this is a problem that will require industry, academia, and the government. i hope we can start from a place where we agree there is a problem and we share the same values. people talk about crypto wars, it throws me. wars are fought between people with different values. i think we all share the same values. we all value in security on the internet. i'm a fan of strong encryption. we all care about public safety. the problem we have is that there is an intention and a lot of our work, increasingly in counterintelligence and criminal work -- given that we care about the same things, i hope we can agree we can come together to solve that problem. i have heard from a lot of folks that it is too hard. my reaction to that is, really? have we really tried?

my look at industry today, i een companies -- i will not name them -- but major service providers that can comply with court orders. they encrypt and decrypt when it passes their networks. i have not heard anybody say those companies are fundamentally insecure and fatally flawed from a security perspective. i don't think we have really tried. second partt to the question, i also don't

think there is an "it" to a solution. i think there are many solutions, whether you are in an honest business or a tiny company. i don't think we have given it a shot that it deserves, which is why i welcome the dialogue. we are having healthy discussions. >> with respect to the second part of your question. i think you have correctly characterized that there is no one-size-fits-all to describe the spectrum of activity we see. that is one reason why you see response to different events are not all the same. we look at each event in its own context. sony, in the first category, we categorize that is an offense of act to create damage, versus much activity that we see, which is nation states attending to gain economic advantage, for competitive purposes or something to steal insight. the theft of information. i think it is one reason today we have been trying to be nuanced in the way that the government has responded. it goes towards some of your opening statements, the idea of acceptable behavior. what is within recent and what is not within reason? we do understand nationstates use the spectrum of capability to generate insight into the world around them. that does not mean that the use of cyber for manipulative and destructive purposes is not

acceptable. we have to work our way on how people develop that in a much more refined way. >> i have to say, sir, many of these issues that you raise are significant. and not reallyes in the realm of the people sitting here. we can try to speak to them. on your concern about conflating or not distinguishing between cyber threats or economic purposes, you are quite right. it's not that we don't make that distinction, but the adversaries, notably the chinese, do not. they don't see a difference at all in the ultimate purpose for which they extract data from us.

i just want to make that distinction. this is a personal view -- with respect to espionage purposes, i would caution that we think -- we should think before we throw rocks. as you correctly and appropriately allude, very complex policy issues. >> if i could drill down once more very narrowly -- on the latter issue, are there any rules of the road when it comes to foreign intelligence gathering? or is it futile to even try and develop them, because at the nation decides it's in their

national security interest, they will do what they are going to do? or should we try to establish some kind of rules of the road for national intelligence every? and director comey, if you could give your thoughts on what you make of the economic arguments that companies are going to do this. there is an advantage to having healthy american companies in this area, both in an economic and national security point of view. are we at risk of losing that? dir. comey: i think it is a reasonable concern. i have two reactions to it. how do we want to govern our concerns and are affairs? and what is the right thing for america? there are a lot of costs to being in american business. you can't pollute the environment, we impose all kinds of rules that other countries don't, which is a disadvantage to our companies. we decided we want to be a certain way. we ought to start there.

i am not blind to the fact that they have to compete in the next national marketplace with others that share our values. it may need to be an international set of norms. safety on the internet and public safety comes together and establish this is how we will act. i can imagine us saying, if there is a mutually detached magistrate is on the basis under the law that this can be obtained and the company must find a way to provide it, that is the way the rule of law that governs our allies around the world is. i think that would be an important part of any agreement that results this. i hear from our allies all the time -- the french want the same thing, the germans, the british. i think this is something that could be done. dir. clapper: on the rules of the road issue, it's fair to say the u.s. has more rules on governing the conduct of foreign intelligence than any other nation on the planet.

example five -- pb28 governs the conduct of signal intelligence and to some extent extends privacies to foreign citizens. i don't believe any other country does that. we do have an elaborate set of governance, tenets, that influence our actions specifically. i don't see too many of our partners that would similarly align with us. comm. rogers: overtime, we will figure out what is acceptable and not acceptable.

but we are clearly not there yet. there are very specific things that i find foreign intelligence organizations doing that are quite frankly illegal for us that we cannot do. it's a very different set of rules out there between us and the activities i see others engage in. >> i yield five minutes to the gentleman from georgia, mr. west moreland. rep. westmoreland: we passed a good cyber bill that allowed sharing information. as adam mentioned we hear about attacks and intrusions. when does playing defense become offense? in other words, some of these

companies have picked out a marker. we have determined where it is coming from. do we continually play defense with that, or try to come up with a better defense? or is some action we might take going to be considered offensive to a nation state or another company, or whatever? where is that line? >> for us on the dod side, we have a well understood idea of what is defensive in action. there is a still uncertainty how you would categorize offensive and what is authorized. again, that boils down to a policy decision. we do that on a case-by-case

basis. in terms of your fundamental premise, a purely reactive, defensive strategy is not ultimately going to change the dynamic. the dynamic we find ourselves in now is not acceptable to anyone. rep. westmoreland: when you say it is a policy issue, is it one that comes out of the white house? >> the application of cyber offense is the application of force. under the law of armed conflict and the broader policy conflict is nations, once you move beyond self-defense is a decision that is made at a broad policy level. for example, as a director of nsa, or director of u.s. cyber command, it's unilaterally decided.

it's not unique to the cyber world. it's the same construct used for the kinetic world. rep. westmoreland: how was that sifted out? who makes that determination? >> it's on a case-by-case basis. clearly the secretary of defense is granted some authority. the president retains some authority on his level. we deal with each individual event on the merits of its own. re. westmoreland: you understand that when the public hears the word attack, it gives a different meaning than if we say intrusion. >> right, which is an important point. terminology and lexicon is very important in this space.

many times i will hear people throughout "attack," "act of war," and does not necessarily how i would categorize that activity. >> how that has been characterized by some loosely as an attack -- it really wasn't. it was entirely passive. it did not result in destruction or any of those kinds of effects. the distinction without -- and thank you for doing that -- is quite important. as admiral rodgers said, the lexicon and terminology is crucial. rep. westmoreland: if a company discovers that they are being attacked by a certain entity, and they use a means to stop the attack, in other words, they can figure out how to stop the attack -- can they do that

offensively? and what would differentiate between an offense if move and -- offensive move and a defensive move? >> there is a clear line in the u.s., it would be a crime to penetrate without permission the computer system of another. that is a statute that this congress has passed. that is a clear line. it makes good sense to those of us in the intelligence committee that we don't want self-help because of the nature of the cyberspace. there are unforeseen consequences that could be traumatic and unforeseen. rep. westmoreland: that is what we are looking for, a definition of what is offensive and what is defensive. i yield back. >> thank you mr. chairman. i want to thank all of you gentlemen for your service to

this nation and the work you are doing in your various agencies. i want to drill deeper into the question that congressman westmoreland raised. director clapper, you suggested that the opm information and that was stolen wasn't used for any nefarious activities. i want to know your thoughts about how the information that was stolen from opm or anthem is being used by these cyber actors. dir. clapper: what we have done is speculate how it could be used. the distinction i was just making had to do with terminology, saying that the opm breach was an "attack." getting back to the definition issue, i wouldn't characterize it that way. what is of great concern with

respect to the opm breach, which i spoke to in my opening statement, had to do with potential uses of that data. of course, we are looking. thus far, we haven't seen any evidence of usage of that data. certainly we will be looking for it. it is of great concern to the employees who are potentially affected in terms of how it could be used. not only institutionally, in terms of particularly for intelligence people, but in general how this could be used to inflict financial damage. >> how do various agencies work in a coordinated effort with respect to cyberattacks? can you talk a little bit about that? dir. clapper: are you talking about the intelligence agencies? we are very mindful of that, obviously. this is a case where we have to

set the highest standards as an example. i know in my own place, there is a very intensive effort on securing and ensuring that our networks in my own headquarters are secure. i know my colleagues are doing the same. i will admiral rogers to comment as well. >> first question is, what is the domain that is receiving this intrusion? is it .gov, .com, .edu, in the private sector? >> is it a coordinated effort, though? in other words, they start in an agency that has particular jurisdictions, but it's coordinated across all the system. >> yes, but the primacy varies by the entity that is being penetrated, where it is -- whether it is inside or outside the government.

.gov for example, the department of homeland security is responsible for the defense of the .gov domain. dhs has overall possibility on the .gov domain. if you look at the opm scenario, they begin to realize what had happened. they realized this is beyond their own capacity, they turned to dhs, who then turned to the fbi and nsa to provide technical support. we do that continually. we have done that between nsa and the fbi. within the government domain, increasingly we find ourselves, when requested, helping those in the private sector. sony is an example. >> is there anything that could be done to enhance?

>> there is always more. from my perspective, as i talked to my teammates -- speed is critical. focus, leadership buy-in, the ability to set up mechanisms to more rapidly flow information back-and-forth, the ability to put expertise more quickly on the problem set. we continually get better. but for me, at least -- dir. clapper: one area we can improve is in the government to private sector relationship. let me ask director comey as well. dir. comey: we have made dramatic strides in the last five years. this may be a homely metaphor, but we are like a fire station -- when the bell rings, we send all the trucks. we don't ask, do you need a ladder, do you need a rescue truck? we send them all. we send nsa, dhs, fbi, to figure out who was needed at the scene

to those that have called 911. it's gotten dramatically better. it has been shared through the ncijtf. we sit together and we share that information about what we need to respond to a particular fire. >> in my remaining time i want to commend director brennan on tackling the problem of diversity in the ic. you commissioned a report. i wanted to commend you on that and i look forward to working with all agencies were presented represented in making sure that we address our lack of diversity in the intelligence community. i yield back. >> gentleman from florida, mr. miller. rep. miller: somebody said that iran did not have the same technical capabilities as a country like china.

is it safe to assume that a country like russia give its capabilities to someone like iran into the cyber world? >> this might be left better to a closed discussion. rep. miller: somebody talked about attribution also. how de we distinguish between state-sponsored hacker attack and an individual? >> the way we do in almost any other circumstance. we see what facts we have two connect -- to connect the individual at the keyboard to the crime. sometimes it is the tools we use and the facts. there is always a human being at the keyboard. that can be tied to a state actor. >> we will compare the activity that we have observed with that

we have observed historically. looking at previous connections. rep. miller: most of the attacks designed to glean information or to disrupt? dir. clapper: the terminology of "attack" vs "gleaning information." to this point, it is the disruption of the website. but more commonly, purloining information. i believe the next push on the envelope is going to be the manipulation or deletion of data, which will compromise its integrity. rep. miller: going back to the russia-iran issue. i know there are some issues

that we can't talk about here. russia is a setting up a cyber command. how about china? dir. clapper: to the best of my knowledge, the chinese have not yet gone to a configuration like the westerners have appeared to -- russians have appeared to have, establishing a cyber comm. that is not to say that the chinese, as you know, have very capable structure and apparatus. >> i yield back mr. chairman. >> mr. quigley is recommended for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you for being here and for your service. we hear most often about our high-profile acts on the u.s.

government and major corporations. as you know, the majority of businesses in the united states are small businesses. we have thousands of a very small local governments. they still contain in their computers extraordinary sensitive client information or public information, -- private information or public information, but they often lack the expertise, knowledge, and resources to meet this challenge. what are we doing to reach out to those entities and try to help them meet this challenge? >> it absolutely is the business of everyone in the united states. what the fbi is doing about it is that we recognize it as a threat to everybody because our lives are connected to the internet. in every community, we have

something called infraguard, a vehicle for those to learn from us and be able to share information that is useful to small businesses and the fbi. i encourage small businesses to contact your local fbi office. we are in every community in this country. we have over 500 offices. it will make you smarter, and we hope that in the process it will make your government smarter. >> i would just add as well the responsibility -- only because they are not represented here today, is the department of homeland security, which does have the responsibility of engaging the private sector segment. >> i appreciate that, but the lack of resources -- we hear so often it is becoming cheaper and easier to hack and more expensive and difficult to defend. is there some other way that we should begin to look at balancing the field between the resources the community bank has versus a major national bank?

just as one example. >> what we need to continue to do better as a federal government is equip our state and local partners to investigate crimes that are digital in nature. that is something that sheriffs and chiefs are hungry for, that the fbi and the secret service are pushing out lots of training online, so that people at the police station can become a certified cyber investigator. that matters so much because there are not going to be enough federal agents to answer the calls of tens of thousands of small businesses that need help, so we have to equip our partners to offer that assistance. >> thank you so much. i yield back. >> now i yield to the chairman of the agriculture committee. >> you mentioned the dark web in your comments.

could you give us a better description of what that means and how it is being used, and can you tell if information being purloined from somewhere else is actually being sold in that arena? >> the dark web is that portion of the internet that is not touched by any of your normal search engines. you will not find it from google, yahoo!, bing, or anything like that. it often requires specialized knowledge and specialized software. because it is not reachable and hidden, it is attractive to people who want to avoid any kind of scrutiny. it is attractive to criminals. >> have you seen it actually being used to sell information that has been stolen elsewhere? >> certainly. we just took down a forum in the dark web that was being used to trade information and skills.

hacking has become so sophisticated that it has become specialized, so no one does all the different pieces that are necessary to steal your identity and then cash it out. it is on those places in the dark web that they meet each other, and someone who specializes in cashing out and talks to someone who specializes in stealing, and somebody with a specialty of hiding things on a server can sell their services there. it is a world full of criminals, which is why the fbi spends a whole lot of time there. >> do you have the right tools -- is there any activity that should be criminal that is not criminal yet? are there areas we need to improve in that arena? >> by and large, we have the tools, congressman. our international partners are the key, because just finding the bad guys from the u.s. is not helping us if they are all around the world.

the operation involved 20 countries locking these guys up. we send a message that you think you are hiding from us, but you are not. the dark web is not a safe place to conduct criminal activity, so i think we have the tools in the fbi to get in there and find them, and what we are getting better at is international relationships. >> do you have the requisite authorities you need? >> yes we do, sir. >> whether there is a brief or an attack at opm, can you ensure us that you would put in place appropriate protections elsewhere? >> i'm not sure that is something i can speak about. >> for nsa, we provided opm with 19 specific recommendations on how we can suggest changes to the network structure would help forestall suspicious activity. i know opm is working their way through that and has a plan for how they are going to implement the steps they believe are

necessary to ensure that they don't see repeat. >> they can't be the only ones who have the problem. those recommendations are being shared beyond just opm. >> yes, part of what we are trying to do -- every time we find ourselves with a major incident, we try to make sure the insights we generate from that are shared more broadly across the government with our private sector partners, because we are the first to acknowledge that it is likely that others will try to replicate the same kind of ttp's and techniques they are using again. we try to make sure that we are sharing information broadly. >> is their authority anywhere for someone to require all these government agencies to actually implement the recommendations to set standards and hold agency executives, secretaries accountable?

somebody has to say, you have to do this by a certain period of time? >> i think that from a simple standpoint of institutional responsibility for -- >> they all work for the president. you would not expect him to call down and make sure it happens. is there someone in the hierarchy of folks who were close to the president that that could actually be required to happen? >> in the aftermath of opm, more broadly across the federal government, the white house set up a task force that specifically designated a series of concrete steps that were required to be executed. we had to finish it all within a 90 day time frame. in the end, this is all about account ability and leadership, and how you prioritize in a

tough environment where you're competing for limited resources. you have a thousand challenges you are trying to deal with and a leader trying to ensure that you are sending a strong message to your organization. you want to make sure everyone knows what is acceptable and not acceptable. >> i want to point to an institution in the government that has that responsibility government wide. it is probably the office of management and budget. of course, they have the power of the purse. >> exactly. gentleman yells back. >> gentleman yields back. mr. swallow? >> i want to thank you for your work this summer. we took down some planned isil attacks, and america's cooperation in the community and the fbi made some helpful

arrests. we have to be perfect -- they pull off one attack and it hurts people and causes panic. thank you for doing that. i want to follow up on what mr. conaway was saying. i appreciate how hard it is to go after what we would call a "paper case" or a computer case. it takes a lot of work to figure out whose fingertips are in the keyboard causing these attacks. it is very difficult, especially when they are drawn across the globe. but do you think we could do a better job of making sure we hold these people responsible and show them worto the and the term or attacks? right now it seems like we are almost entirely on a defensive posture. i think you hinted that a lot of this is because of international

challenges. we just struck an agreement with iran that involved china, russia, and countries we don't normally read with and work with. do you foresee an opportunity to go after cyber criminals? cyber criminals that would better assist you to do your job? >> i do. the bad guys, through the use of the internet, have shrunk the world. they have made places that are thousands of miles apart next-door neighbors on the internet, so our strategy is to shrink the world back in two ways -- deploy agents around the world, and equip our partners around the world with technology and people so that they can help us. the bad guys think it is a freebie -- since they are in their pajamas at the keyboard, they can still anything in america, but we are trying to make them look over their shoulder. it is getting a lot better.

countries around the world see this an -- see this, but it can always be better. >> the talk earlier on the end-to-end encryption -- i would hate if we didn't do everything we could to prevent the next attack and know where it is going to come from. the challenge that you have laid out i think quite articulately over the past year about going dark -- as you mentioned, it has tension with some of the security and privacy values. how do you see us reconciling that? you mentioned making sure that we work with industries, not just policy, but back at home in the bay area, it sometimes feels like we have forgotten about september 11 and privacy is a

paramount concern -- how can we reconcile the two as lawmakers so that we don't look back and see that we could have prevented an attack? >> from the government side, our responsibility is to talk to folks and explain we are not maniacs. the fbi is not an alien force imposed on the american people. we work with the american people through congress. our job is to say, look, our tools are being eroded and we are not making it up. there really is a conflict between two things we already care about deeply, and if we are going to help people, we have to resolve that, but also not be arrogant. you should not look to the government for innovation. we can do a lot of great things, but technological innovation is not our thing. we need to start by saying we have a problem and need to come together to try and solve it.

everybody tells me it is too hard. i really believe we have not given this a shot that it deserves. we will continue to talk about it to demystify it and blow away this nonsense that we are at war with each other. this should not begin him. we all care about the same things -- should not be venom. we should all solve this. >> if most of the interstate and encryption being used by the bad guys ended up being overseas, or companies that were overseas, what is the plan that would ensure that we would protect communication that would threaten america? >> we would have to do it with our foreign partners. as i said, i think every country that cares about the rule of law accident this in the same way -- all of us have to reconcile those two values.

i think there is a reason to govern -- to figure out how to govern ourselves, but we also don't want to chase the problem to a place where we can't get to it, so we have to figure out our peace and work with our international partners as a community of nations to figure out how to address this. >> thank you for all the work you have done. i yield back. >> he yields back. from florida. >> thank you, mr. chairman. the state department targeted 14 hamas leaders as financial facilitators for their terrorist acts. one was saudi, one palestinian, one egyptian, one jordanian. the front property -- they used a front companies to transfer

all of these dollars and were providing incredible financial support to individual terrorists as well as the groups they belong to. this highlights the international scope of fundraising by these terrorist enterprises and the directing of military operations, the facilitating of transfer of funds, all done within the cyber domain. without that, they would not be able to move this money around and plan these attacks, which are costing tens of millions of dollars to move from iran to saudi arabia -- a lot of money laundering. how confident are you in your individual agencies in working together that you have the necessary resources to continue to track the terrorist activities, that we will be able to section these individuals? they keep popping up. as soon as we put four guys down, four more will pop up. but we are able to track them thinks to the technology we have. how confident are you that we can continue this? like in my congressional district, you just have to get faster boats than the drug runners that are moving the drug

shipment. >> thanks for the question, ma'am. i think we have a pretty good understanding of the financial mechanisms that are used. we could always do better and we can always use more resources, but we certainly have put focus on the whole issue of threat finances. that is a whole new realm of intelligence that has evolved over the last decade or so. i have a national intelligence manager for threat finance. we have very good linkage, i think, across the community, bringing to bear all the resources of the community to focus on this, but it is a constant challenge. as you have implied, this is a lifeblood of international terrorist activity. john, do you have a comment?

>> we are trying to make sure we utilize all of our various intelligence capabilities, but as jim mentioned, we have ppd28, and there are issues related to access to metadata and bulk collection, other types of things, that it gets into this issue of what to do for security purposes, but what also might impact civil liberties issues. the treasury department relies heavily on the intelligence community to make sure they have the suspicion basis to designate these individuals. >> is there something we can do in terms of changing laws that would allow you to do your job better in a way to bring down these terrorist organizations? >> rather than respond off the

tops of our heads, when we take that for the record and give that some thought -- why don't we take that for the record and give that some thought. >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> mr. turner is recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. again, thank you all for being here and for your diligence on an issue that is an important one. not only is it an issue of losing may -- of losing information, but of the prospects that we could be looking at a change in the trend of damaging data and its effectiveness. i want to ask questions that relate to coordination. the last time you and i saw each other, you are at the space station in my district. thank you for being there. my concern on the first question, on the issue of

coordination, is in respect to isil. we have the director of the fbi who is trying to ensure that we have isil using social media to recruit officials, finding officials in the united states and porting their opportunity of planned attacks. with dod, their goal is to find these individuals and bring justice to them so we neutralize the threat. isil's use of military personnel and facilities through social media is a concern across the country and my own community. public events have been canceled. but when it comes to the justice -- bringing justice to an individual not in the united states, where coordination is an issue, general, if you could

speak a moment about the issue of the concern of our ability to bring justice to them and what our progress might be there. the second issue is with respect to the office of personnel management. again, i have thousands of individuals in my community, the air force base, that are very concerned about the data breach, specifically with the fh6 and the information contained within. there are personal -- you mentioned there are personal effects. but you have the next layer of what happens with our national effectiveness as that information is compromised. if you could speak for a moment on the issue of coordination. you are all dependent on opm to protect the people that allow your agency to be affected and function. gentlemen?

>> bailard extends to the forces on the ground. we coordinate daily -- aor extends to the forces on the ground. we are in contact with everyone to make sure we get the best characterization of the threat among the best characterization of what they are capable of, and more importantly, if we can target them, how do we get that targeting data down to those forces that can bring justice to those forces? that is our adversary. i feel very comfortable that we are talking. not only are we talking to those units below us, we are also talking laterally. none of what i can do can be done without the efforts of nsa,

or the things that are being done at the cia. we bring all sources of information together, practice -- package that to all of our consumers from the national level down to our forces on the ground, and we can hopefully bring that targetable information that can strike those actors in a very kinetic way. >> director, on the issue of personal risk, it also includes the professional risk. if you could speak to that for a moment, knowing that thousands of employees are very concerned about that breach. >> that is quite right, there is potentially, and i emphasize that word, a great risk in the case of intelligence people, particularly those who signed overseas, and in certain covered categories. that is a great concern of ours. what we have done through the offices of the national

counterintelligence security center is to do as much education as we possibly can on what the potential implications are, both as i said, institutionally and individually, but at this point, we have not seen, as we discussed, actual evidence of the use of any of this data in a nefarious way. i want to ask director commie to comment as well. director coming: i agree with clappers characterization. i talked to my workforce about this, we have everybody monitoring -- that is not my word on this information. i feel like that is like lying flood insurance when the neighborhood just burnt down. we have seen no indication of this being used to hit anybody's credit rating or accounts.

i don't think that is a concern. at the same time, i don't want to put everybody completely at ease, because there is a severe counterintelligence threat associated with having this information in a nationstate. >> dr. weinstrup? dr. weinstrup: tonight, mr. chairman. we talked about nonstate actors, concerned with attacks, nesting, the dark web, etc. how much of what we are seeing is taking place within the united states? are we having bad actors within the united states that are participating in attacks and nesting on the dark web? >> we have our fair share of criminals, and they increasingly operate online, because that is where our lives are. people want to hurt kids, that

is where they are operating, and they are often sharing images together on the dark web hoping that they will not -- that we will not be able to find it. as part of child exploitation. fraudsters of all kinds, whether it is health care or stealing your banking transactions. they think if they go to the dark web, they can hide from us. they are kidding themselves because of the effort that has been put in by all of us in the government over the last few years that there out of our view , but it is a big feature of criminal activity in the united states. >> from a government standpoint, do we have full confidence in working with the five eyes? where should we going, or where are we going in that arena? dir. comey: we have full confidence in the five eyes.

it is a fabulous relationship and is as healthy as it has been for several years. all states that care about the role of law are engaged on this. we have certain states, russia in particular, where it is very hard to get the actors apprehended, so we have to hope to grab them when they leave the country and travel. the good news, all the successful cyber criminals have lots of dough and want to go on vacation. that is when we grab them up. dr. weinstrup: is there a potential for a set of international rules, even amongst those we consider to be our adversaries? >> yes, there is a potential, and of course, it took many years for the geneva conventions to involve, and i suspect it

probably will in this case as well, but i think the hope is there could be established international norms in governing behavior, particularly what civilized nation states would do about criminal behavior and using the internet for terrorist purposes. many countries have an interest in that. >> how do you suspect we begin that process? dir. clapper: the public discourse is certainly useful. it is certainly a topic we discuss in intelligence circles with our friends and allies, particularly the five eyes. there is a growing body of interest in this. i hark back, we are in the

intelligence realm and this is a policy issue that i do not regret. >> that answers my question. one other question, has north korea conducted cyber attacks on u.s. companies since sony? dir. clapper: your question is did they? >> had they conducted any that you are aware of? dir. clapper: since sony, i am not aware. dir. comey: we have not seen any attacks since the sony incident. >> did america act in a way that has been a deterrent? >> i certainly hope that is the case. the president came out publicly and acknowledged the act, attributed the act, and talked

about what we are going to do in response to that. and talked about if we see activity along these lines, we will take additional action. i will argue that your question is narrowly focused against the activity against the united states. i will argue that i have watched them do other activities against other nations in the post-sony environment. >> thank you. i yield back. >> mr. stewart is recognized for five minutes. >> if there is anyone who is going to save our nation from future chaos, it is the work of you in your agencies working together. i have great respect for all of you. i consider some of you friends. admiral, you and i spent some time together last week. thank you for your support.

i have a question, but first, the elector clapper -- director clapper -- you have said some things that i do not understand, and i wish you could clarify that for me. you said the opm reach is not an attack. i understand there may be a technical definition, but there are a couple of things that have troubled me. one, we say we have no evidence of nefarious activity, but we do not know that. if someone has been blackmailed because of this information that has been taken, we would not know that yet. if someone's cover had been revealed, we would not know that yet. we do not know what has been an impact of this being taken. can you define for me what is an attack and what isn't? this seems to me like it would be. dir. clapper: i work in the definition of whether it is an attack or not. it is in my characterization of

it not being attack in that there was no destruction or manipulation data -- it was simply stolen. that is a passive intelligence collection activity, just as we do. >> it seems to me, sir -- dir. clapper: your other question is, we don't know what could be going on, that's quite true. all i am saying is that there has been no evidence surfaced to this point of the use of this data in enough areas way to my either against -- in a nefarious way, either against individuals or groups. we are not mindful of that or watching for it. i asked do think it seems to minimize the gravity of this event by characterizing it not an attack and saying that at this point we are not aware of any nefarious activity, when there very well could be. but if i could go on to my question, because it would appreciate your response -- national security is a matter of

cost-benefit analysis. nationstates say, here are our ambitions and goals, and on the other hand they have to measure the cost of reaching those goals or defending those interests. what are the risks and obstacles they have in doing that? we seem to have a way of making our adversaries know and understand the risks and costs. i think the effect of that is that we have weakened the idea of deterrence, or maybe i don't understand the idea. we have seen these attacks, and they seem to act with impunity. can you help me understand what our policy is regarding deterrence? i know there is some in regards to that that you would not want to talk about, but it seems if

we could be more open on how we would respond that that could act as more of a deterrent. i am not sure we have done a good job of doing that yet. dir. clapper: personally, and this is not company policy, this is my own view -- until we do achieve or create both the substance and mindset of deterrence, this sort of thing is going to continue. the opm breach. as admiral rodgers stated on more than one occasion, this is not a one-off, and we will continue to see this until we create the substance and psychology of deterrence. >> i couldn't agree with you more. it seems to me that we will enhance our security if we do turn them are rather than this monitor -- determine, rather

than dismonitor action. i am hoping that you agree with me. it seems like you are -- if we can be more open and clear about our deterrence policy that it would benefit us. dir. clapper: those are policy issues. as an intel guy, i would be an advocate for that, but ultimately that is not my call. >> i understand. five seconds, is there anyone else on the panel that would like to address deterrence? ok. thank you, mr. chairman. >> mr. carson is recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i think we all understand that we face serious threats as it relates to hacking and cyberspace. we also are dealing with a larger cbe strategy and the distribution of propaganda, and the radicalization of americans using online platforms. it is

obvious that we have challenging concerns about the constitutionality of protected free speech. my first question would be, how effective are these online radicalization efforts domestically? are there particular subsets of our society that are most greatly influenced? secondly, outside of encouraging voluntary compliance by twitter, facebook, and others, what authority do you have to forcibly remove all began to add -- remove propaganda, and what could congress empower you with to improve those efforts? >> if i can respond to that, first of all, these are recruitment efforts -- these recruitment efforts using social media are highly effective. i sold invested -- isil invested in it 15 months ago.

social media works, whether you're selling stickers or the poison of the so-called islamic state. in my experience, social media companies have been highly responsible and responsive in trying to take down media that is related to a terrorist group. the challenge of social media is it is the most, kid's spider web in the world, so you end up having a hard time finding it, and when you find it, you chase it down to some other place. it is an enormous problem and i do not have a simple answer. i will say that they have been responsible and responsive. those who respond to it are troubled minds, people who seek meaning in their lives. unfortunately, there is an audience for this kind of poison, finding meaning in the ultimate value.

we see people who have problems with alcohol, families, it or the law being responsive to this kind of stuff. the fbi tries to do two things at once. first, they send a strong message of deterrence. this is not a way to find meaning in your life, this is a way to find decades in a federal prison. that ought to factor into peoples' consideration. and to equip parents with the markers of radicalization. we have developed a matrix of the indicators of that journey, and we're trying to equip people with that so they can see it and help reorient the person. >> has the citizens' academy -- >> coming up, astronauts talk about their time on the

international space station. bernie sanders speaks at liberty university in virginia. today, a discussion on pope francis's use of capitalism and whether it leads to inequality and poverty. we are live from the cato institute at noon eastern here n c-span. today, a discussion on the state of the army with john mccue. we will join him at noon eastern on our compendium network c-span2. a signature feature of book tv is our all-day coverage of book fairs and festivals from across the country, with top nonfiction authors. schedule.r near the end of september, we are in new york for the brooklyn book festival, celebrating its 10th year. in early october, the southern

festival of books. weekend after that, we are live from austin for the texas book festival. near the end of the month we will be covering to book festivals on the same weekend from our nation's heartland, the wisconsin book festival in madison. back on the east coast, the boston book festival. at the start of november, we will be in portland, oregon, followed by the national book awards for new york city. at the end of november we are live for the 18th year in a world from florida. that is a few of the fairs and festivals this fall on c-span2's book tv. next, nasa astronauts mark virts and terry ve stig about their work on the iss. this is an hour. good morning,

everybody, and welcome to the national press club. my name is john hughes, im and editor at bloomberg's first word, bloomberg's breaking news desk here in washington. i in the president of the national press club. we have a historic day here in the national press club. guest, live via video link from the international space station,'s astronaut scott kelly. here in the ballroom next to me, we welcome astronauts mark kelly into terry virts. the first it won't introduce our distinguished table. the table includes club members and guests of our speakers. from the audience's right, david , robert koons, colonel cady coleman, frank jerry' jr.,

seemski, denny lnick, captain samantha sitov,andretti fairdous alfarouk, tom mcmann. welcome to you all. [applause] mr. hughes: i also want to welcome our c-span and public radio audiences and are live

audience watching around the world on the internet. you can follow the action on twitter. use the hashtag #npclive. 100 years ago, one of the first transcontinental telephone calls themade from national press club. the photo documents the historic moment. it also marks the first time a high-ranking u.s. official was photographed at the national press club, then secretary of state william jennings bryan, who made that historical. year, a speech has been given -- asked the question, what would be the 20 15th equivalent of that 1915 phone call? well, some conversations resulted from that question, and some cooperation from nasa let us here today for another first

for the national press club. livee press conference, messaging going up to space. it is a historic day. it raises the question for the national press club president, who are you going to call, and how far will you reach? it is fascinating that we are here today. i want to remind you that are astronaut is scott kelly. stint in may.-day this is his brother who just corrected me. this'll be the longest ever stint by a u.s. astronaut, and as of today he is just under the halfway point to making history. here on the ground, we have his twin brother, the retired nasa astronaut, captain mark kelly.

he is undergoing a study with his brother to determine the effect of long duration space flight on the human body. inalso have terry virts, who june was the most recent nasa astronaut to return from the iss. so we welcome our astronauts here on the ground, and i expect that in about a minute, we will be hearing from the international space station. what are you going to say to your brother, if you are able to send a message to him this morning? mr. mark kelly: wanted to say it twice? [laughter] mr. hughes: we should wait until he had them on the screen. mr. mark kelly: i talked to him yesterday. we caught up a little bit on what has been going on. i get the opportunity -- there is a phone on the space station, for folks that don't know. it is kind of like an internet call, and there he is. there scott is. scott, can you hear us?

>> houston, are you ready for the event? mr. scott kelly: i am ready for the event. >> national press club, this is mission control houston. please go station for a voice check. mr. hughes: station, this is national press club. have you hear me? -- how do you hear me? mr. scott kelly: i have you loud and clear. welcome aboard the space station. mr. hughes: thanks for joining us, scott. we have a full room here -- i know it is around lunchtime at their, but we just had breakfast. could you tell us what you are doing today? first of all,y: it is great to be here with you guys today. i know you are having breakfast because both my brother and terry virts sent me pictures of their food. [laughter] mr. scott kelly: i guess they are trying to make me feel bad about what we have to eat appear. -- eat up here. today is a day off for us

because we had some crew members departing late last week, so today is actually a free day. mr. hughes: what do you do on your day off on the international space station? know, we kelly: you have a lot of work up here with over 400 different science experiments going on throughout the year. we do a lot of work on the different systems that keep us alive. mostly, on the day off, it is a time to rest and recover from a very hectic schedule. i generally take a lot of pictures of the earth, to email, maybe watch something on tv. yesterday we were watching the texas and broncos game. that was nice. mr. hughes: so you are about halfway to your year-long goal. how do you feel? what affects has microgravity had on you so far, in this

almost six-month period? so, i feelelly: pretty good overall. i definitely recognize that i have been up to her longtime, just as long ahead of me, but i feel positive about it. energy, ie my work, will have enough in the tank to get to the end. i'm pretty sure i will. as far as physically, i feel good. we have pretty good exercise equipment up here. but there are a lot of effects of this environment that we can't see or feel, like both loss, effects on vision, effects on genetics, proteins, things like that. that is why we are studying myself and misha on this one your flight. -- this one year flight.

the jury is out. we will have to get all the data and have the scientist analyze it. submit the results for p review peer review. hopefully we will find out some great rings about me and my colleagues spending a year in space. mr. hughes: there is a lot of attention and interest in getting to mars. how will your effort up there help us get to mars? so a lot of the studies we are doing focus, particularly me and my russian longer duration spaceflight that we have done before. this is an incredible facility we had aboard the international thl space station -- it has the ability to collect data on us. we have an ultrasound, we have devices that measure vision. next week we will do a lot of

imaging and data collection on a russian device that pulls the blood down toward your feet. a lower body negative pressure device. from these experiments, we will hopefully find out if there are any cliffs out there, if our vision gets significantly worse after nine months or a year. even though the russians have flown onboard the space station for a year or longer in a couple cases, they didn't have the technology we have today to figure this out. the space station is also a great experiment in sustainable energy and life support equipment, understanding how that works and how we can maintain ourselves with these systems for longer periods of time. both of those will help us go to mars sunday, hopefully in the not-too-distant future. mr. hughes: as part of what is happening -- you are undergoing

a twin study along with your brother here on the ground. explain how that is working. do you have any results on the twin study so far? anything you can share? or won't any of this be known until after your experience is done and you have analyzed all the data afterwards? you know, illy: think most of it will be stuff that we learn afterwards. i have has some interaction with some of the investigators. thing i found somewhat interesting, maybe not too unexpected, is our micro biome, the stuff that is inside of us that is not us, we have more cells and bacteria that we carry around in us that aren't -- that is a part of our body, but they live inside of us. one of the principal

investigators told me that while he was up he, she found it interesting that my brother and i have different microbiomes. i guess it is not that unexpected because we live separate lives, but it was an interesting factoid, i guess. mr. hughes: the goal, however, is that at the end you will be able to document -- nasa will be able to document like never before the effects of microgravity on a human, using a twin to really get in a detailed level. yeah.ott kelly: it is kind of a serendipitous thing that my brother and i are both identical twins and astronauts. the fact that he is an astronaut and has a lot of experience with nasa means not only is he comfortable doing all these types of experiments, as a

control, but also nasa has a lot of data on him going back to when we interviewed in 1995. and can look at that data look at the data they collect with him over this year. they can see what kind of deviations we have on a genetic could be a result of this environment, the weightlessness, the radiation that we see. from that, figure out other areas we need to investigate so we can eventually complete our journey to mars and elsewhere. estimates thata the recently discovered earthlike planet in the kepler-452 star system has doubled th the earth's gravity. mentioned your heroic experiment any effect on gravity when talking about this. as you anticipate the physical recovery needed to return to earth's gravity from the

weightlessness of the space station, how do you think humans could one day adapt to gravity stronger than earth? you know, illy: guess -- charles darwin proved that the species, different species in general, are very adaptable to their environment. i think over the long term it wouldn't be an issue. just like we have learned to live and work in microgravity, i'm sure people would be able to live and work in an environment that is twice the amount of gravity, although i think to be comfortable in that situation would probably take longer than it would to get comfortable up here. when we come back from the space station, we do feel like we weigh 500 pounds, more than double your real weight.

but it is something you would just too quickly. i think we as a species, throughout evolution, have shown we are very adaptable. mr. hughes: how long has it taken you to get used to this environment of microgravity? is a constant process of adjustment, or is it something that you figure out, and then it is just there? mr. scott kelly: that is a really good question. one i have never been asked before. what is the process of adjusting? that it isave found a continuous thing. it gets less significant overtime, but i do notice that i can do things now that i couldn't do right when i first got up here, even though i had flown 180 days in space before. my ability to move around is

really improved over time, and continues to improve. you just get more comfortable. your clarity of thought is greater. your ability to focus, things like that. i found that the adaptation has not stopped, and it will be interesting to see where i am at six months from now. mr. hughes: i know that on earth when they do experiments -- there you go. that's good. that's good. when they do experiments, they often put people down in a close environment and leave them there for months at a time to see how they interact with one another. you are up there for a long time with your colleague. how about the human component of this, the human interaction? are there subjects that you need to avoid in talking about?

how do you learn to live with one person for such a long time, up on the space station? you know, illy: think people find it hard to believe, but so far in my over , i have noticed very few conflicts. not only does nasa but our international partners do a good job at selecting people that are easy to get along with in this type of a harsh environment -- , nor doly on this light i expect to have any. we recognize each other on the psychological level and for our

own personal safety. that goes -- it is just as important with my fellow astronaut as it is with my other colleagues, including the russian cosmonauts. mr. hughes: i will bring in your brother in a minute -- do you think that you or mark got the better end of the deal on the twin study? well, i thinky: it depends. it is a privilege to fly on this flight but sometimes when he says the pictures of his breakfast i am a little envious. [laughter] mr. hughes: mark, what would you say to your brother? mr. mark kelly: about breakfast? [laughter] mr. mark kelly: i talked to him yesterday and we caught up on a few things. there is a phone on the space station so we can communicate other than this kind of setting.

i was interested in what you thought about the houston's performance. mr. scott kelly: well, fortunately, it's a long season. i'm very optimistic they will improve. i think there are areas where they need to. but regardless of how they do, i am a huge fan. i feel fortunate to have football season here and have something to look forward to on the weekends. mr. mark kelly: i had another question for scott -- in space, you can see he has his legs down that he is not standing. his feet are under handrail. i always think it is interesting what happens to your feet in space. maybe you can share, if you are comfortable, with folks. yeah.ott kelly: we don't really use the bottoms .f our feet much

over time, calluses on your feet fall off. after five months, you have baby feet. but then you have a big callus on the top of your toe, because you use that to move around. when i got back from my last flight, a few days after the , getting one of those massage places. i was pretty sore in certain areas and the masseuse says -- you have the softest feet i have ever felt in my life! my response was, thank you, i'm very proud of them. [laughter] scott, this is probably the start of what will be a long experience, of long human spaceflight missions, as we contemplate mars and beyond. you have been up there about half way to your full year stint , but do you have any advice that you would give to future astronauts who are going to be

spending a long duration in space? anything you have learned so far that you would pass on to them? know, i waslly: you fortunate that i had flown almost six months in my previous flight. i sort of knew what i was getting into. despite that, i did have certain apprehensions, having to go into something that was going to be twice as long. i intentionally thought about ways for me to get to the end of this with as much energy as i had in the beginning. part of that is having a good balance between work and rest. don't work aty the same pace i did last time i was up here, where i felt like i could go at 100% speed for the full six months.

i can't do that, so i consciously try to throttle myself back a little bit at certain times and have a really good balance between work and rest. that is what i would encourage anyone who attempts to spend this amount of time in this environment -- you have to pace yourself. mr. hughes: so in the remaining time you have other, what are you most looking forward to in the next six months or so up there? mr. scott kelly: um, we have a couple spacewalks coming up. i look forward to that. i have never done a spacewalk. along with the guy who just got something out of the refrigerator. [laughter] mr. scott kelly: we both look forward to that -- that will be a challenge for the two of us. but what i am looking most forward to is just getting to the end of this, as much energy

and enthusiasm as i had in the beginning, doing it safely and completing all of our mission objectives and getting all the science done. mr. hughes: ok. last question. all the things you miss in your time away from earth, and after such a long time, what is the top of your list of things you miss from being down on the planet? so after being: people youpeople, care about, your family, your friends, going outside. this is a very close environment. we can never leave. the lighting is always pretty much the same. the smells, the sounds, everything is the same. i think most prisoners can get outside occasionally. [laughter] mr. scott kelly: but we can't.

that is what i miss, after people. mr. hughes: scott kelly, i want to thank you for joining us today on this historic day at the national press club. if the audience wants to show its appreciation by giving you some applause -- [applause] mr. scott kelly: my pleasure. see youes: th later. somebody pass the question -- >> thank you, that concludes our event. mr. hughes: there were some large cameras in the pictures, telephoto lenses. are those to take pictures of earth? what are those used for? mr. mark kelly: those are for earth labs. --tt has a very large window

sometimes we have experiments in there that take pictures of form fields, how those are used. but what we don't have -- the experiment blocking the window -- we can grab a camera and take pictures. scott has been really good -- i had a tendency to take big picture views where you could see the earth and space and stars. scott was a big fan of getting that gigantic telescope and zooming in on stuff. it is one of the favorite things we do in space. mr. hughes: what was the room that he was coming to us from? what was the purpose of that space? mr. virts: we were in the lab looking backward toward the russian segment. where he came from is some exercise equipment. i think he was either running on the treadmill, or we have an exercise machine that allows you to do edge presses. mr. hughes: any u.s. laboratory. -- in a u.s. laboratory. he mentioned missing going outside. what would you do to avoid being

stir crazy up there? mr. mark kelly: it was funny -- right after scott got there, we -- i missed earth, and the russians were sending us audio clips of rain and wind and birds. there was one weekend where every laptop in the station -- we put this rain sound. it was raining and the station for the whole weekend. everywhere you went, it sounded like rain. that is one way to go. i talked withrk, your brother about the twin study. what is your role in the twin study here on the ground, and how much time does it take? how often are you being tested and the like? mr. mark kelly: so far my role has been to provide samples. blood, saliva, other things. i won't go into. mris andfor ultrasounds, and even some

experiments. inetimes i will be laying some contraction -- i don't even know what they are trying to figure out. do it every need to do. mr. hughes: so it is providing data over an extended period of time. mr. mark kelly: sometimes i will visit houston and meet with the researchers, spend the whole day getting data. sometimes they will send somebody to tucson, or even to new york city to collect the data from me. we will do this while my brother is in space, then also after he gets back for a period of time. understand, from some of these researchers, one of them recently said that they will have more information on scott and i on our molecular and genetic information than any other human ever. that was not an official position, but this is one of the researchers, their comment on this study. there is probably 10 to 12

different experiments or different universities doing experiments, all the way from the university of frankfurt to stanford, harvard medical, johns hopkins, the university of pennsylvania, purdue. pretty substantial research universities. it will be interesting to see what the data shows on the genetic and molecular effects of this long-duration spaceflight. my brother mentioned that there might be a cliff. i think that needs a little bit of further explanation. we have data on a lot of people after six months of being in space. we have a pretty good idea of what happens in that x months period. -- that six-month period. maybe there is a bend in the curve. what we know is that vision gets worse, but maybe at nine months

or 10 months, maybe it gets really, really bad. aagine you are trying to send crew to go work and live on mars for an extended period of from the environment. that's a big problem. that's part of the idea of doing this research over a one-yearperiod to figure out if there are bands and the curve. what are your thoughts on how soon we can get to mars? ability tolly: our go to mars is not so much based on the technology to do that. i think we can do that and figure it out and figure out the engineering and propulsion system. i think we can figure out what it will take to mitigate these physiological effects from being an space. i think the limiting factor is controls when we actually do this is the public desire to do it.

we will need a lot of public to takeif we are going on that kind of endeavor and put a person on mars. that public support then means we get congressional support and administration support in the white house. that is the most important. challenge like sending somebody to mars will be expensive and it will take a long time. that public support, i would say it will not happen. mr. hughes: both of you have spent time in the station and had that experience of adjusting back to earth's gravity. scott will have that in a more significant way because of the length of time that he will be up there. what are the three or so you most unique things your body experiences that you go through when you transition back to earth from a period of time on

the space station? mr. virts: after my shuttle flight which was a few weeks, i felt heavy. my sense of gravity was significant. after my station flight of 200 but the mainheavy sensation was one of being dizzy. but it tookill walk a few days before that abated. the thing that surprised me about the station flight was how quickly i adapted back to earth. i was prepared for much worse and had months of lingering effects but i adapted a lot quicker than i thought. mr. hughes: was that also your experience? mr. virts: i had other flights but they were all around two weeks. been thattion has

when you are flying a space shuttle mission, it is like a two-week train wreck of trying to operate and get everything you need to complete in this very short amount of time. the crewmembers working very fast, you do not have a lot of time to exercise. it is important to exercise in space. i will exercise two or three times. you have crewmembers even though they are there for six months, they're doing a significant amount of exercise every day. why youthat is probably acclimated pretty well after 200 days in space. it probably didn't feel a lot different than being an space for a couple of weeks. the amount of exercise and the amount of work you are doing during that time. mr. hughes: i think both of you would agree the technology is imaginable on getting to mars. what happened with our

astronauts once they get there, how do we handle the making it so astronauts can live there, how difficult will that be. any idea how long they will be able to stay before coming back, or would they just not come back? >> are you going to see that in a movie in a week or so? mr. virts: you can read that in a book also. there are three ways to go to mars and this is a way to -- you can use a slow boat which is a chemical rocket we have now. if you do that it takes 6-9 months to get there. and you have to wait for her to go around the sun before you can come around again so you spend a year and a half on the surface. watera long time for your systems to work and for your carbon dioxide to work. that's a lot of food to pack. is to doboat to mars

what we call electric propulsion. it is using electricity to pump out the propeller really fast out the backend and the spaceship goes faster. you get to mars in a couple of months, spend a few weeks or a month on the surface and come back. the problem is you need a nuclear reactor. if you go the fast way, the problems of the human body in space are mitigated, problems of packing less water and food is mitigated. your systems don't have to last for as long. that's a decision we will have to make on how to get there. the fast way or the slow way. mr. hughes: if we made the decision, and congress cap behind it, how far away are we from achieving this? the first human in space happened in 1961 and we were on the moon in 1969. ,o there is historical context getting to mars takes longer than getting to the moon but it

could be done in a decade or two. well, it is said it more a question of political science than rocket science. mr. hughes: let me ask you about nasa in general. as someone who grew up with apollo. for me, apollo 15 was the end all because i was seven years old. i didn't remember apollo 11. but i did have the astronaut dolls. the little guys i would play with. nasa was a huge deal. in more recent years, there was some thought that nasa had come on harder times. we were relying on the russians more and nasa's glory days were over. but them we had the pluto flyby and there was excitement created. and nasa seem to hit again. -- hiopp again. , if do we need to do

anything, to put it on the right future course? mr. virts: i can talk about what we are doing now. there's a lot going on, the pluto mission. mars rovers, we have three active right now. and one in the works. the mars program is robust. the human space flight program is robust. i just back from a long flight and scott is up there now. all aspectslved in of it, robotically. away at all.ne we are flying with the russians right now. that was one of the highlights of my mission, the chance to go work with russian colleagues. that was a great experience. flying on american vehicles again, nasa is very busy. it hasn't ended in any way and there is a bright future. have the best: we

scientists and engineers in the world. i think we can do anything we set our minds to. especially in space flight. it is challenging but we have the resources to do these things. we need to pick exciting missions that the public will be interested in like the pluto mission. being somebody who used to work at nasa and flying in space, even i thought that was pretty neat. to see pluto up close for the first time, see those images come back and start to learn more about something that is or isn't a planet. have to pick these exciting missions. we have to allow nasa to do this. what often happens is you will see -- we will be asked to do something. and either nasa will cancer the program or congress or the white

house will cancel it. we have to understand that these things, despite the ability of our scientists and engineers to do these things, they take a long amount of time. often from one administration in the white house to the next. i think people need to be patient and we need to get nasa the resources to do these hard things. we have the people and the ability to accomplish exciting things. we heard scott say he was looking forward to his spacewalk and you completed three during your mission. this helped prepare the station for the new boeing and spacex commercial crew vehicles. you also give us some amazing go pro imagery and it made us feel it we were there too. can you tell us what it was like to be out on the spacewalk and doing this sort of work?

it was unique. i had a chance to do a lot of stuff that was unique. going outside for the first time. in the pool, we practice spacewalks and you got side of the airlock and there is a module. i reach over and grab and move on to where i'm doing my work. on my first spacewalk, i went to i am notnd i went note going to do that so i stayed on the side of the station and did not take a shortcut. it is an amazing experience. i felt like maybe a minute or two to do that. they were so busy for so many tasks that had to happen. i never felt like i had any free time while i was out there. it was more like a shuttle flight. with thes: international space station, it's almost like we are so used to it we are taking it for granted. the can be done to improve

scientific output of the space station and the impact it has? mr. mark kelly: my brother mentioned that over the time he will be there there are 400 different experiments going on. in different laboratories. the u.s., the japanese, the european laboratories. do science and the russian segment. it is an incredible facility. there is a lot going on. to expand the output of the space station, you need more people. the space station was launched in 1998 so 17 years now. starting to get old, things break. people have to fix things. that takes time away from doing the science. you do not have an electrician or a plumber. you do not have some of the to clean the place. the crewmembers are the

mechanics, the scientists, the secretary, the guy fixing the toilet. you are the maid, you are cleaning up on the weekend or during the week. it really comes down to time. but to add crewmembers is complicated. you have more on board, you need another return vehicle that acts as the lifeboat if something happens. it also with those extra people you need to support them. not only with food and water but oxygen. air to breathe and carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. it gets complicated. just answer your question, we would need more people. mr. hughes: the international space station living up to its name has been an international effort. do you foresee will me look at long spaceflight missions and the future, do you envision these will be

international collaborations, or well they be more of a u.s. effort? mr. virts: my view is they will be international. the reason the international space station survived if you look at it back in the 90's, the international aspect of it to the it to go back political science and the rocket science aspect of it. the program makes it something that can survive over a long amount of time. it is also great to have the ingenuity. by can gain efficiencies having different countries build different modules so one country doesn't have to build the entire program. mr. hughes: somebody passed up a question about elon musk who mars andtalked about using a thermo nuclear device as an option to make mars more habitable. any thought or comment on that? i don't know the

science behind nuking a planet, but i will tell you he is a smart man and he does think outside the box. when you look at what he has accomplished not only with spacex launching cargo to the international space station, i'mfully people ready soon, incredible car company and solar company. he tends to know what he is talking about but i do not know the science behind nuking the planet. mr. hughes: another person in the audience here rights, u.s.-russia relations are tense onerous -- on earth but seem productive and space. what can leaders learn about your cooperation aboard the iss? mr. virts: i definitely second that motion. the relationships in space and on earth, preparing to launch our great. our colleagues are very capable, they are very friendly.

i had a great time and space with anton and sasha and misha are right there right now. withd a great experience them and frankly, i think the station has accomplished a lot of things. the most important thing is the international relation aspect. of all the ups and downs of relationships on earth, it has been a very positive one. mr. hughes: you have been on the space station during experiments with 3-d printing. please describe the benefits of this technology for deep space missions in the future, and for the space station now if there are any. whether any parts produced during the test run that were used and any lessons learns on the technology. mr. virts: the 3-d printing is a great concept. you can imagine going to mars, you are going to have a full

closet and you are limited to one bag only. you cannot bring all the tools you need and if you have to print out tools or parts, that can really save on the amount of mass you have to launch. andid make a little ranch it was made out of plastic, it was not a hard metal wrench. that was the first time it has ever been done in space. it was cool to see a tool printed in space. we sent it to earth for analysis. that is a technology that has a lot of promise. lastughes: what is the impression that space has given you when you think of your time up there, what is the thing that strikes you the most later on? think whatlly: i became very obvious to me in 2001 during my first space mission was that we live on an island.

a really unforgiving environment. you look back at the year from a distance, and you have a few people aboard the space shuttle and space station. we have seven and a half million people -- billion people on this round ball floating through space. we really have no or else to go. that was really striking and quick. i imagine that was by other astronauts affine space. -- fly in space. i think that gives you an appreciation for our planet and what it does for us and the need for us to consider that. and take care of it. as we have talked about the space station crew that has conducted hundreds of experiments, including many that have been developed by science students and transmitted up there. do you consult with these same

students when questions arise, and if so, how? which science student experiments with a most interesting or challenging? have -- itwe do depends. sometimes we just talked to houston or the nasa control center and sometimes if it is complicated they will have to send directly with the scientist who made it. it depends on the experiment. i am trying to think of what student only experiments we had and most of the ones we did, you just do the experiment and don't know who came up with it. experiments,dent the things i do remember is a built equipment bike storage bags or locations and stuff. there were little cartridges little

and they fly them around and that was a big student led experiment with m.i.t. that my crewmates were talking about. the students could make software and fly them around like robotic competitions that a lot of kids do only this was a satellite in space. earlier,s: i mentioned relying on others for transport up to the space station. the you think ending the space shuttle program before there was a replacement slowed the u.s. space program? was it a good transition or could we have done better? we have thely: columbia accident in 2003. after columbia, there was a joint decision made to retire the space shuttle because we realized if we continued to fly it for another decade, we would

probably lose another spacecraft and crew. and we did not want to do that. this was a decision made by the white house and congress and by nasa, including the astronaut office. this was the right thing to do. to retire the shuttle. it allowed us to speed up the development of what the next spacecraft would be. and you get into testing developing and building the hardware for a new system or rocket, it gets expensive quickly. upwards of 2-3,000,000,000 dollars per year. it just happens that the space wastle outage it -- budget to billion dollars a year. we could use that money to develop a new spacecraft, or we billione gotten 2-3 dollars.

nasa's budget is only $19 billion. you are talking about a 15% increase in nasa's budget to build a new spacecraft. thethis environment over last decade, how hard do you think it would be for an agency to get an increase of about 15% in its yearly budget? it would be really hard to do. i absolutely believe we made the right decision. personallye preferred to fly the space shuttle every year for the rest of my life. it is the best spaceship ever. part of me still wishes it was still around. we did make the right decision. the space shuttle was designed to fly about 100 flights. endeavor, which i flew on its last flight, flight number 25,

so they were not designed to fly for 30 or 40 years. that's the issue we were dealing with. where we in a position have to rely on our russian partners to get to and from the space station. right now, over the next couple of years, we will be back flying u.s. crew members on u.s. rockets from u.s. soil here in no time. i think it puts us on a good path. if you were congress or the president, where would you focus resources are nasa? mars, missions like the pluto flyby, going back to the moon, the space station, where we need to focus? mr. mark kelly: we need to do everything it was up to may. mr. hughes: what if you didn't have unlimited resources? mr. mark kelly: i will let terri answer that.

i would not focus on just one thing. i think nasa has a broad mission. exploration.space i would divided up. stayedhes: you connection through bass ball -- baseball. every major league ballpark from orbit, and you posted these images on social media. where did that end up? mr. virts: i got almost all. the coastal stadiums are easy to d.clike baltimore, ec -- boston is very easy., is nothing obvious around kansas city, it is hundreds of miles of flat. there was st. louis or cincinnati.

corners werehe very easy to get and the ones in the middle were tougher. i think i did get them all. i still need to go through files and double check. pittsburgh was always tough to get. mr. virts: i think my brother is working on all the football stadiums because of what you did. mr. hughes: before i ask the final question, i have housekeeping i want to remind people in the room that are astronauts, will be available down the hall for standup interviews immediately after this program concludes. i also want to remind you the national press club is the world's leading professional organization for journalists. we fight for a free press worldwide and for more information about the club, andt our website press.org donate to our nonprofit institute, visit

press.org/institute. i would also like to remind you about upcoming programs. 16, monday, september archbishop was in state of wu, ceo ofdr. carol catholic really services will discuss pope francis'upcoming visit to washington, d.c. the big ques -- shoe,e athletics and jane chair of the national endowment for the arts will share new initiatives at a breakfast on said there were 28. i will now present our in room guest with a national press club mug. this onot easily find the space station, it is very valuable, and we will have to find a way to get it to your brother. mr. mark kelly: i can take care of that. not very useful in space,

though. thehughes: we mentioned mars movie that will come out. so much fascination in literature, movies, television, space. i come of myself of course in a star trek junkie. tell me what you kind of science fiction you enjoy, if any, and what you think about the movies and science fiction you see out there in books or tv starting with you. mr. virts: of course, star wars was the big thing and i love that. ira member reading arthur clarke as a teenager and he wrote great stuff. in 2001, there was a space station in north orbit and i watch that when i was ispace and i thought a lot of that stuff came true. i just watched interstellar.

a lot of that stuff is not what is going on board the space station, there are no wormholes but that is a movie you have to watch a few times to figure out. mr. hughes: does hollywood get it wrong most of the time? hollywood has to make it exciting. night and gravity one watched the disaster, it was fun. the mechanics of where everything was and what it looked like, it was very real. we do not have giant explosions , they had to, so make that to make a movie interesting. doing just astronauts science experiment, probably would not gross very much at the box office. mr. mark kelly: i started seveng this will called e's. about using the space station to

save humanity after something that happens on her face it was interesting to see how an author or hollywood uses existing space technology in their movies. when i was younger, these guys down here, the brothers and sisters down here. read a lot of isaac asimov, those kinds of books. maybe figure out what it would be like to be in space one day. i think that is important. people ambition and make a picture of themselves in a different place and different time. mr. hughes: the good thing with all the genetic data they have with you and your brother, if the apocalypse comes we can just clone you. mr. hughes: what about the young people i mentioned as a

fascinatedwe were so with the space program and i'm sure that continues. young people that want to go to space someday get on that career track. what do you see just they do? , what would you suggest that they do? we get asked this question all the time. the real answer is do what you are passionate about. everyone is blessed with the different abilities and skills. what you are created to do, do that and do it well. there is not one path to be an astronaut. there are engineers and scientists. mark and i are previous pilots. there are medical doctors, scott is a medical doctor. there are different ways to be an astronaut. we need people with different skills. be passionate and work where your skills are. mr. huges: