basically they have these capabilities creating this information i think there's this growing understanding of the wide nature of this problem. but countries like ukraine automatically limits this. >> the atlanta council has been leading the charge against this for four years i would like to pick up on a portion you just named talking about this problem and credible information we

considered spain to be a largely hostile territory until catalonia then we did an event in madrid and overseas and we were the star of that event and now without the same was true of greece and we see reports that the greeks have declared a couple of russian diplomats into politics. would you say this phenomenon of opening up to understanding is growing in europe? >> yes i think it is growing but in some countries there is a game that they artie helped to maintain. russia hates multilateral worlds or the idea of being united with a single prop or

being able to rebuff if you could un-fix that and make countries challenge the value of that alliance that fits the narrative of the establishment. it's and undermined confidence experience with in regard to the social world and citizens are vocal about their unhappiness. and seeing russia as a friendly full force is a challenge of the institution as well.>> natalie, you brought some really interesting insight. you talk about moscow having to use all of its tools to prevent ukraine from making its choice to embrace these values.

i think it was spot on. but yet not well understood so here's my question, i was working on the base 20+ years ago when we thought we could have a good relationship with russia. russian policies 25 years ago weren't bad in most areas looking for the exception in this neighborhood. the question that struck of us -- struck some of us at the time why did they have no soft power in their neighborhoods? or why did they 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 do the hard power option.>> i think that is the way the kremlin has managed post-soviet

and economic history as not providing for people to have hope in the future in terms of their economic wherewithal and you don't see the kind of growth in the direction of the economy that he would look at or that the rest of the people would like or even deserve. they don't have the same kinds of freedoms that i think the russian people had hope for as it was taken away. the legality and the fixes on freedom of media -- restrictions of freedom of media they are seeing an example with ukrainian citizens enjoying this within the european union because they've met several different conditions that needed to be met in order to get the use of free travel opportunity. when you look at young ukrainians who were at the core or the beginning of the revolution they were given a choice whether or not to push

to continue down the path of those values and opportunities or they could look north to what was happening in russia and their generation didn't have these options so i think there's the current economic structure that the kremlin has put in place and i don't think it was an absolute but i believe that is a system currently in place and it does not offer assistance. it's an issue for the people of russia and leaders of russia as they can't outspend the united states regarding military. and they thought they could for some reason and they failed. senator warman mentioned their budget. if you can't win in the military spending and you can't win with soft power or your ideas they are going around the world selling marxist ideologies

with this democracy or capitalism as they aren't able to sell what they have at home so the to protect it from being infiltrated by these ideas and the strength of that system.>> i feel like this conversation points to how confusing the threats of this disinformation is for our framework of understanding could you start by talking about hard power versus soft power and that they lack the ability to track the soft power.>> attracting to them, is the means through which we used to think of soft power working through ideas and values. i don't know if people have heard about the work done by chris walker on heart power. we also needed a different framework for understanding how this disinformation works.

it does not fit into that binary framing.>> in your initial statement you spoke about social media stepping up. what could be done by international groups to encourage social media step up? >> having some sort of common principles, maybe through violation of legislation are not. i think that some of this embraces tech companies. bringing in transparency everywhere and come from where the webpages are being ministered from. very local levels. speaking out especially against the regime.

to at least know about this essentially in the key phase of talking about where you might live given that transparency i think we were responsible so i think there's a question about stabilizing during the regulation period within the campaign for the uk in the final 3-4 weeks. it would be a hard organization to run. with full transparency and traceability of who you are which would not be easy to look at. it's important to look at the efforts of individuals without their consent or knowledge.

saying i've got a group of people who i know who i have supported, i would like to find another group of people like them so i want to find the other purple does make people worried about this as well. basically i think it's a really serious question. i think that is a dialogue that we need to have with this. being more particular about the harmful things that are in this content. whether it should possibly go up or be taken down and i think it's interesting regarding this whole model, so, i think it's one of these instincts in the world facebook.

it's whether or not you go down the legal route. with the company doing anything like this. monitoring what goes on in the site.. .>> i'm looking into the efforts about what to do.

>> it is a question that i find still, we are going to be talking about how much needs to be free we elect >> what we have seen is in this part of the disinformation active and and in the netherlands and internationally, they've failed to bring charges of anti-russian sentiments to shut this down. they may be anti-aggression but anti-russia. >> i would say that i really appreciate the efforts of the german government and other governments in europe to be proactive and concerned about

the quality especially in this case, i think they've gone after the wrong target and i reference the resources putting out rather than their manipulation an important part. this is a big problem, they basically handed over a judicial contract to the pirate sector is -- to the private sector that's not democratically accountable. i think this is problematic another piece that bothers me, you don't want to encourage the definition of what kind of things are illegal. most of the disinformation wasn't false or illegal so i think it's the wrong target.

>> i think there are two important categories within that. there is public information which i think is useful. the pizza case story -- the pizza gate story, criminal acts and false information. but that is an example of competent -- content mistreatment. there was another debate as well based on these facts. based on these interpretations. so these people understand where it's coming from. is it a legitimate act. but there's this category of a heart campaign with disinformation. so this kind of work within the private sector, with the

government taking up this framework, if they fail to do that then there was some sort of intention applied to them. and in many areas where people were having powerful misinformation >> in your initial comments, you spoke about the effectiveness of the official russia media pushing out things that were part of a major part of the public situation. how might this issue the results were at least managed?>> it's difficult, they aren't hiding the fact that they are doing it. i think with our team at times, they are operating under the uk.

i think that is an issue for these other organizations. and people who would engage more readily with social media as well. i think half americans -- have americans get their news from facebook -- half of americans get their news from facebook. they get it these bite-size images shared randomly by people that they happen to know. it's a huge issue with policy as far as the way their content is shared on these platforms regarding what you in the media or your friends on their social media pages. it's been arranged in this way for they've got some responsibility.>> i was up on

the hill talking about this in ukraine and i could tell you more than half of the current rational representatives -- congressional representatives weren't there today. that may have changed but i could tell you that a couple of years ago people weren't aware that this was a russian broadcast network and what we need to do is to educate people so they could choose to watch it but they need to know what they are watching and we need to educate our own media when they are sourcing information from these networks to clearly state what they are doing because this is how they get into our algorithms. getting in with the attribution of our it. with the statements within the news originally taken from them so i think part of this has to do with following the track and making everyone aware.>> i want to add, i don't think any

serious person in the private sector has no sense of responsibility and i think they've woken up to this possibility. i think just as though we do not want the government to be markers of truth and democracy we don't want the private sector to as well. the manipulation of the platforms and the fabrication of these personas part of that, they are embracing the concept of quality, the quality of discourse that is necessary within democracy and the quality of information that is shared, it's a subtle difference but the way i see this it's not about the content but the manipulative effect of the whole system. >> i agree with that but i think there is some hard areas

of content. they created a company that created a tool with over 99 fake actors. they identified this itself. they would say okay well let's see what the company could do and if they can then you can two. this is information that the fines people. and so this is as hard as it gets regarding the content. >> i think that you made the right distinction, violence is one kind of category. disinformation is a challenge that democracy has faced for generations.>> i figured that but there's a difference between

disinformation and these kinds of content. giving a specifically the tools that we need regarding the information. you know the organization feels very powerfully about these politicians, with results to identify this and trying to do something about it. >> you raise a good point about these improvements. let's follow the laws a little, we know that we have problems right here in the united states, the russians were sending out inflammatory messages going to white supremacist on one side and others on the other side.

does this fit your policy of the described activities are not?>> there were similar things done and i think it depends on the nature of this group as we are seeing with the terror attacks. the misreporting of these events, there's confusion and what happened or not.>> confusion and hatred usually follows along. >> with facebook i think the misinformation is about who is spreading this information around. >> the people need to see this content does mixing this content need understand, there's outside involvement.

they need to give less weight to the content they see. >> one group was not at all locally established and being able to identify whether it is a member of your community or identifying the source could be so helpful which is insidious about these examples because it's causing the democratic government because they don't like expression

-- the creation of dissonance. stoking fires in this society. >> it was kind of a policy,

they say they have fake accounts, they've got this financial reporting and they say about 3 %-for % of the accounts are fake on this site. what should you do then to make what they do to go on? >> let's talk a little bit more on this. some people may argue that that person might be a billionaire, are you going to object his or her voice? and so, is restricting money restricting free speech?>> we should have massive party financing rules. >> so restricting money. >> right. so i would put a finer point on

it. i think they've obviously been a massive part of the problem in manipulation and i think that these blanket rules for you can't have this bought online doesn't make sense. their application bots who could do real-time updating or whether or news so there are positive applications for bots so it is not blanket spanning. it's advocating personas -- personas but we will never get to this level of detail so we have to err on the side of caution and give up our weather news for the bots who are doing that. >> i think, you're one of these people who is technically competent regarding this. good bots and bad bots?>> you mean under the surface before they are out there? in other words, you could make

a distinction between a good bought.>> it's like police men.>> so, we've all heard the idea that technology could be used for good or ill which is how you evaluate this. it's how it's used. whether you could police it under the surface, i couldn't answer that. >> to determine which of the bots is good or bad, unfortunately it's determining whether fake information is here , it's not the content but then it is the manipulative effect. it's the same distinction. >> people are running apps in the way that people understand leveling the detailed accounts so they could help people out.

i can't believe if they wanted to they couldn't easily identify that. it's sending 1000 tweets about trump. in two hours. and that is the distinction. >> i want to relay something else that people here may find interesting. we have had many unusual things happen over these past few weeks. one of those was president trump planning, i found that, i saw some advantages and disadvantages within that. was this a positive contribution to the goal of stopping the mainstream?

>> this is a clear economic policy decision on part of the present. germany fortunately or unfortunately depending on what side you were on, what the president says tends to have the opposite effect so i hear the president is coming out strongly against, they have the strength of the german will. in the press conference today, it was interesting that this came up, vladimir putin used to

show we were good competitors and we aren't enemies and i'm competing for the gas market and so may the best man win. i found this to be a strategic foreign policy issue to be dealt with as say, a competitive issue between the two different soft drink brands.>> i think they would have been happy to hear something like that. likening them with the issue of the deal under something ironic about criticizing the closeness of the relationship with russia. given these statements today. but i do think that there is a issue about the growing influence russia has over the

decisions made within a year.>> i would add that the overlay of that comment was to embarrass merkel and going back to the idea of undermining our transatlantic alliance and undermining the pursed -- post- world war ii order.>> i agree with that. i would point out that the reaction in russia were several kinds. there was criticism and then putin's reaction was a smart play. >> it misses the point that i was referring to.>> just look at the last week, the ability of the present, saying i think we should do this and i think it's important has been this managed -- diminished.

it's sad but true. >> we have like seven minutes left, if anyone in the audience has a question, i've got a microphone. i have 3 questions over here so we will do one, two, 3. >> hello i am suzanne spaulding, i was the undersecretary of the department of homeland security responsible for cyber security infrastructure protection including elections. i am now with the center for strategic international studies where i am looking at leading a project to look at all the ways and with -- in which russia is doing underlined public trust and confidence in a fundamental pillar of democracy, mainly within the justice -- the judicial justice system. we know what we see here has been going on for some time elsewhere specifically in the ukraine as it's been a proving

ground for techniques against the u.s. and i'm wondering, if you saw similar measures targeting the judiciary, we have certainly seen them in hungary and poland and elsewhere.>> it's not that i could say that i have. the judicial system in ukraine has unfortunately been most affected by corruption, simply corruption and a lack of follow- through in the rule of law. i will allow the rest of us to share the blame as being part of the source of corruption in ukraine but they aren't responsible, ukraine is responsible. so the judicial system, the biggest risk has been the nondirect russian interference. >> michael martel, cyber research for the national security archive. people have been talking about transparency and the location

of both. it is fairly easy to spoof locations online using vpn. at a certain point to make this effective we would have to target the vpn. virtual private network, used in places like russia, china, iran, at times with american encouragement in order to be able to practice free speech of their own. at what point do we decide that is for the worst or the best? >> any comments? that's a good question.>> it really is a trade-off, there are costs to doing that and even though there are benefits as with the other question, that is what democracies democratic government is supposed to do, they're supposed to address the hard questions of freedom, security, democratic process and the rule of law. i don't have a straight answer to that particular question but

that is what we've got to do. we can't throw one thing under the bus in the name of protecting democracy but we have to do it all. i lean toward saying we have to save the democratic system first so i would lean toward unfortunately, dealing with the vpn, i've seen in many of the era of awakening for targeted use of vpn, the weapon is the ultimate protection of their -- of them in those situations and again, it's unbalanced. >> i think things are to continue as they are.>> another question over here? >> my name is lee block, i work at the american university. my question is as follows, how multilateral institutions -- how to multiply lateral organizations count her --

encounter russia as a huge corruption to the method of soft power in foreign policy? that's my question. >> there's a lot more we could do to callout russia probes than we do. with anti-money laundering, for those who suddenly come into a lot of money or elsewhere, another logical thing to mention, the cease-fire, it's very open to money laundering in the interest people. it's a hugely accessible tool.

looking at money laundering in the caribbean, we could do this questions whether or not to get these within much more innovation. >> i would say more transparency. we have a rule in one of the countries where working into insist on and promote and ensure there's affective transparency. whether it's auditing companies in the ukraine, putting the treasury of the country online, continuing to do that throughout if the countries are working to have more and more transparency within the united states and in these advanced countries with regards to the tasks being used within the real estate markets as i said earlier today and it united states with the ability to buy through in corporations and companies that have been set up yesterday. real estate property transferring hundreds of millions of dollars we need to

practice what we preach. i'm not suggesting selling out to do it ourselves but i think a lot of this could be resolved with more transparency.

>> with the information of the investigation looking into these elections, that's an example of data breaches, affected by those people in russia. there is individuals like erin

banks as this information has come out, investigating these journalists. identifying this information and seeing it in public as it plays a important role. there in an international portion of the primary agency. unfortunately the cases aren't as forthcoming about what they are trying to do and have succeeded on getting data regarding the work they are getting into. which is why think this is important regarding what we do. i hope this at least encourages the agency. >> thank you. i would like to thank you all for being here this afternoon. the program we've been doing following the russian investigation, there is an

event on the 19th on russian efforts to corrupt american voting. thank you very much. >> saturday 10:00 and eastern on american history tv, live all-day coverage of the confederate icon topic from james madison university in harrisburg virginia. speakers include kristi coleman, ceo of the american civil war museum. and the museums historian john coffey. kevin walker, ceo of the shenandoah valley battlefield foundation, caroline jeannie purdue university professor, and james robertson officer -- author of the book after the war, the heroes, villains,

so