app as was itunes, stitcher, and google play an online anytime at c-span.org. coming up next, from washington journal, a look at russian ever to to interfere in u.s. elections. this follows a discussion on the impact of u.s. sanctions against other countries and the possibility talks between the u.s. and north korea. later, sarah sanders taking questions on north korea at friday's briefing with reporters. >> "washington journal" continues. host: patrick tucker, technology editor for defense one, to talk about russian interference. mr. tucker, how did russia use technology to interfere in the 2016 election? guest: great question. we are still learning the full parameters of this activity which a lot of intelligence heads say is ongoing. but the 2016 effort is two

pronged. we mix russian activity together in like a big meddling stew. there are aspects that are illegal and there are aspects that are sort of -- we would have a lot of pause about it, but they're less illegal. in 2016 we know that the d.n.c., democratic national committee, system that its was exfiltrating data. this comes from two sources that have been linked to the russian government. they had on their servers for a long time malware from the g.r.u. and more recently in the spring, they had additional -- suffered an additional attack from the f.s.b. so what is sort of strange about that is you had two russian services that were working at cross purposes because they weren't communicating. what was happening was folks at the d.n.c. were getting emails

from people that looked like they were trusted. it wasn't like hi, i am a nigerian prince. these were documents and pieces of email that were very specifically tailored using intelligence to gain the attention and the trust of the recipients to encourage them to click a link where upon this malwear would enter their system and it's very pornts because it's also very characteristic of this particular brand of malware which has attacked the joint chiefs of staff civilian email system in august, the year before. that's how i first began to know about them. so there is actually a long lineage and a lot of intelligence about what this stuff is as it was discovered in that environment on d.n.c. servers in the spring of 2016. you get to the public revelation of that in the summer of 2016 by

a private cybersecurity company that said there's been two different intruders in the d.n.c. system and we are going to lay out the forensic case for who they are. there is zero controversy about this. for all of us that have been following these actors, we recognize them immediately. then you get to this move by the russian government to take this exfiltrated data, release it to wikileaks, a third party, and begin to use that as a means to influence the election. on the other side, you have use of american social media platforms to create and disseminate this information. so on one hand, you have theft of actual information, which is against international norms and laws. on the other hand, you have the creation of fake identities, fake personas on u.s. social media platforms in order to create confusion and

isinformation and also amplify the pro-kremlin agenda. that's 2016. host: what about -- before you go on to what it's looking like for 2018, what about state election systems and the report of attempts to hack into those systems? guest: that's a good point. when we talk about the d.n.c. stuff and also the social media stuff, we can talk about that in terms of things that actually had some sort of effect. information was stolen. it was publicly released. mission objective achieved. personas were created. they did push false information on social media platforms. when we talk about attempts by russian actors to infiltrate voting rolls, that's something that d.h.s. has acknowledged for nonts now and they probably did succeed in accessing voter rolls and possibly stealing information. there is yet to be any outcome

we can trace to that. e haven't seen any use of data that might have been gleaned from state voter rolls in practice yet. there is consensus from d.h.s. and other members of the intelligence community that russian actors did attempt to and in some cases gain access to state voting rolls. it's different from voting machines. this is where this whole question of how do you hack an election comes into play. voting machines, even those that are electronic, are not connected to the internet. they are vulnerable if you have physical access to them, if you are able to break into the warehouse where they are kept, you can easily disrupt the way they work. but because they're not connected to the internet, it's difficult to imagine that agents located within russia could have somehow manipulated the behavior of those specific voting

machines. that's not to say that there shouldn't be some public concern about making these systems more secure and really evaluating whether or not they could be. it's also not to say that we shouldn't have more investigation into the possibility that maybe, however unlikely, there was some physical contact with these machines. there is no evidence to suggest that at this point. host: democrats are pushing for more money to guard elections, trying to attach a bipartisan bill to authorize $386 million in federal grants to improve state election systems. what are your comments this morning about how russia used technology to interfere and the threat that they could do it the next time around? democrats, 202-748-8000. republicans, 202-748-8001. independents, 202-748-8002. so patrick tucker, what are people concerned about for the midterm elections? guest: there is a lot of insecurity about personal

information that might be voter databases that are under state control. so helping different states because it's really a state responsibility to better guard that information, to better understand the moment that it's infiltrated, if there is a breach, as opposed to after action reporting. that's a big concern. physical security, voting machines is something folks are looking at. there is this side question of misinformation that's amplified on social media and other online platforms to create sort of like a cognitive effect, to change people's opinion. the government has a clear mandate to try and tackle, security at voting rolls, it's clearly within state government's jobs to secure and they can rely on d.h.s. which they might want to do, to better understand their security and environment as it relates to that voting data, the personal

data related to voters. cognitive warfare is this different thing. we don't have hard legislation that says exactly how we are supposed to tackle this. but there is a tremendous amount of urgency. if you watch testimony on capitol hill between the senate armed services, senate intelligence committee and other lawmakers, and you watch them talk to intelligence heads, you see a lot of urgency for there to be a policy and intelligence heads will look back at them and they'll say i am sorry, what we do is provide intelligence mostly to you. so the job of creating policy falls to you and we can provide you with advice on how to do that but don't look to us to create change absent a policy. host: john in georgia, republican. hi, john. guest: good morning. host: good morning. one proven state

where the machines were actually hacked and the votes were changed? does your organization -- and i don't know if you are an independent on nonprofit, but i would like to know if you can tell me -- host: we heard the question, john. guest: no, we don't have evidence that physical voting machines in any state or jurisdiction were hacked to change the actual results from that machine. that's not something that has happened. we are a for-profit organization, a news website. having said that, like i said, you do have security concerns around those machines. a lot of different folks have shown -- security professionals have demonstrated how easy it is to hack these machines if you have physical access. the physical access thing

remains key, but that's still something that we rely on states to do, like actually physically secure these things. we also rely on them to do after-action investigation and really certify that incidents haven't happened. just because there hasn't been evidence to suggest it has happened doesn't mean an investigation would be out of the ordinary or would be incorrect. it seems like something you would want to do especially as you gear up to 2018 as you prepare to advance the left of security, which i think we can agree it is the job of state election boards and the department of homeland security to actually do. host: rachel in tennessee, independent. guest: i wanted to comment, we have 100% proof that the primary was rigged against bernie sanders, but we still do not have proof of so-called russian meddling. what i have seen as a citizen that's disturbing is this sort of attack under the guise of

somehow foreign adversaries promoting all kinds of groups, whether it be environmental groups, black lives matter, jill stein, any anti-war groups, and what i am seeing is it's being used to scare the public that we are under attack when the discontent is due to our own government's policies and we need to fix ourselves instead of scapegoating a nonexistent foreign adversary. guest: you are under attack. this country is under attack. i don't know how to put that any more plainly. go and watch the heads of the .b.i., the director of intelligence, michael rogers, head of the n.s.a. and watch the new head of the n.s.a. go to the

hill who will testify and say we anticipate continued activity from adversarial states to create destabilization and spread misinformation. you don't have to believe me. you should believe department heads who were appointed by republican and democratic administrations. you shouldn't necessarily be scared about it, but i think creating awareness is part of my job in the media, part of the job of intelligence heads when they testify on this and part of the job of lawmakers. let's not be ignorant about it. the thing we should keep in mind about this activity is that vladimir putin is not a republican or a democrat. there was activity aimed to create and foment discord as it related to people across the political spectrum. this is very much true. you can go to facebook, you can go to twitter. you might have received a notice like this from twitter if you

accidentally, unwittingly spread or participated in the spread of false information from russian-controlled entities operating out of st. petersburg. facebook sent notices to folks saying you might have shared content or seen content that was from a foreign adversarial source. twitter has basically alerted folks, you may have at some point interacted with an account that was operated under a false persona that was out of st. petersburg. that's the social media companies, very reluctantly, i might add, admitting a huge problem that affected the way they delivered content to their users around the world. they weren't excited to do this. the question of whether or not you deserve to be informed, i think, yes, you do deserve to be informed about an active campaign targeting the united states that is ongoing.

i understand you may disagree, but it's still my job. host: what are the social media companies doing, facebook, twitter, about the next election? what policies have they put in place, and what are they hoping the government doesn't make them do? guest: so they've been responding to a lot of pressure, public pressure and some lawmaker pressure, senator warner from virginia has a bill to make political content on social media, particularly facebook, work more like political advertising on tv, different levels of scrutiny you can apply to it. facebook has been a little bit better on this, i would have to say. they began very late but did eventually inform users that had accidentally, again, accidentally -- the user is i think rather blameless, but they did take the step of informing

users who accidentally shared, spread or interacted with misinformation from a kremlin sponsored source and they informed them about the specific content and that's key. for 2018 they have taken the step involving the a.p. in sort of vetting information that comes across the site in terms of sort of -- the story didn't take off and go viral. they've taken the step of de-emphasizing the news and story you see close to the top of your feed as you go on to facebook, so now you are more likely to see stuff shared by friends and family. this has not been great for them in terms of time on site and expandsing the user -- expanding the user base. they have a team that is looking at this because it is a big problem for them. you are going to see some friction with lawmakers about whether or not they're doing enough and i think you'll see

friction with users. twitter, i think, you can say is more politely managed. it's a much smaller group of people that watch this stuff. they've taken the step, again late, of informing users specifically whether or not they interacted with this content. but they haven't taken a ton of additional steps except for very recently purging accounts that they knew to be primarily just software animated accounts that were linked to the russian government. again, why it takes until 2018 to do that is a question a lot of people will be asking going forward. host: james in virginia beach, democrat. guest: please listen for a minute. what you are saying is not true. you are going on trump's talking points. the general public will understand. the cable box is not hooked up to the internet. ou do not run the box. the company can control that.

it is a wireless modem in it. you have to go to the software companies and hardware companies in china and russia that makes these. they can be manipulated. that's why the voting machines -- they can be hacked. during the tabulation of these votes, this is how russia knew what counted and what state. all you have to do is go into milwaukee county, 50,000 votes that was bought. hillary clinton -- what you are saying is not true. also, you cannot say absolute that there was no voting change. you do not know that because there is no paper trail to prove that. am i right or wrong, sir? thank you. guest: i am actually not saying that i know with absolute certainty there was no changing of votes. there was no evidence. i think greater scrutiny on this is in the interest of the

country. i agree, i cover insecurities in software and hardware all day, and you are right, there's a ton. it's not to say there is a lot of evidence to suggest changing of actual votes. but just because you haven't seen evidence doesn't mean it doesn't exist. if that's your point, i think i agree. but you also get a sense from the passion on both sides of this that this was an effective campaign in order to politicize something that should not be political. the attack of the country. it's a new form of attack. it doesn't rise to the level of violent warfare but it's not like peace either. this is an actual activity that remains ongoing and it has this effect of creating a very politicized state. a lot of extreme feelings on both sides and it separates people from a consensus of facts. -- you an do that, then are a russian information officer, you've had a great day. let's all understand that the central thing we should be

talking about is did this happen? yes. is it ongoing? yes. what do we do about it? host: from texas, a republican. guest: good morning. great topic. i think nobody should interfere in anybody's elections worldwide. anything we can do to protect ours is great. but you hear all these stories that america spends our taxpayer dollars to interfere in elections like in israel and other countries like that. you can't call the goose one thing and not do it yourself. host: let's take your point. patrick tucker. guest: right, so i think that what about doesn't work for me as a way to understand my job creating news content for the public and not a way that i think of myself as a citizen and what i want for election security. i take your point that at various points in united states history, there is evidence to suggest that this country's foreign policy was not helpful or in line with our stated

ideals of creating a more democratic world. i feel like though we have to move that to a side discussion because it's used to kind of -- it's a useful means of distracting ourselves from the problem at hand and our civic duty to defend ourselves from aggressive activity from a hostile foreign agent. we are not the moral equivalent of vladimir putin. this country is not. to the extent that in the arab spring instance, for example, we tried to further democratic goals perhaps by undermining certain autocratic regimes, you can have an after-action report to look at whether or not the planning that went into that or lack of planning was the best way to do that. but the goal was furthering the democratic process in creating availability and opportunity for people around the world to participate in democratic elections. that's different from what vladimir putin is trying to do.

he is trying to first distance ourselves from our allies, create discontinuity in the united states, create discord, undermine a common sense of civic purpose and the reason for that, it's multifaceted but largely it has to do with the fact he looks better if counter to that, the united states and the west looks terrible in contrast. so this is very much i think part of the goal for this. we are not the moral equivalent. host: chris in tennessee, independent. guest: i think russia has probably been interfering in our election since the revolution. as far as the hacking into the d.n.c. computers and all that stuff, i think that if i had to make an educated guess, i think it was probably the inside job from the packs standi boys and until the f.b.i. seizes those

computers, i don't think you are ever going to get to the bottom of that one, and i don't think the f.b.i. wanted to seize the computers because they probably knew the answer already. host: patrick tucker, what do we know about how these russian intelligence services were able to put this -- you explained a emails looked like they had specific information. who clicked on them? guest: we are getting some transparency into a variety of different people in the d.n.c. that clicked on them. we understand the signature because it was employed against other u.s. targets, joint chiefs of staff's ability, nonchassfide email, state department, colin powell, john mccain. host: they all clicked on -- guest: exact same group targeted all of those different targets. it is a nonpartisan group.

this question of whether or not the -- there's something fundamentally flawed about this investigation or the conclusions of the intelligence community because the f.b.i. did not physically examine the servers at the d.n.c. is to me completely irrelevant. since crowd strike's initial public reporting, the office of the director of national intelligence has put out more evidence and recently subpoenaed the investigatories offices released more information. we can sense this grow stronger all of the time and it's somewhat distant from the question of whether or not the f.b.i. had to physically examine the servers in order to understand clearly the pedigree, if you will, of the actual messages that were sent to the d.n.c. and were clicked on and spread within the d.n.c. and by john podesta. the trail, it's very

transparent. it's not something that will manifestly change when you actually physically examine the servers. more importantly, that initial piece of evidence has since been corroborated over and over again by new pieces of evidence that have since been made public, bolstered by human intelligence, real interviews, that's coming out at this point not just in statements and reports from the intelligence community but actual indictment. that's how strong this stuff is. now the discussion amongst the intelligence community is how much of the tactics, procedures, they can reveal in indictments in order to get indictment. that's how secure they are in this. when you see every intelligence head chief, including those appointed by donald trump, speak with one mind on this, with complete anonymity, that has to be compelling. ost: gary is watching, a

republican. o ahead, gary. sorry, saul, houston, texas, republican. guest: hi, i am actually independent. i just wanted to bring up what another caller actually brought up a few calls ago, about the fact that the united states has been caught red-handed so many times interfering with -- excuse me, with elections. now, i understand we need to preserve our own democratic process and everything else. i highly am for that, but at the same time you can't dismiss the fact that so many examples of us in the past doing it. i understand with the arab spring, trying to bring democracy to the people, but that's none of our business. it hasn't been our business. when anyone interferes with us, it's a thing of they're trying to destroy our democracy. but when we do it, we are just trying to help. host: you said we are not the

moral equivalent of russia and vladimir putin. why are lawmakers saying about what russia did in the 2016 election, how do they classify it? there's always this discussion. it's not war, it's not peace either. so when is an attack seen as war? guest: this is a very good question. i also think to clarify, we might be the moral equivalent of russia, not the equivalent of putin. so the big problem that i think a lot of folks -- that lawmakers are having is trying to understand what their role is going forward in terms of fighting disinformation and i take the caller's point. there are lots of instances in history where suggesting the united states didn't live up to its ideals. for lawmakers they're charged with protecting u.s. elections

going forward. so in terms of whether or not this rises to the level of war, we have approached some consensus from intelligence chiefs about what should be done. what they suggest is a whole of government response, and that means that we need to, number one, call out this behavior as unacceptable. that's step one, to acknowledge that it happened, not hide in the sand from it, to say this is what occurred and it is unacceptable and invoke a whole of government response that might include some sort of counterhack or things like this, might include economic pressure, diplomatic pressure. this is how you get the obama era sanctions that they put in place in 2016 which the trump administration has so far refused to enforce, much to the mystery and chagrin of bipartisan lawmakers and to the extent that they can actually express this under testimony, they can reveal this, they think

to the confusion of the intelligence heads. in terms of what they feel like is our job as a response, there is a lot of crosstalk about this. there needs to be a coherent policy that's something that the entire government can get behind but you need economic pressure, diplomatic pressure and you need to show you have technical capabilities to respond to attacks or events like that in the question of how to regulate social media networks, that would possibly fall under regulatory purview, but that is somebody with later. host: for viewers want to try to follow along as this story continues to develop, go to defenseone.com, you can follow after turner there, also on twitter @defenseone.

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