as far as performance and the difference -- >> the network directors established the performance standards. fordeputy under secretary health and operations management establishes the performance managers -- measures. >> are they different? some performance measures that are standardized across the system. there is flexibility to introduce standards that may relate particularly to the network or facility. >> i wish you would look at that. what concerns me is if different networks have different performance measures, i don't know why they would be different. my big concern -- when the american legion went to the gulf

systemility, the questioned how the benefit the responsen -- that the american legion told me from the staff at the baltimore facility was that there was the v.a. way of doing things and then there was the baltimore way of doing things and we are doing at the baltimore way. that is a concern that i have. even though the secretary might say this is the way it is systemwide, you have different regions doing things differently because that is weighted -- the way they have always done that. it gets back to the metrics. think that definitely needs to be looked at. what other performance measures and metrics.

>> i think regions and facilities may be different. there may need to be some flexibility based on what you need to achieve at that facility. >> thank you. i yield back. >> i thought i was supposed to yield back. [laughter] >> i yield back to you. >> i yield back. >> any further statements? ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your interest. thank you for appearing. the subpoena will not be served. think for coming tonight. this meeting is adjourned. >> we are covering a couple of events today regarding veterans issues. republicans of the house and representatives of veterans groups are holding a news hospital's.va the house veterans affairs subcommittee on disabilities is

holding a hearing on how to help veterans transition to civilian life. ist is on c-span 3 and scheduled to begin at 1:00 p.m. eastern. book "sundays at eight" includes malcolm gladwell. >> when you write, you cannot you cannot sit down to write a bestseller. you should not think about that issue at all when you sit down to write. what you should do when you sit down to write this to write what you find interesting to follow your own curiosity. when i was writing "tipping point" for instance, i can honestly say that i never for a moment tried to imagine how well the book would sell. i just wanted to write something cool. i was interested in this.

i wanted to write something that my friends would read, that my mother would like. >> read more of the conversation with malcolm gladwell and others in "sundays at eight." available for a father's day gift that your famous bookseller -- favorite bookseller. >> you can now take c-span with you wherever you go. with our free c-span radio app for your smart phone and tablet. this into all three c-span tv channels were c-span radio at any time. there's a schedule of each of our network so you can tune in whenever you want, play podcasts .rom recent shows take c-span with you wherever you go. download the free app online for your iphone, android, or blackberry. next, an update on general motors' recall of millions of cars.

this portion of "washington journal" is a little less than half an hour. each week in this segment of "the washington journal" we look at a magazine piece. why gm keeps swerving from .pology general motors is currently on recall number 30 at this point. the ignition switch recall is the one you focus on in your piece. remind us what that was about and how my cars were impacted here. the problem is, with the ignition switch, gm has found that under certain conditions, the ignition and turned the power in the car off avid

striving. you can be driving down the highway at 60 miles an hour and then find that your power is cut off and that is a situation that is potentially very dangerous. these ignition switch failures have been linked to several dozen crashes and at least 13 deaths. at the core of gm's problem. it's far from the entire problem . gm is already announced the recall of some 14 million cars. bloomberg news is reporting as of this morning that federal regulatory records show that the regulators are looking at yet thater 2 million gm cars could potentially be recalled. this is turning out to be quite a bad year for general motors. host: here is the headline from today's washington post. you talk about how deadly this could be. the defect killed 13 or perhaps

more. statements about that faulty ignition switch. can you tell us where we are in terms of gm's liability here and the investigations that are taking place? agenciesltiple federal are looking at this situation. criminal investigators in the justice department are looking at the question of whether gm covered up its knowledge of the extent of the ignition switch problem. you have investigators from the department of transportation. the congressional investigators. you have a swarm of federal officials were looking at various problems. ofthe most likely outcome that network of investigations will ultimately be a settlement with the federal government.

large companies like gm don't go to war with the federal government over these things. you look at a very substantial sediment -- settlement that will result in civil complaints against the company and possibly criminal applications. that's only a piece of the picture as far as general motors and its shareholders are concerned. the new have the whole question of private civil liability. you have a high level also spent of already been filed under various theories. gm has made broad statements saying that they will do the right thing. at the same time, the company has indicated that it plans to fight many of the tens of thousands of claims of car owners who are saying that the value of my vehicle was reduced as a result of the general existence of the defect, even if

i wasn't physically harmed in any way. that takes you into a very raising gm'sealm bankruptcy in 2009. story talkingyour about this being a teachable moment for gm. as they are looking to navigate the legal issues and the pr issues, what is the teachable moment here? least severale at lessons to be drawn. the first having to do with the fact that gm engineers and about people in-house new the ignition switch problem years ago. maybe as long as a decade ago. it was only in the winter of this year that the company came forward and conceded the problem and began making these large recalls. his first big lesson is,

companies like gm have to move very swiftly in the interest of their consumers and their own reputation when they discover they have a problem of this sort. the second lesson goes to the question of quality control overall. gm historically has had a problem with reputation for a lack of reliability. had the reputation for producing clunkers. had ahe company near-death experience in 2009 in the midst of the great recession. builders stepped in and the company out to the tune of some $50 billion. the company went through a swift a group c restructuring -- swift bankruptcy restructuring and became the new gm.

as thenounced mary barra new gm. she said this is a new company with a new attitude and quality is back and that is the new standard. recalls isf these now obviously bringing those promises and to those declarations into question. it is far from clear that gm will really be able to establish itself as a new am opposed new,uptcy company -- as a post-bankruptcy company. we are talking with paul barrett of bloomberg businessweek in this week's spotlight on magazine piece. the article is why gm keeps swerving from apology to aggression in recall crisis. our phone lines are open. democrats can call (202)

585-3880. republicans, (202) 585-3881. independents, (202) 585-3882. a special line for gm car owners, (202) 585-3883. barra's rolemary in this. i want to talk about how she has handled herself in front of congress. here's a bit from her testimony last month when she testified about some of the safety issues here. >> i cannot tell you why it took so long for a safety defect to be announced for the program. i can tell you that we will find out. .his is an extra near situation it involves vehicles we no longer make. it came to light on my watch, so i am responsible for resolving them. when we have answers, we will be fully transparent with you,

regulators and our customers. while i cannot turn back the clock, as soon as i learned about the problem, we acted without hesitation. we told the world we had a problem that needed to be fixed. we did so because whatever mistakes were made in the past, from ourot shy away response abilities. today's gm will do the right thing. that begins with my sincere apologies to everyone who has been affected by this recall. especially the families and friends who lost their lives or were injured. i am deeply sorry. part this is the apology of the swerve that is your headline. guest: yes. those words, certainly if you heard them and sell them, would sound fair enough. i apologize. she sounds very sincere.

on the other hand, they are delivered in a fairly flat, unemotional way. listeners and viewers can make with a will of that. nownd that, while she says everything is different and we are going to do the right thing from this point going forward, of course, what did the right thing is is a subject of debate. what she thinks is the right thing might not strike the typical gm consumer who thought they had a high-quality car but now it turns out has to bring the car back to the dealer, get repairs made and when they go to sell that used car in a year or two is going to have to confess to the potential buyer that this was a car that was recalled and value may have been diminished. minimum, she said that the right words. it's far from clear that gm plus

apology -- gm's apology is going to solve these problems. host: the headline and the story we are focusing on in this week's spotlight on magazine. on our waiting in ohio line for republicans. caller: good morning. the government had control of gm -- they try tor hang a lot of this on mary barra who was a lower ranking official. what about the guy from the government who was running gm? guest: i think that is a fair question. on the other hand, i would be a little more hesitant to give gm pass.ives a

mary barra has been at the company for 30 years. before she was the ceo, she was not some junior flunky. she was a quite senior person. the company nearly collapsed in 2009. that is not a secret. by presidents made obama and is a ministration to save this company. rather than to allow to collapse and have millions of people, the employees of many companies who supply this huge organization with parts and services -- they decided to keep it going and keep people employed and not exacerbate what was already a terrible recession, especially in the midwest. i don't think the federal administrators who came in and temporarily ran the company for 18 months would be held responsible for these long-standing safety and quality problems.

by any sensible analyst of the situation. which is not to say that we should keep it a secret. what it is those federal overseers knew. what the executives of the company told them and so forth. we will find out a lot about this as these investigations unfold. asks, is from twitter there any reason to believe that the link the recall until after the 2012 election was politically motivated? guest: i'm not even sure i would understand what the premise is behind that question. that the recall would be delayed to protect whom? host: he does not mention that on his week. -- on his tweet. john is waiting in michigan. we have a special line for gm owners. john is on that line. good morning. caller: good morning, c-span.

i'm not only a general motors car owner. in 1978 andrk at gm retired out of their in 1990 and then went to drive a truck. i've got a gm car. in 1980 camaro z 28. that is a car. 19 84-1986, they started taking our plant apart and shifted over to mexico. now you have all this junk. that is why they are yelling about key switches. we were yelling on the production line that they were making junk and they wanted to keep right on going. you couldn't tell the engineer is nothing. dummy in brought dr. there to help rebuild japan. he came into general motors and he said, you have to think about

a different way of doing things. how are we supposed to do that when the product and the process is set in stone? we can change anything. now you are seeing the results of the hierarchy coming out of their office and saying, we want money and we can make keep the shareholders happy and they were cranking out junk. what you are going to see, mary barra has been around their 34 years. she is not stupid. she knows what was going on out there on the line. , if you are going to see they are going to have a new general motors, you have to have somebody step up to the plate and start making something like a mustang. they're making a new corvette. that is what it's going to take to get gm back on track. host: what do you make of his

observations? guest: i don't think i'm qualified to weigh in on whether or camaro is an ideal car the corvette is the answer to chevrolet's future. general attitude , thate is giving voice to sometime in the 1980's, gm and all of the detroit got very far off track -- this is a problem that traces back to the 1970's with a lack of innovation, deteriorating reliability, a failure to adjust to the changing tastes of the consumer -- all those problems made the american auto industry very vulnerable to foreign competitors from japan, germany and elsewhere. we saw the result of that with foreign competitors eating the

lunch of the troy. later, these companies are far smaller. they're supposedly much more efficient. a lot of people lost their jobs and that efficiency move. they're prepared to make better cars. the question is, is the color correct that they are still making junk or is mary barra correct that we have learned our lesson and we are now putting out a how quality product -- a high-quality product? having to recall 14 million cars in the first half of this year would tend to raise questions about her claims that they have solved their quality problems. host: we're showing our viewers a headline. are there any gm cars c to recall?

why doesn't gm just lift the cars that are not being recalled? it would be a shorter list. you talk about the pr aspects of those kinds of comments? avoidingere is no real the pr calamity that recalls on this scale create for a company like gm. there is nothing good to say about recalls beyond the apology and the pledge that now we are taking stock and we are going to do right in the future. saying the right things. at the same time, they are going to be fighting in court to try to limit their liability to all of these millions of car owners who are going to be making claims about the value of their car being reduced by some

ofdreds or thousands dollars. how gm deals with that situation, do they end up using every legal technicality to try todefend those claims off -- defend those claims off or do they come up with a way to settle those claims and move on? that is we are interesting issues cross wire with legal issues and attitudes of lawyers and judges. all of that is yet to be determined. there are many? questionare many marks. host: we briefly covered her commitment address at the university of michigan back on may the third when she talked bu about crisis management. let's go to the phones. george is in new york on our line for independents.

caller: good morning. i have a question and a comment. our country has been building 1898.ince ignition switch is not rocket science. it's usually on, off or accessory. you have to explain what the problem is with the switch. an inherent ball bearing or a spring inside or is it something hanging off the switch like on your keychain that is affecting it? most cars still have the ignition switch on a column. not on the --. dash. on the guest: the main problem that has been diagnosed is that the to simplyre prone switch off if they are gerard. if the car were to hit a significant pothole or if the

iver had a bunch of other keys or other doodads that created weight on their keychain. that collection of things hanging off the key ring was jarred, that by itself would cause the ignition switch to switch from on to off. it is not a problem of rocket science. it is not a particularly high-tech or computer-related problem. it is a basic flaw in the design of the switch. it does not work under circumstances that most people would think are easily foreseeable. such as the carping drug. you're not driving across a silk surface. jarred.as the car being that is the core of the problem. host: we have 15 minutes left with paul barrett.

his piece, gmat keeps swerving from apology to aggression in recall crisis. mike is waiting on our special line for gm car owners. dayton, ohio. good morning. caller: the morning. even if you don't have a vehicle specifically threatened by this doesn't lower the value of your gm vehicle? affect theng to is car? value of th what a car is worth or what a used car is worth on the market is not something that is scientifically determined. it is determined by what

consumers and what other people are willing to pay for it. i can't see that the value of gm in anould be improved environment in which gm is recalling millions of cars. certainly, the owner who wants to go to sell that cadillac after using it for one year or two and decides he now wants to write a bicycle and wants to -- nobody has raised any questions about my particular model or my particular car that is sitting here in my driveway. like a reasonable argument. on the other hand, the potential consumer is coming to take a look at it. if they are an individual buyer or some type of wholesaler who wouldsed cars in bulk say, look, i understand it from your perspective. from my perspective, i've got questions about gm in general and therefore i'm going to discount what i offer you by 10%. i was going to offer you $25,000

for your used cadillac. off thatll not be $500 price. take it or leave it. the marketplace will determine that. i can see >> on the next washington journal, we will talk with mac thornberry of texas. our focus on foreign policy continues with derek show lay -- derek chollet. washington journal is live on c-span everyday at 7:00. you can join the conversation on facebook and twitter. the house judiciary committee looks into operations at the department of homeland security.

members are expected to ask jeh johnson about his enforcement of immigration laws. c-span 3, the house ways in on -- the house ways and means committee talks about expiring tax provisions. mark the 25thwill anniversary of the demonstrations in china's --ement square -- tnm and tienenmen square. >> is tax rate was the gold standard tax rate. 25% is what he got the top rate down to. he fought like crazy. it started with wilson. if you look at what the socialites said -- about

coolidge, they probably were from families who endorsed different policies. tr was a bully pulpit presidency. here was coolidge, prissy, cold, and not giving out favors. she said, it looked like he had been weaned on a pickle. he was from new england. farmers don't wave their arms about because a cow might kick them. it was temperamental, of temperament -- he was a shy person. it also had a political purpose. he knew that if he did not talk a lot, people would stop talking. political leader is constantly bombarded with requests and his silence was his into specialtting interests. he articulated that quite explicitly. taxes, depression era

presidents, and current fiscal policies. in, live for three hours. in-depth, live for three hours. >> george washington university hosted the leaders of the house intelligence committee and the president of estonia. the gush and on cyber security -- discussion on cyber security and diplomacy. has put american soldiers in danger. the estonian president said that snowden leaks have created a wedge between the u.s. and its allies not seen before in the postwar era. this is an hour and a half.

>> ladies and gentlemen, the president of george washington university. [applause] knapp, president of george washington university. it's a pleasure to welcome you to this very important symposium this morning. at george washington we frequently have the opportunity to bring global leaders to campus to discuss the important issues of our day. that's one of the ways in which we provide our community with a front row seat in the theater of history. i'd like to take a moment to recognize among the many

distinguished guests we have with us today, the four ambassadors who are in attendance this morning. their excellencies marina callurand of estonia. ambassador andres lason of lot via, am mass dor richard schnepp of poeland and finally ambassador jean-louis voltsfeld of lex umburg. i'll mention one other member of the audience, a former governor of minnesota, tim pawlenty, is here with us today. of course i'd like to welcome especially all of today's distinguished speakers, congressman mike rogers, congressman dutch ruppersberger

and paula dobriansky, former undersecretary of state for democracy and global issues. i'm especially honored to welcome toomas hendrik ilves who will be addressing us in just a moment. estonia has been an extraordinarily viable partner of george washington's world executive mba in cyber security. that program i think is having an important impact in training leaders who can help us address this very important challenge. our students have worked with members of the estonian parliament's cyber security and national defense committees and with the minister of education. the ambassador has visited our campus on a number of occasions to participate in discussions of cyber issues. for the past two years president ilves has met with students as part of their international residency. we're honored today to host this forum as part of our broader cyber security initiative.

it was established in 2012 under the chairmanship of former secretary of homeland security michael chertoff and this brings together university's expertise, research, policy and education to address the wide range of issues that are relevant to the cyber challenge, including national and international security and economic competitiveness as well as concerns about privacy and civil liberties. i'm sure you join me in looking forward to the program and to president ilves' address. please join me in welcoming frank salufo and director of gw's homeland security policy institute. >> thank you, president knapp, and let me echo the president's comments and welcome everyone to

george washington university today. let me also welcome our viewers on c-span, those watching at home. it is a real treat and i've got the distinct privilege of very, very briefly introducing our speakers. to give you a sense of the state of play, we're going to start with some prepared remarks by president ilves. then we'll turn right into a moderated question and answer period with congressman rogers, congressman ruppersberger and ambassador dobriansky. let me first introduce our keynote speaker, president ilves. i think it's a real treat to have someone who is not only articulate on cyber issues but in addition to understanding the strategic initiatives, he is a technologist at heart himself. it's pretty amazing when you see what estonia has done since it regained independence. quite honestly it's one of the most innovative countries you will see.

it's synonymous with cyber. it's done so much in such a short period of time, and i think it's fair to say that they punched way above their weight. and it's a bit of a combination of technology, policy and entrepreneurialism. and i think that's synonymous with their head of state. i think it's fair to say that estonia is in large part where it is today because of president ilves. president ilves was born in sweden. he was the son of refugees during the cold war. he grew up in the united states, went to high school in new jersey. i won't ask him what exit. and was educated in the united states. he went to two small schools, columbia and u-penn. he was ambassador, the estonian ambassador to the united states. he's in his second term as

elected president of estonia and i think you can't have a conversation about cyber security without estonia coming up. so i think that's quite amazing. and it's this combination of grit and technology. he came in immediately following the cold war and started hooking up and networking all the schools to computers. rather than looking to legacy systems, he was looking ahead. many countries were looking at the past, concerned about what they saw for good reason, but i think estonia put the grit and the entrepreneurialism to try to propel forward. in addition to that, as many may know, he's invested very heavily in education. how many people can say they have first graders coding? well, that's precisely what they're doing in estonia. they're coding at a very young age and they're doing so. i had the opportunity to visit a number of the schools and it's pretty amazing in terms of what

you see in terms of coding and robotics. and obviously president ilves is also a leader in the e.u. he's leading a lot of the ehealth initiatives. he's leading the cloud environment and is a true champion not only of cyber. and i might note whereas he's a technologist, at the end of the day it's also the marrying up of culture. they have invested so aggressively in technology, which is neat, they didn't look to legacy systems, but they have also done so with the dna or the ethos that is striving for freedom. so if you think about it, they had to live in an environment where they didn't have any of that. so in addition to technology, you have the opportunity, and i can tell you they will continue to remain the most transparent country. i'm going to quickly introduce our other speakers so we can go right into the conversation. we have following president

ilves, congressman mike rogers. mike rogers is no stranger to gw, no stranger to anyone in the united states or at least anyone who has a tv or the internet. he's been a relentless champion on national security issues. he chairs the house permanent select committee on intelligence and i just want to note he has announced that he will be stepping down from the hill. i might say this is a huge loss for our national security community. so all of us owe him a huge debt of gratitude for thinking country first. his partner in crime, and i say that in a good way, is dutch ruppersberger who's the ranking member of the house select committee on intelligence. if there's any committee that's b bipartisan, that's the one. i think it's all the more important that our intelligence issues and national security issues are treated in a nonpartisan way. and last but certainly not least, we have ambassador paula

dobriansky who had a must-read op-ed in the "washington post" this weekend. if you haven't read it, read it. she is no stranger to diplomacy and national security issues. i had the privilege of working with her in the burn white house. she's headed up the council on foreign relations in d.c. she's at harvard. she got her undergraduate at the other george across town. i won't hold that against you. but got her master's and ph.d. in harvard in soviet military and political studies. dare i say those -- that dissertation is probably as relevant today as it was then. so president ilves, the floor is yours. thank you so much for joining us and thank you from everyone. well, thank you very much. it's great to be here. i'll try to speak quickly because 10, 15 minutes to cover cyber from its various aspects is quite a task.

we're very late in actually coming to realize the importance of cyber. it was only in 2011, that's three years ago, that the munich security conference, the premiere security conference in the transatlantic area actually had its first session on cyber. before that, they didn't have it. at the same time, this awareness has increased dramatically. just last year when u.s. experts were rated on what are the threats, cyber went beyond terrorism by 20 percentage points as the biggest threat. and that should be understandable because in fact the capability of cyber is immense. when you think about how dependent we are on the digital world, the internet of things where basically we have machines already just talking to one

another, more important supervisory control and data acquisition systems that run everything from power plants to the milk deliveries in your supermarket, all of those things are vulnerable. and we've gotten to the point where in fact you don't really need to physically attack a country to debill at a ti tadeb. and that was with a very primitive attack. we had d-dos attacks flooding our servers and that was seven years ago. it seems prehistoric looking at what the capabilities are. when you think also the number of cyber attacks and between 2000 and 2011, there was a 17-fold increase in cyber attacks on u.s. infrastructure. we can assume that it's more or less the same everywhere else in the free world.

so we, of course, got -- we were the first ones who were subjected to something -- to an attack that was explicitly political, and it was the first time it would sort of meet the category of policy by other means. before that clearly there were all kinds of cyber attacks, but it was never clear that it was a policy by other means. and what makes it all much more difficult, of course, this is all the obvious, it's very hard to tell who did it. forensics are really difficult. this leads to major problems in figuring, for example, from the point of view what is an article 5 attack. if someone shoots a missile at your -- at a power plant, you know where it came from, you have an appropriate response. if you take out the power plant with a cyber attack, you don't know who did it, you don't know what's at fault. these are the kinds of things

that we have to start thinking about. we have to start thinking about defending the entirety of our societies from attack. i think it's wrong to only think about cyber in a strictly military-to-military domain because in fact they don't have -- whoever is attacking you, doesn't have to attack your military. they can just attack your infrastructure. we have, i think, moved considerably at least -- nato has finally figured out cyber is an issue so the nato center of excellence for cyber is in estonia. we do regular exercises, most recently i think with 17 countries participating in an annual exercise called lock shields, which is a cyber defense exercise. and those things are moving along. and we ourselves are very proud that we are the only country so far to have a memorandum of understanding of cyber security with the united states.

now, of course all of this is complicated by some of the developments that we find -- we have to deal with politically because of various revelations from people who used to work at nsa. and i think that we have to understand that this makes it all politically much more difficult to do a lot of the things that we want to do. and i think that we have some major intellectual tasks ahead of us. basically what we're dealing with is overall in cyber is the modern equivalent of hobbs' -- thomas hobbs' war of wall against all. it is a state of nature. all things are allowed, there are no rules. we see that some countries in fact are taking hobbsian solutions and imposing a sovereign -- that is to say a dictator on top saying what is to be done.

we who are in the freedom online coalition with the united states, we are number two in the world in internet freedom, we were for a number of years number one but then iceland crept ahead of us. number three now is the u.s. but if you want to maintain a free internet, we have to come up with a new solution or new understanding, i think, between society and government on what -- how we deal with the hobbsian nature of the world and the internet where all is allowed up to now. so we need our jeffersons, we need our voltaires in this area and i hope people work on that. especially when we think about all of the things that relate to cyber -- rather to privacy, not only are we talking about what governments do, but it's all your google searches, your swipe

car cards. if you read the wonderful book by shinberger on big data, you see everyone is using big data to follow everything and oftentimes they know more about you than you know yourself, even to the point that you're pregnant, as one example was in that book. so this is where we're dealing with something very big that we're only now beginning to grasp. a few words about what we do shall because it's very different from other countries. we have come to the conclusion that you cannot have any genuine security without a secure online identity. most of you may recall the old new yorker cartoon of two dogs and one of them says to the other on the internet, no one knows you're a dog. well, that is the dilemma of all internet relations. you don't know who's who. and until you can do that, you

cannot really be sure of anything. and so our solution has been to create a very secure online identity to factor public key infrastructure and rsa 2048, if that means anything to anybody, but in fact we know who's who. you can be sure that whoever has an online identity is that person. and so we've built the legal infrastructure based on that, so we allow digital signatures. we've given 160 million digital signatures in estonia since we started this. we have built up an architecture on top of that which allows us to offer about 400 services, both public and private, ranging from banking to online prescriptions. that is to say if you get a prescription in estonia, you can take it out anywhere in the country by just sticking your

card in. we think that's the way of the future. other countries don't want to have secure online identities. there is this sort of odd paradox that the u.k., canada, u.s., new zealand and australia are also the five countries most opposed to having any secure online identities. why that is, i don't know. but in any case we don't fear it and we in fact find that it's far more secure and our citizens love it. they fill out their taxes. all taxes get done virtually online. in about three minutes. we have online medical records. all these things are possible if and only if you have a secure online identity, because whoever has the data knows it's you and not anyone else. we also -- we also have a few laws that also are crucial, i

think. one is that you own your own data. i just read the big data report that was put out here in the u.s. one thing that you could do is actually give the right to own your own data to people. if you own your own data then whoever owns it is obligated to tell you they have been looking at it. that's difficult, i know, but you can do it. so those are the kinds of things that are alternative ways to give you cyber security. i don't know where -- how things are going to go, but certainly in europe i think that that will be the way we will go because the level of fear about cyber, often ignorant fear, is so great that we will have to take measures to guarantee the security of data. and i think that the way things are going in the world with

cyber attacks and with fear of privacy, we haven't even gotten to the big issues because everyone is concerned about privacy. i think the real issue in cyber will not be privacy, but rather integrity of data. people -- to take an example, you might be worried about someone knowing your blood type. i'm much more worried about someone changing the record on my blood type and that's what data integrity is. so far all the discussion posts has been about privacy, but the real issue and the real fear and issue that instills fear in me is that data can be changed. and that will require a solution of the sort that we have beca e because -- things can get pretty batted, i say basically. but we're glad that we're

working closely with the united states on these issues and the u.s. does do a lot of work with us. when you say we punch above our weight, it's actually the digital world has no weight. and that's why i would say in this world digital is like the old colt .45, the great equalizer. you don't have to be big, you don't have to be rich, you just have to be smart. if you're smart, you can do things in digital which are very good. unfortunately, some people who are smart do things that are very bad. anyway, i won't take any more time. just wanted to give that brief overview, thank you very much. [ applause ] >> let's jump right into the questions. let's start with our congressman. congressman rogers, congressman ruppersberger, if you had to rack and stack the threat environment we see today, we've heard a little bit about what estonia is doing to defend not only their country from a national security perspective but also their citizens from

misuse and breaches and the like. if you were to rack and stack the threat environment today, where would you put the various actors? because i mean we tend to speak of these issues loosely. computer network exploit, for example, is not the same as computer network attack. countries that may have intentions to steal secrets may not necessarily at this point have the same intent to attack. but if you were to look at the threat environment, i'd love to hear from the two of you where you see that. and then you guys have both passed bipartisan legislation on the house side. i think it's fair to say that you can't move forward without information sharing. why aren't we moving forward on that front. so congressman rogers, let me start with you, and congressman ruppersberger. >> if you think about the last 30 days of general alexander as the national security agency

director, they stopped 41 million separate attacks on department of defense or dot-mil if you will or dot-gov. 41 million. and they are by the way getting more sophisticated. that's everything from a very low level attack to a very sophisticated attack. so if you said what is the threat matrix out there today, it looks even different than it did even 24 months ago, even than it did 12 months ago, even than it did six months ago. it is constantly changing. and the problem is you have new, higher quality actors starting to come in. if you look at the target attack, this was a non-nation state actor, organized crime basically in the eastern block countries who used nation state tactics to get in, develop a tool that was able in a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a second steal credit card information. they did it not by attacking the security of the company, which by any stretch of the

imagination wouldn't have been difficult to get through. they did it by finding that somewhere down the logistics chain of that particular company and swam upstream until they got where they needed to go. so you think just that attack, which probably wouldn't have happened 18, 19, 20 months ago, now you see this organized crime group with really sophisticated capabilities and it's getting better. >> by the way, i might underscore we just hosted the head of europe and over 85% of their investigations are russian speaking. from countries russian speaking. >> it's getting difficult, by the way, to determine between russian organized crime and russian intelligence services. i think that's where the president was going to go. it's kind of hard to figure out who's behind that keyboard. >> the great kleptocracy of vladimir putin is a confusing place to draw lines between organized crime groups. so the chinese have gone

unavetted in their ability to steal intellectual property and repurpose it. that is a long-term economic problem for the united states of america. the russians are also in that game, not to the same extent. now you have other nation states who see this who are investing in this capability, including, by the way, terrorist groups who are now out advertising to find the right people with the right qualifications to help them do cyber attacks. and of course according to public reports, you do have a nation state who is interested and eager for a disruptive terrorist-style attack, the nation state of iran, who has been probing our financial institutions with pretty low level we think d-dos style attacks but we know they have better capability laying on the shelf. so next week if you ask me what the threat matrix is, it will change. next month it will change, next year it will change. the one thing that hasn't changed is we have admired this problem long enough. next week we'll admire it some

more and next year we'll admire it some more. dutch and i have worked pretty hard to find that bipartisan solution that at least gives the private sector the opportunity to defend themselves. >> congressman -- >> you asked the question about the threat. number one, other than weapons of mass destruction, i think the cyber attacks generally is probably the second biggest threat to our world. and we -- if you look ten years from now, we will be the pioneers. we -- not only in the united states but in the whole world have to come together and set some type of standard on how we're going to protect ourselves. every citizen in the world is really on the front line of what could happen with respect to these cyber attacks. as positive as the internet is. mike talked about the issue with stealing. it's been estimated by our cyber command that we lose the united states over $300 billion because of theft, mostly from china. and just recently in the last two weeks we indicted five

people who work for the chinese military in china for stealing. we all have -- all countries have espionage. that's what we've done since world war i to protect us, but we don't steal from other people, other countries. we're not stealing to make ourselves richer, and that's what some of these countries are doing. now, you talked about the legislation that mike and i have worked with. we're getting a divorce, he's leaving and we're negotiating all our child support and custody, but mike is a very unique individual. we made a commitment, each one of us, because our committee before we took leadership did not work well together. that the stakes are so high, not only cyber but terrorism, space issues, all these issues that we had to work together. as a result of his leadership, we have tried to do the best we could to deal with this issue of cyber threat. the first thing we did was this bill called sispa. we realized that we had to have a way, that we had to have a law that would allow information to be shared with the private

sector. 1947 law basically says there's a law that the government cannot share information with business and other groups unless there's a clearance issue there. so an example, if you see hurricane sandy coming up the east coast and you're a meteorologist, you can't warn anybody. that's how we feel right now until our bill is passed. now, unfortunately, the public generally has some mistrust of what our intelligence agencies are doing. unfortunately also it's misplaced because that's what our job is on the intelligence committees, that's what justice does. we have a lot of checks and balances to protect our freedom and our liberties and our constitutional rights. so what we did, we educated our republican and democratic members. we put this bill that would allow for information sharing so that when the united states, basically nsa but other intelligence agencies see these attacks coming in, we can take that information and share it with the private sector.

what most people don't realize, 80% of the network in the united states is controlled by the private sector, so there has to be this partnership. so after working and educating people about security, we passed a bill, a very strong vote, and it went to the senate. and chairman rogers and i worked with senator feinstein and senator chambliss to come together to make sure we can get proper legislation and this is the sispa bill. the senate was getting ready to move and all of a sudden we had the snowden leak and everything came to a stop. unfortunately, that was very dangerous to our country what occurred. a lot of misinformation. but more importantly is it became viral as if the united states and nsa was listening to people illegally. there was not one violation of the law. so mike and i had to come together again to find another way to get the confidence of the public back and let them know we follow the law. we have more checks and balances in this country as far as listening to people than any country in the world.

i think we're number one with estonia, but we'll argue that later. and as a result of that, we came together, we have checks and balances. we brought the aclu and privacy groups to the table. we negotiated and we had an overwhelming vote of over 300 members last week, which is unusual in this congress, it's almost a miracle, but we did it because the left and right came together, understanding the threat but understanding that we do care very much about privacy. now that we passed this bill, hopefully the senate will pick it up and we'll be able to get back to the sispa bill so we don't have a target for you ladies, target, whatever, but we don't have issues with target. target is taking a big hit. they might lose $1 billion. their ceo was released. these threats are there. it's not only -- there are two different threats. there's the threat of stealing information, which china is doing a lot, but it's a destructive threat that are really concerning. your infrastructure, your electric grids. you know, these destructive threats. it's been said by the media that

iran attacked saudi arabia, the largest oil company in saudi arabia, shut down 5,000 of their computers. these are things that can happen every day right now if we don't get it together and set up standards. >> thank you, congressman. i want to pull on one of the points that you raised, and i know you have a pressing hill meeting but i want to get both of your comments and i want to get president ilves in on this before we pivot to some of the geopolitical questions in russia. but you mentioned the indictments. i think you also highlighted an important nuance and difference. do we engage in espionage? of course. every country does. it's been called the second oldest profession in the world. to protect our national security. the difference is, is when you have nation states using national assets and resources to benefit companies. that's a big nuance. that's a big difference. first i'd like to get your thoughts on whether you think the indictments and looking at economic instruments are the right way to go.

actually i want to build into the russia question. we're also sanctioning individuals there. are we looking at microsanctions, microindictments, and is the international community ready to have that conversation, the difference between national security collection and economic and industrial espionage? i'd first like to get the members thoughts on the indictments, right way to go? were we just fed up? enough is enough as the attorney general said and we needed to move since we hadn't seen any changes in behavior thus far? >> i agreed with the indictments, i agree with certain visa restrictions. i would even go a step further and start targeting the financing of those individuals, but it can't be done in isolation. this has to be part of a broader program. my concern was they launched the indictments. and the very folks that are going to suffer from this are people that don't have a healthy defense from the united states, which is the 85% of the networks are private sector networks who are already under siege by these

people. and i will tell you, it has gone absolutely unabated. so, yes, it was the right idea. great for the press release. played great for the glitz and glamour, but there was nothing followed. and that's where i think the biggest mistake was made here. this shu been part of a coordinated effort to slowly start tightening the noose on chinese espionage operations. by the way, they're growing and if you read the indictment, something we've known for years is that it was getting worse in the sense that these people were working for the government for the first eight hours of the day or nine hours of the day and then they look down the list. so think of this. the government is giving them a list saying we want you to go get -- fill in the blank -- general motors manufacturing techniques for x or something other. down the list is the hydraulic lifts for, you know, the things that lift up your car for oil change places. that's way down the list in their grand scheme of things. these folks would go down, pick

that company off way down the list, call up that company in china and say, listen, you're way down the list. for $30,000, i have my nights and weekends free, i'll steal it for you and hand it to you. now you had a problem eight hours a day. now you've got a much larger problem because they have doubled their output of thievery. so right idea, wrong execution if we can get this second piece of this, which includes sispa, which allows the private sector to protect themselves. i fear for what's going to happen in the next few months. >> and i am going to pull on that act of defense and look at the role of the private sector defending themselves. >> i agree, for china it's as if the stealing of private information, the gift that keeps giving. we have to let china know, who is a very powerful country, one of the most powerful countries in the world, they have got to grow up, be big boys and they have to stop stealing. i think there's a perception in

china that we do that and other countries and we don't. so we have to start. it can't just be five indictments. that is a message, china, you have to stop. now we have to get the world coalition together just like what we're doing with russia and get the world coalition to say we've got to set stsandards and there's going to be sanctions if you continue to do this. it's too much. i said it before, $3 billion a year has been stolen from the united states. that equates to about 500,000 jobs. so this is something that has to stop. but it's just not going to happen overnight. this is the beginning salvo. again, it can't just be the united states, it's got to be the world coming together to set these standards. >> president ilves, are we ready to have that nuanced conversation on an international stage? >> well -- >> i'd be curious what your thoughts are of the indictments because the moral equivalency is made but i think there is a

difference. >> there is a first step. starting with skype. microsoft bought it but r & d still happens and they're hit so hard all the time, morning till night. so we have the same problem as well. i mean the name for this used to be mercantilism. i think one of the things where the direction we're going to have to go, and it's going to be very tough, is actually that we've built up in the world democracies a clear firewall between the private sector and the public sector, and for very good reason. those are the countries that are uncorrupt. but we're going to have to develop much more cooperation with the private sector in terms of security clearances, getting them in on what we're doing in the government side. the government side trusting the private sector. and that also requires a certain degree of growing up that i'm not sure every country is

willing to do. and so -- but it's clear that it's not enough -- companies are being swamped basically. and they need the help of their governments, at least in the democratic countries. >> and the argument is why invest in that r & d if it can be stolen from someone else. so what can we do to induce changes in behavior that can have a real effect? and i do think the public-private partnerships. is there anything in estonia? a colleague and i from my office, we wrote a piece looking at the estonia cyber defense league. do you think that's a model? >> just so people know, basically since no government, even the u.s. government, cannot compete with getting the best and the brightest in cyber because they're being paid so much or they're making so much, so we switched it around and said we'll offer you the chance to actually work with i guess the equivalent of a national guard cyber unit.

and so people who actually make so much money that you could never pay them that, offered their free time. thursday nights they get together with other geeks and what they get is that they get checked up, so they get a nato security clearance because that's the prestige part they get out of it. they feel like they're doing something for their country. they feel good about having -- being sort of in nato. and they work out very sophisticated stuff because -- that we could never buy. as a government, you couldn't buy either. the maryland national guard is actually following the same model right now. i think that's one way of doing it, is to get the people who are good at it into the -- into thinking about these issues and working on these issues and then you see knowledge transfer. when you're working on cyber security at a sort of almost military level, they go back to

their companies and they say, wow, we ought to do this too. and i think that's a beginning, but we have a long way to go. >> paula. >> i was just going to jump in on this point, the part with public-private partnerships. i worked at thompson reuters and the only reason i mention it is because as a company there was great interest in bonding with other companies and looking at the cyber question. and in fact up in new york they sponsored at least three in which they brought in government representatives and also like-mindinged businesses and to literally look at what is our role in this, meaning from a business standpoint, and also o government? i think you're going to see much, much more of that. that was, mind you, several years ago, and i'm sure that that interest continues. so there's a very strong desire to think about ways in which

what can the private sector do in terms of its preparedness and also what can the government do in reaching out to the private sector? >> awesome. i'm going to pull in congressman rubersberger. please give a quick thanks before -- [ applause ] >> i want to pull in governor pawlenty. governor pawlenty is heading up the financial services roundtable, which includes basically all the financial and banking institutions. we've heard already about some of the government iran sponsored ddos attacks not only on saudi aramco and qatari ramsgas, and financial institutions in the u.s. do you want to weigh in with a comment and also a question? >> first of all, thank you to all the panelists for your great leadership and public service. particularly on these issues. mr. president, it's an honor to see you again, and thank you for being here. general rogers, we're going to

miss you, and i think the country's national security posture is going to miss you and your leadership. thank you for all you've done. i would like to jump back to the question that frank posed regarding the senate version of the sispa bill. i think the congressman indicated it's hung up because of post known concerns about personal information, although the bill, as you know, chairman, is really about thread information sharing. given the magnitude and pace and increasing sophistication of these attacks, time is of the essence. i know you've done a great work trying to re-educate the public about snowden-like concerns and threat concerns, but another 36 months down the road seems potentially too late for a senate sispa bill. i hope you can give says more hope about what you can do in terms of the elongated time frame. >> thank you for that, governor. >> the conversation with dinan feinstein, saxby chambliss, and the ranking member.

i think we've made tremendous progress in the last few months. they have an impact to make people good. they don't actually impact the problem. i think the sispa bill does impact the problem with a very light touch. no mandates. it's not the government getting in your business. do we think we've made some progress? we've narrowed it down to just a few short issues. one of them is the portal. how does the information get exchanged between the business and the government sector? how does that happen? if it doesn't happen in real-time, if this is a phone call or a disk transfer, too late. it doesn't work. so we're very close on getting

an agreement on what that portal looks like. how does that information get shared in real-time? who gets the clearances? you know, you want to catch it as far upstream as you can. i'm cautiously optimistic that we can find some agreement within the next 30 days to try to get something moving, and i will promise you it will be the fastest conference committee known to man because i'll be the chairman of it, to try to get some movement and agreement on what the final piece of package looks like. i agree with you this is a simple thing that is so incredibly important for the defense of our intellectual property as we move forward. the banks have done it right. all the financial institutions were kind of the canaries in the coal mine on all of this, and you have some systems in place, but you can't have financial institutions fighting nation states. oh, and, by the way, terrorist organizations and, oh, by the way, organized crime groups all at the same time. it is an unfair fight.

we wouldn't ask the banks to engage in missile defense. why would we ask them to try to stop what is an absolute tidal wave of daily efforts to bring down a financial institution? so i agree with you. hopefully if we can get the public to understand this threat, target was a great example, i think people finally said, oh, i guess this is serious. 80 million credit cards. the only problem was it was somebody else's paid for it. that was the problem we found. most people thought, oh, it doesn't matter. it doesn't cost me anything. that's really the wrong answer. it will cost you something eventually, and we were hoping that that would be the catalyst for people to understand just how serious this is. haven't gotten there yet. close toon agreement. 30 days. urge you to pick up the phone, work your senator, tell them we need an agreement of some sort to get this in the conference. >> the d.o.j. finding does help a little bit in terms of

indemnification of liability to share some of the information, does it not? i don't even feel like we're going far enough on what perceived or real we can do, so i'm hoping that we can -- >> this liability, if you don't have liability protection, it won't work. unless you're going to have a heavily government mandated system of reporting and sharing, which i just don't think will work. not in the age where technology is going to change in six and eight and 12 months from now. you have to have liability for protection. if they're doing it within the spirit of the law in real-time, sharing malicious code, which is what we're talking about. when we hear sharing, people think you're talking about my personal data. talking about malicious code in real-time. >> yeah. exactly. >> i'm going to ask one more question, and then we're going to pivot to some of the geopolitical things. >> basically i'll take -- we have a very different approach in my country, which is that it is the government should step in very rarely, but it should step in when you have market failure, and the two cases of market

failure that make most sense, i would say -- i mean, for people to understand what it means, we do not believe -- i mean, given the possibility of having genuine secure transactions that a bank cannot write off a stolen credit card or hack an account as a business loss because they're not just doing the right thing. a power company that goes down because of a cyber attack should not get insurance because it's an act of god, because it is not an act of god. it is an act of a man or men or women, and so this is a place where the government steps in to guarantee the security. that requires a far more sophisticated system of identity, as i said, but there has to be a willingness to adopt that system. we have that -- the government

guarantees you secure communications at a level that, well, given the experience love of it. we know at a higher level encryption than they could break -- they couldn't break lava bit at rsa 512. we're at rsa 4028. it requires people to use the system of encryption and guaranteed identity. i think ultimately it's the way countries will go. everything less than that, anything that is not offer a binary key code approach to encryption will be and can be hacked. >> the reality is the initiative remains with the attacker here. that's a given. to be able to get to the point where we can get true resill yept systems, we need to articulate what it is we want to defend against, and, oh, by the way, we don't deter things. we deter actors.

china is not iran and iran is not russia, and you name the other countries. we've got to get to the point where we can at least have -- articulate a strategy to diswade, discern, and compel. i don't think we're at that point yet. i'm going to ask one more question on cyber, and then we're going to turn to russia, but sort of an unfair question. a lot of discussion on mr. snowden, and i think mr. snowden did reveal some legitimate questions domestically that we need to have a conversation about, but the reality is he also revealed a vast majority of what he has revealed are national security secrets that have nothing to do with what the community is allegedly doing domestically or not. why russia? why is he in russia? if you were to get to your list

of countries that are most freedom-loving and transpatient, it's not -- >> it's actually way at the back. >> i would like your thoughts, and congressman rogers, you -- there we go. >> i have no idea what is behind it all. it's more the damage has been so huge that i think it's probably the worst -- most damaging thing has happened since the end of the cold war. it's not only i think the biggest wedge that's been driven into the trans-atlantic alliance is the affect of europe has been disastrous, and overcoming that is really -- i mean, as a -- this has been the wedge of magnitude that we have not ever

seen in the post war era, i would even say. here we are. i mean, you see a lot of the trusts that's been broken. new legislation is being proposed by all kinds of people in europe that would, in fact, weaken the trans-atlantic link. why? i mean, if you ask me why, what was his motivation, i don't know. certainly the effects have been catastrophic. >> well, i mean, i don't believe that it's a coincidence that he first landed in hong kong and then went -- is now in the loving arms of the fsb in moscow. you know, that just doesn't happen overnight. you don't show up and knock on the door and say here i am.

>> it's all just an accident. somebody reached in and stole other people's passwords, used different mechanisms to get into places he was not cleared to access. the vast majority of that material had nothing to do with the program he said he was so upset about. the vast majority, over 90% of it, had to do with military tactics there were technologies in there. by the way, in the intelligence community they continue to try to understand what mitigation we have to go through and it will cost us probably when it's done ewe don't even have a good number. probably in the billions of dollars. probably the best number i saw was about $3 billion to try to mitigate damage. if you don't know if they go or

they don't, sitting where i'm at as the chairman, we can tell what information let me just pull two. china and russia. we can see that happen. it's absolute naivety. now we know for a fact that he is in the custody. nobody disputes that. of the fsb and the russians. we know that now. now the question is, well, how far back did that go? what did it look like for him to coordinate his travel and activities to get where he ended up? maybe we don't know the answer. maybe we do know the answer. you have to start asking those questions versus this was the best thing that ever happened to us. i dispute that. every investigation, every group that reviewed it found no

illegal activity. no abuses and that it was lawful. >> do people like the fact that that information is there? no, people say we don't like it. it doesn't mean it was illegal or -- it means they have a comfort level. what mr. rupertsberger and i did was we said we need to rebuild confidence. we know for a fact that these programs have saved lives. you do want to know when a terrorist from yemen is calling into the united states to trigger an activity. i don't know about you. as an old fbi guy, we would call that a clue, and we missed it on 9/11, 2001. i took this job. i said we're not going to miss that piece of information this go-round. not on our watch. we think we got to a good place

to rebuild confidence and to move forward. this was a train wreck that we were trying to clean up. this was not about some great glorious activity who should be idolized by so many who has done so much damage, including, by the way, troops in the field. some of this information will impact our soldiers who are standing in the dirt, defending freedom in places like afghanistan today. not next year. not ten years from now. today. and that's why i can tell i get a little worked up about it. that side of the story never gets told. they're not listening to your phone calls or reading your emails. if they are, somebody is going to go to jail. the way the press has portrayed this has been so inaccurate and dangerous to actually configure ourselves to stop that 41

million efforts to get into our department of defense, to stop organized crime groups from getting into target. i hope we shake ourselves out of this very, very soon. we have this huge threat. estonia has seen it. they lived through it. pretty damaging to them in 2007. we just keep shrugging it off like it just doesn't matter. even the conversation about the guy who stole all this and making him a hero just sends me into orbit, as you might be able to figure out. >> i think this is a perfect segue. one of those blind spots may have been what we saw unfold in crimea, and perhaps russia did learn from a trade craft and moat is apprehendeye. he i hope he would be. and what we saw there was probably rudimentary in terms of the cyber perspective.

we also need a real article, and he also has been the chair of the canon at harvard and elsewhere. paul, what did we see unfold in crimea? what are those implications? what are the intentions? what do you think the true intentions are of the leadership in moscow today, and what do you think we should be doing bilaterally, multi-laterally? estonia has been one of the few countries that fulfills its nato obligations and commitments and have been fighting shoulder to shoulder with u.s. and other allied nations in iraq and afghanistan. what does this all mean? >> first, by the way, i didn't -- when i jumped in before, i do want to thank president knapp and also you, frank, and g.w., for hosting this incredible forum today. thank you very much. crimea, we witnessed the

unlawful aggression by moscow in crimea, and then also an illegal referend referendum, which was held. illegal. it went against the laws put forth by ukraine which states that when you hold a referendum, you have not only at the local level, but you have to have approval also at the federal level. we virtually saw a total renouncement and undermining of the kind of international legal norms that have been in place post cold war. starting with that, i mean, to define it outright, it really, i think, defied almost everything that we have known in terms of the perimeters and framework of trans-atlantic relations. it might be worth stepping back and also citing the fact, i

think, most crucially, what led up to this. if you look back last year, when there were protests taking place in the midon in ukraine, what were the protests for? they were for supporting ukraine's is hes eggs into the european union. if ukraine became a member of the e.u., trade barriers will be knocked down. the second factor -- when the prime minister yatsenyuch opened up the treasury, they looked and saw that $37 billion had been stolen, so this is the scale of what we're talking about here.

so you start with that and those demonstrations. those demonstrations basically provided a kind of a threat. a threat being that ukraine was very desirous of making a significant change, a hang in terms of becoming officially part of the e.u., rectifying and reforming its economy, and also embracing the western political values. when we saw the aggression in crimea, the argument that was given by president putin on march 18th was that russia has legitimate interest because of russians in crimea. by the way, estonia has more of a percentage of russians than does ukraine. it has 26%. granted, your country is smaller, so the proportion is a little bit different, but 26% in

estonia, 27% in latvia. in this case the argument was that there were, in fact, discriminate ory actions being taken against russians. let me go back to another point worth mentioning, and that is that since ukraine has been independent, there are two key points to remember. one, there was a referendum, and, you know, at the time the referendum was held, crimea voted in favor of the independence of ukraine and being part of ukraine. since ukraine's independence, i can't cite for you one is hes eggsest movement that i'm aware of or allegations or discriminatory action. if there was people would take recourse.

the doctrine which basically refutes the legitimacy of the international system. it also undermines western values that russia has legitimate rights for going in and for dealing with situations or circumstances. if you go by that kind of a framework, by the way, or take action anywhere on behalf of its citizenry. it would be a western strategy. the strategy being in what i think is lacking is we've been focussing on particulars. the united states and western europe have been looking at sanctioned approach, which has been a reactive approach. i think we've been challenged through this putin doukt rin.

we've been challenged in basically a pronouncement of hostilities against western values, hostilities against the framework as is defined the international system, and literally the moral foundation of which the trans-atlantic alliance has been built on. toward that end we need a western strategy, and we also need a western rebuttal to what putin has put forward. let me just mention one last point, and that is there's been a real focus on the situation that this situation has been predominantly trans-atlantic. naturally not only ukraine is gravely concerned because of destabilization. reintegrate crimea again, but also as you know, the

neighborhood. we have put forward sanctions, but what we haven't put forward is a strategy, a strategic vision and a rebuttal to literally the idealogical and moral underpinnings of what putin has put forward. remember the days of the cold war when it was so clearly defined? well, we haven't put forth that kind of statement. we're not in that same period. we're not looking at a marksist lennonist government in russia.

the united states has given the opportunities we have here. what are your thoughts right now when you see? paul, i think what you really are looking at is reversing the dissolution as you referred to in europe ed. that's a frightening thought. >> frankly, i just add not just reversing but uniting and stating exactly what we stand for. >> and i might note since we also talk cyber, what you saw in crimea was an isolation. they did use rudimentary. they were basically using hacksaws to take down communication, so you can isolate people in crimea from the rest of the ukraine and beyond, and then that was followed up with somewhat rudimentary ddos attacks on some of the political leadership.

>> the post war security framework has just disappeared. it's been blown up. first of all, what we saw when the march 18th speech by the russian president was an argument that we have not seen since the -- annexation of territory of co-ethnics living there. we have seen -- we've already received an answer on may 8th, 1945 that you don't do those kinds of things. we recall that check slovakia was dismembered -- they were germans living there. we see this for the first time since 1938. now, then the idea that you can

actually change borders by nonpeaceful means. the entire -- the western and eastern cohabitation that allowed us to overcome the cold war, at least in its most dangerous phase, was based on the 1975 helsinki founding act, which said that you do not change. everyone agreed. all countries agreed, including the soviet union, which was then now a successor state, you do not change borders, except through negotiation. that is the fundamental principle of the whole founding act. that no longer applies. the justification for annexing or reinfluencing ukraine was based on the 1990 cse charter that says that each country has a right to make its own decisions. on top of that i say that -- just to correct the thing about what you said, paul, all that

ukraine was trying to do was get an association agreement. i mean, an association agreement basically allows teachers and students to, like, go and study elsewhere in europe. we signed our association agreement about a decade before we ever joined. when i was in the european parliament, i was there for albania's association agreement, and that was ten years ago, and they're far, far, far away from -- there are no implications for joining. this was a low-level agreement that had a symbolic value, but not anything really -- i mean, it just shows an orientation of a country, and that was enough to justify on the part of russia getting -- doing what it did. i'm very, very worried because, a, what we have for 40 years or since 1938 -- or 1945, et

cetera, completely ouch bounds is now happening. this thing that makes me more worried is that there are a lot of countries going along with it. bosnian people lost two million people as refugees. what will we do with 45 million if it really goes south? they're bordering four countries in the e.u. poland, slovakia, romania, and hungary. the situation could be really out of hand. there is no real genuine willingness right now to take a trans-atlantic approach. there is an unwillingness to go too far with sanctions or go too far. we don't have a trans-atlantic

sort of issue, and there are a number of forces in europe mainly commercial ones that really don't care at all about the fundamental principles of the western security architecture being blown up. they just want to make more money. what they did in crimea and eastern ukraine, in fact, is an analogy to cyber war. the little green men are bognets. bognets are these criminal groups that do work for money for governments. >> proxies. >> they're proxies. they get a cut what we see again is criminal groups giving deniability like the estonian attack. one government saying we have nothing to do with that. they were in themselves -- the government was not doing it, but who is doing it? the people who send you the

agrispan. it's the same mechanism. they were concentrating these messages, pinging, chosen computers. we see complete and utter deniability of criminal gangs, organized crime gangs. when you look at the people involved in eastern ukraine and also in crimea, it was the -- i mean, the guy in crimea is -- was a crime boss. i mean, he still is a crime boss for all i know, but now he is a governor. we see this kind of public-private partnership of the worst kind. >> may i just address two things that the president mentioned? i'm glad for his refinement

specifically on the e.u. association because it's purely an association, and i think you made that very clear, but let me mention another document that really, i think, in terms of what russia's aggression in crimea literally cut into that has global implications. the president mentioned osce or the helsinki accords. i mention the budapest memorandum, which was signed in 1994 by ukraine, wraits, and the u.k., and russia. specifically, it was u.s., u.k., and russia, and basically the implications was for ukraine that ukraine's nuclear weapons were basically -- it was to give up its nuclear weapons. ukraine at the time was the third largest nuclear weapons

possessing country that had these weapons. it was right number three. specifically by this action, it undercut the budapest memorandum, so it not only was an undercutting in this particular case, an agreement that was signed where ukraine gave up its nuclear force, but it also sends a signal to other countries around the world that are grappling with nuclear weapons and dealing with the question of proliferation and want this possession of nuclear weapons. let me tell you, in asia, this has been very much taken notice of in the middle east it's been taken notice of, and i think it's another critical point that has to be put into the space. >> it really must be because 50 years from now, however long it's going to take to solve the iran issue.

>> that seem to -- whether it's in the ukraine or whether it's in named the hotspot. congressman rogers, i want to ask you, and for all i know president obama is laying out his foreign policy vision and strategy as we speak in west point. maybe all these issues are covered and addressed. i tend to think probably not, but possibly, but what are your thoughts? do you see a time where congress can stand united with an executive -- if we lay out a clear, articulate, straight forward strategy because, i

mean, there's some disconnects between the executive and legislative branch, and i don't see everyone looking for solutions. i look at -- i see folks who identify problems. how do we fix this? >> well, and that's a -- -- >> that's what's happening. >> that's what's happening. >> that's what makes them so lethal and dangerous. you served all authorities of government to deal with what you have to. >> what you see in the crime boss, who is now the governor, is exactly what was happening in all of ukraine, and that's where the russian influence came from was that criminal side of the house, and we shouldn't forget

that. can congress work with the president? absolutely. i will tell you, as somebody who has tried to work with them and i have, and i have agreed with them when i could and disagreed with them hopefully civilly when i couldn't. they are very difficult to work with. i'll give you a great example today. so today -- yesterday the president comes out and announces the troop levels. we certainly weren't consulted. we've been asking for about 18 months you have to give us the troop numbers so that in this year's budget we can appropriately fund operations that would have it separate from d.o.d. on the ground in afghanistan. i hope i'm not being -- the intelligence community would have separate costs and separate operations that would be sustained and functioned, and you can't do that without the support of the department of defense for quick reaction. fairly important details like

that. this has been the most frustrating national security that i have faced certainly in my time in congress. they lone wolf he's things without consultation for the folks who are going to have to implement all of the aspects of these plans. i think it's candidly quite dangerous. so for those of you who have military experience, you tell me what -- where although command energy is going to be on the ground in the next six months. it is no small undertaking to remove that many troops and equipment and do it safely. it will consume 90% of their efforts in the next few months. we have a safe haven developing in afghanistan. this is what happens when there's no interaction and

discussion about how something like this would work. it's dangerous. i'll express my frustration one step forward. i believe this happened because somebody was trying to -- we've been asking for this for 18 months. it gets announced yesterday. this is a serious, serious national security policy announcement yesterday. i don't know what the president is going to talk about today. maybe we're going to get back reengaging in the world in a way that i think helps push back on these issues. if not, we are in some serious trouble. you know, you can't -- a policy like this can't be because i want to have a line in my biography that says i ended the war in afghanistan. i'll guarantee you the taliban hasn't. they haven't surrendered. they didn't put out their timeline and say by 2016 we're going to be done. as a matter of fact, we're seeing them escalate their activities because of these announcements. think about where we are right now and why this is so important. i know time is short, but think about this. we have the russians who now we believe, according to public

reports, have violated their nuclear inf treaty in a very serious and significant way. tell me what options we have. not many. they've been occupying 20% of georgia -- the country of georgia's territory without much effort or interest by -- including our european allies. he now fwz into crimea. people just say, well, he got that. maybe we can stop the rest from going maybe. this is a serious a problem as i have ever seen, and we don't have any good effort to push back. i'll tell you this one quick story, and then i'll be quiet. this is so important. messages matter. engagement matters. it doesn't mean military. everybody says there's either all in with 101st airborne -- that's completely wrong, and it's disingenuous. there are lots of options. let me tell you this quick -- i was over there right after the president unilaterally pulled out the four radar deployment in

the czech republic. i happened to be in moscow shortly thereafter trying to have a discussion about missile defense systems. can you kind of figure out how that went. afterward this general pulls me in the meeting afterwards and said can i talk to you afterwards. i won't do my russian accent. it's very bad. he pulled me in this room and said basic will he, listen, congressman, it's great to see that america is finally admitting she's a nation in decline, and we've been through it, and we would love to give you all the advice and counsel you can take. you think of the slow progress. vladimir putin is as popular today as he has ever been in russia. what do you think his next few decisions are going to be? pull back? give up? start negotiating? i doubt it. why? because he has no economic plan for recovery in russia. it's not doing well economically. this is the one place he can get his numbers through the roof. every indication we have is it's going to get worse, not better.

>> congressman, i want to allow one -- to depoliticize, i think it is emblem attic on a bigger challenge where we focus on tactics, not strategy. they're mascarading. it's lv almost add. you stee in every issue. i want to offer one question, maybe a student. do we have a student with a question? we're actually coming up against our -- or we're actually beyond our timeline, and apologies to c-span. do we have any burning, burning questions? okay. one question here. please. we're going to have to then close. please identify yourself. >> i'm leanned are a burnstein with -- this is a question, actually, not about russia, but i would like to know your thoughts on the usa freedom act which passed through the house, but not with the support of the original sponsor, congressman,

because he said it was stripped of the oversight that he believes congress should be conducting and also there have been numerous statements from senator weidan, senator leahy concerning their ability to conduct oversight on the nsa, so how do you respond to their concerns and the concerns of many american people that congress is not able to conduct oversight? >> well, i absolutely fundamentally reject the fact that there has not been oversight, including by somebody i work with, senator widen. he had that ability. we do conduct oversight, which is why he came to the conclusions that he did. he was participating in something called oversight. oversight cannot be on the front page of the washington post. that's not oversight. that's dangerous. so on these very sensitive

programs you have in a constitutional republic, you've selected the people who have clearances at both parties who have the ability to drill down and get all that information. you know, for folks who feign, oh, my gosh, who knew, i will tell you, as a member of the committee for the last ten years, i supported these programs when they were classified, and i support these programs today. why? because i believed in the oversight responsibility very seriously. so you have most -- he was a co-sponsor. didn't write the legislation. if you look at jerry nadler, hardly someone you would say is wishy-washy on these issues. jim sensenbrenner, all of them supported the bill in the house. that is the process of which we're in. i believe it was an important place to get to where you say we're going to protect america's ability to catch that safehouse from yemen, calling into the united states. the biggest problem that was expressed, by the way, in all of

these discussions was who holds the information? it wasn't -- was it abused? it was not. it was who holds the information? that was the biggest dispute. we solved that problem, and in this bill where both sides said we can live with this. i will tell you, this is not the bill i would have written for the simple reason that it slows us down a little bit. it does. but understanding the public needed rebuild its confidence in these programs, we decided or i decided along with dutch that maybe moving it from the nsa back to the companies would rebuild that confidence. you know, it's not the solution i love. in order to protect the operational ability, that's the -- i think the legitimate place we came to. i think we have accomplished both. you continue the operational capability, and you take care of the notion that it could -- by the way, this is what the whole fight was about. it could be abused. not that it was. it could be abused. okay. here's how we got there.

you know, one thing i found in this whole debate, there are individuals that clearly they have a brand name they need to protect in politics, which i think is really dangerous for all of us. celebrity politicians and people who are trying to brand themselves as x or y, forget about the substance of the facts. this really isn't a political game, the united states congress. it is a serious, serious, serious matter. we're not always going to agree. sometimes we're going to have passionate disagreements. we do. even in the intelligence committee with the doors closed and no microphones, you should hear what happens. i think america would be proud of, it candidly, because nobody is getting credit on the front page of the paper for it. it's all done because they believe it. we need to get back to that, and some notion. if you have a disagreement, that's great, but saying it doesn't do x or y because i'm the only one that understands the constitution of the united states i think is simply wrong, and it's irresponsible. this is the most responsible effort to make sure that

everybody's concerns were met, and we still have the operational capability to protect the united states of america, which, by the way, is in the constitution of the united states. >> congressman rogers, on that note, the time requires i being a tyrant before we take a moment to think thank all of you for your wonderful insights. i would like to thank congressman knapp and others for their commitment to the cyber security work and marina who will be leaving d.c. has been such a powerful light for estonia, so you will be missed, but not forgotten. rachel and my team for all their hard work. on that note, i have tokens, literally, figuratively, and literally, of our appreciation. coins of the institute. i wanted to say thank you for your time. please take a moment and thank the speakers.

>> i also have as a bow tie wearer, the g.w. bow tie. wear it proud. and you will to tell you about this morning. the house judiciary committee look for relations at the house committee. they will -- at homeland security.

that is at 10;30 a.m. eastern on cspan 2. at 2:15 marketing of the bill to make permanent some expiring tax provisions. leaders will mark the 25th anniversary at the demonstrations in china's square. that is on c-span three. >> your called live on " washington journal." -- you car calls. today's agenda includes this year's spending bill for the department of commerce and justice. about 45 minutes, we will talk about defense and foreign-policy issues with republican for presented in mac thornberry from texas, vice chair of the armed services

committee and member of the intelligence committee. our focus on foreign policy 8:30.ues just after 8:30 " washington journal" is next. the oig clearly found that it is systemic throughout the ba v.a. oughout the stake andealth is at i will not stand for a department cover-up. ♪ that is jeff miller. he's reacting to the lease of a report from the veterans affairs inspector general, citing systemic problems when it comes to scheduling and wait times at v.a.