values, rather than where it appeared today where he sided with mr. putin over his own intelligence community -- committee. thank you very much senator warner and senator rubio. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2017] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org]

announcer: next, a look at the way russia is seeking to increase its influence in the democratic world. the panel includes a former ukrainian finance minister. >> we are going to get started. we had a wonderful session with sen. warner: are in my name is john hurts. i run the center at the atlantic council. we are the ones that put event.r today's senators warner and rubio gave you a very strong perspective of the problems defined from washington. i will take a broader international scope. we have a panel. you have i.s. in front of the year. we have natalie to rescue. i am going to ask eileen who is a cyber-esque for -- cyber expert to frame the problem for the -- from the global perspective. eileen: i want to join in thanking the atlantic council

and the transatlantic commission on election integrity for the exquisite timing. i will say it is surreal. it is like we are all participating in some kind of a spoof that should be really unbelievable and yet it is very real. following from the panel from the senators, we heard some of this is a moment of truth for democracy at large. foreign actors are hacking our democracy. undermining confidence in the integrity of outcomes. undermining confidence in the feasibility of adhering to democratic values and protecting our society. and the big game is actually to win the narrative that democratic governance is not really feasible. -- hard part, i would say one of the hard parts is this conversation is so unwieldy. even for those of us who spend our days thinking about this we areely absorbed,

fielding input from all over the place on lots of different realms. to get your hands around the topic and it is hard to break free with the public. what i like to do is try to break it down. do some diagnostics. develop a simple frame of understanding that hopefully can help yield some actionable solution. i sort of see this problem is breaking into three big buckets. the first of which is hacking of machines, infrastructure, data. a traditional cyber security type problem. ae second big bucket and vector of attack is the hack of discourse. undermining the integrity of the information echoes system. and undermining the quality of discourse necessary to sustain democracy. is a hack onket

our confidence. in democratic governance itself. the feasibility of adhering to our values and protecting ourselves. these categories bleed into each other as we will see. it is also useful to tease them apart. on the hacking of machine front, on the one hand, it is traditional sad -- cyber security issue. on the other hand, as a senator said, it is shocking how vulnerable we are in this regard. we have systemic societywide digital insecurity, and it is showing up in our critical election infrastructure. this problem we can see but solving it is going to take a massive amount of political will. we brought up the hack of the vote. actually, it was not the hack of a vote. it was hacking of infrastructure. hacking into the machine without

hacking the vote. it showed the power to infiltrate. that was almost the goal. similarly, the hack of john podesta's emails. what is interesting about that case is it shows how hacking of believesinformation into hacking of discourse and disruption of the inner -- of the information ecosystem. i would basically say the traditional media failed us in this regard and they themselves were somewhat packed -- hacked by becoming unwitting participants in this information operation by getting fooled into thinking they had to report on every recipe in john podesta's emails as though it was news. they too got manipulated. that is how these categories lead into each other. into each other. multi part. i would say this may be the

category that is hardest to get our heads around a democracy because information and discourse, it is supposed to be the lifeblood of democracy. free expression. access to information. beinginformation is weaponize to against us. and we were caught flat-footed in defending ourselves. all of us. our cyber security experts, national security experts. subject ofough the security, cyber security, is morphing before our eyes. i will just mention a few parts to the disinformation info op approach of the russians. obviously, fabrication of personas, which mixed in with authentic organic civic discourse, and i will note that fabrication, the content of it was not illegal and not even technically false. but it was misleading and

manipulative. also, you have got inauthentic mechanisms. amplification tools. box. -- bots. it is not about the content, but the mechanisms of manipulation. heard is the micro-targeting tools. exquisite targeting of voters where it mattered. very potent. you put those things together and it ends up changing the discourse around the elections. the third big bucket i will say, a couple of words about. hardest to believe. that it is possible. that our confidence in democratic governance is really being undermined. ,he core belief that our values our openness, are part of our security is being hacked.

i am going to mention two things that is somewhat challenging. obviously, it already came up. the hack of the rhetoric of the american president where the media is being called fake news. to be theupposed watchdog and democracy and is being targeted as an enemy. our allies, our transatlantic alliances, g7, nato, all being criticized, undermined. isis sort of as though this happening before our eyes. his rhetoric is being hacked. raise another very challenging point in light of our relationship with our european partners and the wonderful conversation we had earlier at lunch. i have to admit there is a part of me, as an american, that has the confidence of some european company -- of european countries have been hacked in the sense

that the approach to combating disinformation belies a loss of confidence in our ability to adhere to democratic values. of an effort kind to regulate content in the way authoritarian governments might. i see it somewhat as a 20th century concept being applied to a 20th century solution. i don't think that is the way to go. onhink the focus should be the mechanisms of manipulations. get in think we want to the business of regulating content in an expansive way. as authoritarian governments do. every line, hack in category. we have had machines, campaigns, thec discourse, the media, rhetoric of our president, and the confidence of democratic governments. need to rollally up our sleeves and get to work on this. i hope the rest of our conversation gets to solutions. he raised many interesting

points. i want everyone in the panel to have a chance to speak. eileen did a wonderful job in framing these and large concerts. how do you see russian efforts in britain? >> sure. the most specific area of interest of russian involvement in britain has been around brexit. i think i agree with what was thaton the previous panel the objectives in russia getting involved in the brexit referendum may not necessarily be to influence the outcome of the election. but to sell massive amounts of discord. whichever way the referendum had gone, you may have seen continued involvement around undermine confidence in the result. making people believe the result had been stolen. i think their interest is in creating division. undermining people's confidence in public institutions and the rule of law in mainstream media. and leaving people confused.

-- itvolvement in brexit could be the same with russia's involvement in america. i feel we are at a moment like in the wizard of oz when the park -- when the curtain is pulled back and you see the great powerful man is just a small man behind the curtain. we recognize there is a capability of foreign powers to target those -- voters with the disinformation or content in our country without people realizing or seeing or understanding what was going on. and at the same time, i think this is certainly the consequence of the story about the data breach or a facebook, is people have noticed there has been -- we freely give away enormous amount of data by .urselves they land in the hands of big tech companies. they take more than we know and they can't keep it safe. it gets up in the hands of bad actors.

we never would have given our consent if we knew our data would end up there. we have this moment where we have stumbled into this new reality and we are trying to cope with it and understand what is going on. i think specifically in the u.k., we have seen the russian interference follow a similar pattern to what you are familiar with in the united states. there is much more limited facebook advertising that we know of. similarlydvertising to what was agreed with -- to what was in america. this is the tip of the iceberg. the issue is about how fake accounts can be used to distribute content, targeting people. whether they could have been collusion into that as well. from a marcus put a view, it is a form of missile and to allow large-scale use of fake accounts on your platforms.

you know most of the problems on your platform are caused by fake accounts. it is not wrong for us to say to the tech companies in the way we pay for a bank -- of a bank has suspicions about one -- about money laundering, it is its responsibilities to check out what is going on. haveech companies don't any obligations at all to investigate that unless someone comes to them with a complaint. i think that is run. i think i have the capabilities. the facebook ad checking team should have spotted ads running political campaigns. and they didn't. they did not at the time. they didn't spot it for a year afterwards. they only spotted it when they were begrudgingly asked her to do it. finally, they agreed to do it. they have not conducted a wide possibility of russian involvement in politics and other countries being run through their platforms in other ways.

we should not underestimate the power of the official russian state news agencies pumping propaganda out. there was a study done in the u.k. during the breast -- during the brexit referendum suggesting if you looked at the poisoning in salisbury, if you went on to facebook and you saw it and you search for stories about the poisoning, you would probably get two most popular bbc reports on it. after that, in the top 10, most of the other search returns would have been from rt or sputnik. what they are doing as they are amplifying the russian version of the story to sow confusion of doubt. they don't have to convince you that russia's argument is correct. they just have to pose enough questions that the british

government can answer to make you disbelieve what the mainstream media is telling you. we have to recognize that for the russians, there is a multilayered approach to disinformation, causing pout doubt, and back to the brexit referendum. what were they talking about? it's a similar pattern to what you saw in america, as well. it is aggressive wedge issues on sensitive subjects like the immigration, like race relations being used, both i think to encourage people to support in particular side, but also, attempting to suppress voters. we need to lay out what is going on, so that people are aware. and i think that where the tech companies do have a responsibility, wherever they see wrongdoing happening, they should act to stop it. they should intervene proactively, and i think that they are developing tools themselves to do that. when we are concerned about in

europe is certainly, the most harmful forms of content and disinformation, this is a tactic, and this is getting more sophisticated. the problem will get worse. the help of to need the tech companies to intervene here. and the question we are considering in europe here now, want intervene, what sort of liability should there be for failing to act? that is that discussion we are having in europe. thank you. you have also raised a couple of important things that we will come back to. but first command want to give natalie a chance to talk about the situation in ukraine. natalie: so, i would step back from this conversation and say that at some point in the not too recent past, the kremlin identified that the liberal international order, established post world war ii, was a direct threat to their existence, and the system they would like to maintain. all of this is about destroying that liberal international order

in every form it takes, most importantly, our democracy's the elections and values. ukraine is a critical element of that, because ukraine is an example of the success that that liberal international order, those values have over the minds of people who are free. people in ukraine have shown their desire over 25 years to live by those values, and to live by those norms, those responsibilities. for that reason, amongst others, the kremlin has intervened in ukraine's free choice from day one, in its politics and elections. and the more clear it became over the past 25 years, that the ukrainian people were yearning for european and western values, but willing to fight and die to obtain those values that civilizational choice, it became more important to intervene. it started simply by making sure that political forces represented russian interests, first in kiev, perhaps in the

south, maybe in the east. then in the security services, maybe in the military. often it was financed by corruption until my government stepped in 2014 and ended the use of intermediaries in gas trade, the russians enabled billions of dollars in the gas trade, to go through intermediaries and finance further, their interests in ukrainian politics. that largess is what helped their political interests. in 2004, the orange revolution, their innuance wasfluence was challenged by a candidate who embodied a western vision, and russia provided political consultants, hundreds of millions of dollars, poisoned the candidate ultimately, and this was a foreshadowing, ice year, of what we now here is happening, unfortunately much -- foreshadowing, i fear, of what is happening unfortunately much , too often, whether it be in the uk or elsewhere, and it accomplished their strategy for the moment. and they created fear.

they showed that they could control individuals and ideas. from 2004 through 2014, all tools were used. gas trade, fake news, creating dissonance between the different parts of the society, as a ukraine continue to liberate the social order. and ukraine, almost entering association agreement with the eu. it was russia leashing all of the tools it had at that time to stop ukraine from moving forward. they still failed commit with the revolution of dignity. when the ukrainian people insisted on leaving that open, even a $15 billion offered bribe was not enough to stop ukraine moving forward with its trade agreement and the association agreement. so russia moved to other tools and techniques. illegal annexation and occupation of crimea. the war in the east that's led to tens of thousands of lives being lost, 2 million internally displaced people in europe.

60 political prisoners, loss of an indigenous homeland for the crimean qatar's, and 40 years tomorrow, the loss of some 300 civilians on the shooting down .f mh-17 the anniversary is tomorrow. innocent civilians. massive use of disinformation, and all along, the bulk of the international community has looked at the situation in ukraine as being a unique situation, based on ukraine and russia's historical closeness. yet, -- i guess my point is, it has nothing to do with that. that may be an element why it's so strong and physical geography helps, but this is an important testing ground for russia in its attempts throughout the liberal international order. i think the actions of russia in the upcoming elections for president and autumn elections for parliament in ukraine need

to be watched carefully. i am proud that the commission on -- the transatlantic commission on election integrity would be working with the specific task force to identify in real-time, the things that are occurring in these elections, so that we can try to stop them, try to identify them for the population, so that perhaps their vote will not be removed from their hands. because of this is not about ukraine or about russian-ukrainian relations. aggressively prepare for the roll up, i think we can expect massive use of disinformation in ukraine, social media, cyber attacks to create disruption and chaos. kinetic operations of all kinds. ratcheting up and down the war, of using the war to create more pain and more economic dissonance. for example, recently, the militaryf the russian in the sea, which are locked many ships from entering eastern

blocked many hav ships from entering ukraine. the assassinations that have occurred in ukraine will continue to be a tool. bottom line is, destabilize ukraine and promote a more malleable leadership. ignoring these examples outside the united states creates grave consequences. therefore, i think they have to be used instead as lessons to be learned from. host: natalie, thank you, that was wonderful. i would like particularly thank you for bringing up the international liberal order. while eileen did not mention it, in a sense, your discussion of theing, was all about russians pulling at the vulnerabilities of the international liberal order. some very smart people have written that ultimately, advanced, civilized society depends on something called trust. everyone knows to depend upon the rule of law, but trust is

-- law is required in the extreme instance, but trust is required for evidence activity. and what the kremlin has been doing very effectively is cutting at the trust of the international liberal order. so i would like you to comment on that, eileen. mean: i completely agree, and i am so glad that natalie's the debt, because we all should be best natalie said it, we should be underscoring that. that is the big game. it is the erosion of confidence in the post world war ii liberal democratic order. and i like to focus on this concept of algorithms of democracy. you know, sometimes, we use the term to point to the responsibility and duty of the private sector, which is a really important part of this conversation, but it also gets to the possibility of democratic governments, that we are able to protect freedoms, securities and democratic processes all under the rule of law.

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

liberty and security, and we should turn to it. it is peculiarly well-suited for our globalized, digitized ecosystem and that should be our starting place. host: ok, thank you. damian, you raised a couple of things which i will come back to in a little bit. but right now, i want to think about one point which plays off of what natalie said and buttressed by eileen. natalie's point was that what we have seen russia do in ukraine , is not only about, or principally about ukraine but about the community of democracies. this is something that was not understood until 2014 in europe. would you say it's understood today in britain? to some extent, i think it depends which countries you look at. i think, in the ukraine, it would be. you go back to the russian invasion of the ukraine, you had right,ians on the

politicians like nigel farage, saying quite exited very things. and during the brexit debate as well, saying that the eu had provoked russia into doing this. saying that it was russia's right to stop the eu's encroachment. funnily enough, the sort of people that were saying those things, are the sort of people now who have much closer links .o russia so i think that there is this undercurrent, this sympathy with national politics that some politicians have. and the allies they seek across europe, are sympathetic to that as well. we're seeing the most extraordinary wave of political change across europe at the moment. and i think what to me as we -- what for me, as we embark on this inquiry as a committee, which is really important to ask , is to understand that the problems we think are new here,

a 2016 from them are a lot longer established in the baltic states, in the former soviet republics, in the front line countries in eastern europe, where they have been dealing with this problem for many years. it was interesting, the people in spain have been analyzing the catalan referendum and there has been evidence of a russian involvement in the interference their. they believe that russia is sporting the capability by having agencies in venezuela, focusing back on spain. there are obviously concerns about whether they could be directed towards mexico, and to the mexican community in america as well. so i think there is a growing understanding of a widespread nature of the problem. but beyond the sort of countries like ukraine, i think that knowledge has been limited. host: the atlantic council has been leading the charge against kremlin revisionism for four years. and this is not just to give us a plug, but i want to pick up on the points you just made.

talking about this problem, talking about kremlin disinformation, we consider ed spain to be largely hostile territory, until catalonia. that opened a window for us that we then jumped through. we did an event in madrid, which was overseen by the ambassador. greecee same was true of , and now, we have seen reports that the greeks have declared persona nongrata. a couple of russian diplomats who were playing fast and those with the orthodox religion and politics. so now greece is opening itself up to this. would you say this phenomena of opening up to understanding is growing in europe? damien: i think it is growing. but a think in a sense, in some countries, you are fighting against a quite entrenched position that the russians helped develop and maintain, . the sympathy toward them and their political aspirations. russia hates the multilateral world, the idea of a continental

europe being united in a single and, and able to rebut withstand russian pressure or whatever it is. if you can unpick that and make countries doubt the value of our alliance, and come to their own terms in agreement with russia, independent of the eu, that is the established narrative they have. to undermine public confidence in the institutions that we post war world. and to say that those institutions are responsible for their unhappiness, and maybe even see russia as a friendly force. host: thank you. natalie, you offered a really interesting insight, which i think stems from the fact that you are both american and ukrainian. you talked about moscow having to use all of its tools to prevent ukraine from making the choice any free people would make, to embrace the values of the west.

i think that was spot-on, but not well understood here. here's my question. i was working on the post soviet space 20 plus years ago, right? when we thought we could have a good relationship with russia. and russian policy 20 years ago, 25 years ago was not bad in most areas, and the question that struck some of us at the time was, why does russia have no soft power in its neighborhood? in other words, why did it have the option of pulling ukraine or georgia or armenia to itself by the power of attraction? your thoughts, and why therefore they had to move towards the hard power option? natalie: ok. i think that the way the kremlin

has managed post soviet economic history, has not provided for people to have hope in the future, in terms of their economic wherewithal. you don't see the kind of growth in the russian economy but i think the russian people would like and deserve. this related not have the same types of freedoms that i think the russian people got a taste of and it was taken away, the yearly gala a now of most ngos, the restrictions on the freedom of media. enjoyingainly aren't -- as an example of free travel, -free travel, which in the ukraine and are entering in the european union, because they met several -- over 400 conditions to get that free travel. so i think that when you look at theg ukrainians who were at

core of the revolution, they were being given a choice whether or not to push at resident yanukovych, to continue down the path of the eu. those values, those opportunities, or they could look north to what was happening in russia, and they're calling their generation didn't have those opportunities. i think russia can't offer that with the current economic structure that the kremlin has put in place. i don't think that it was an absolute that that had to happen. but i do believe that is a system that's currently in place, and does not offer a future. it is not just an issue of the people of russia, it is also for the government of russia. they cannot outspend the united states on military. the soviet union thought they could and failed. senator warner mentioned our budget, versus their budget on the military. if you can't win with military spending, and you cannot win with soft power, your ideas,

there are no longer going around the world selling marxist ideology. they are not able to sell what they have at home, so they need to protect it from being infiltrated by those ideas and the strength of those systems. host: thank you. ?ileen eileen: i feel like this conversation points to how confusing the threat of disinformation is our framework of understanding this. you started by talking about hard power versus soft power. and that they lack the ability to attract through soft power. well, disinformation isn't attracting to them, but it is the means through which we used to think of soft power working, which is attraction to ideas and values. and so i don't know if people have heard about the work done by chris walker on sharp power. we need a different framework

understanding how disinformation works. binary framing. host: damien, in your initial statement, you spoke about the problem of social media stepping up to its responsibilities. the can be done by transatlantic group to encourage social media to step up? that having some sort of common charter or set of principles that we would ask the tech companies to work on, but i think the tech companies already said they're going to bring in transparency everywhere. i can understand where that could be done at a local level. it cannot be done in some local levels, because in some countries, there might your

resume or somebody might want anonymity, speaking out against an oppressive regime. at least, to know -- a community page that talks about issues where you live, is actually being run by someone in your country and not by somebody overseas. i think there is a question as well about political advertising. during the regulated period of the election, there is a short period, in the final three or should be, where you a registered organization to run political advertising during .hat period of time so, there is that full transparency about who you are, what message you are running, and that is something we should look at. i think we should also look at the ethics of individuals being sold by facebook. some of these campaign groups run ads without their consent or knowledge. i think it's one thing to target

with a message you know who they are, and you might send them a piece of dark mail. but to actually get on facebook and say, i have a group of people who are my supporters, and a what you to find me another group of people like them, or, i have a group of people worried about immigration, find me another group of people worried about immigration. i think we should really question the ethics of some of these techniques, and i think that that is a dialogue we need to have with the tech companies. there is a debate in the united kingdom at the moment, and in germany in particular, that if companies do not stop putting a legal content, they should have some sort of liability for that. i think it's really interesting in germany. the german government has said, you will take down messages that hate speech laws, and if you don't, you, the tech company, will face massive fines. -- i think there are

about one in six fact checkers who work for facebook, are currently working in germany. investcompanies do not on this, given the amount of money they make, invest money in actually monitoring what goes on -- and engagehen their own committee guidelines. host: natalie? natalie: i am looking to the experts on what the solutions are for social media, but i worry about it at the same time. i've seen ukrainian activists on facebook are continually removed by facebook when they do anything that is anti-russia. there has been a large campaign as you can imagine, during the world cup, to remind everyone about political prisoners, or the number of people who have as youring the war, and can imagine, each one of them has been routinely taken off. so i worry about how we leave these companies to their own judicious sense of what's right

and wrong and what that means for freedom of speech. i know we need a solution, because i don't like the problem either, but i am still not confident that leaving it in their hands and the person who it on facebook, just happens to be of russian heritage -- that is another issue -- but it is a question that i think we will be talking about how much speech should be free. i am worried about who we let make that decision. host: you anticipated, and i was going to say, because what we've seen is that in this part of the disinformation war, the russians have been proactive and effective. in germany, the netherlands and more broadly, internationally, they had been quick to bring charges of anti-russian sentiment to shut down legitimate pages, who may not be , and this is part of the problem that we need to get our hands around.

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

damien: i think there are two important categories within that. one is, there was some disinformation, which was harmful and clearly lies, for example, that it's a good story. someone could have committed a criminal act on the basis of false information. that is an example of content that could be considered harmful to riyadh there was another debate around hyper partisan messaging, which is based on people who have different views are interpretations. to me, that is less about regulating and transparency. that is a real person sending it or someone else? is it a legitimate act? you have this category of very campaigns or misinformation, and identify those people who are doing it. it is quite clear that it is malicious material.

the self policing works in the larger private sector already, where the government set out frameworks for the companies to abide in. and if they fail to do that, they have sanctions apply to them. and there is an incentive for them to do that. to keep it within the guidelines. host: damian, in your initial comments, you spoke about in effect the effectiveness of official russian media, in pushing out memes that become a major part of the public discussion. your sense as to how this issue might be resolved, or at least managed? damien: yeah, this is difficult, because there are not hiding the fact that they are doing it. there are still legitimate news organizations to riyadh i do think sometimes, with rt in particular, that we should look -- there are still legitimate news organizations. i think sometimes, with rt in

particular, we should look at whether there operating in terms of their broadcasting license, in terms of partiality and balance. but that is about a necessity for other news organizations and legitimate political organizations to engage through social media, as well. to make it harder for those companies to dominate the space in facebook like the currently do. i think as senator warner said, at least half of americans get their news on facebook t. it was said in the referendum that 7 out of 10 people who hadn't decided how to vote got their news through facebook. again, for me, this is where i think the tech companies have responsibility towards the way contempt is shared on their platform. i again for me, this is i think tech companies have some sense of social responsibility on content shared on their platform. it is not a totally organic space, where you think the news is just something that somebody

posted, it is news that is being targeted at you. so i think they have some responsibility for that. natalie: i can add that three years ago, when i was up on the hell talking about issues with ukraine, more than half of the congressional representatives did not know that "r.t." represented "russia today." i now, that may have changed, but i can tell you a couple of years ago, people were not aware that it was a russian official broadcast network. we need to educate people on that. they'reeed to know what watching, and at the same time, we need to educate our own media when they are sourcing information from those networks, to source it and clearly say what they're doing. because that is how it gets into the algorithm on facebook. fivemes through 3, 4 or different restatements of the news originally taken from them. so i think part of it has to be with following that track, making everyone aware of what

that track is. >> i want to add, at an think any serious person thinks that the private sector has no responsibility. i actually do think the private sector has look in up to their responsibility, and i admit that they were not on it, just like nobody else was on it. but i think that just as so we do not want government to be arbiters of truth in a democracy, we don't want the private sector to. tot we want them to do is focus on the manipulation of their platform, fabricated personas that are part of a they . are embracing this concept of quality, the quality of discourse necessary to sustain democracy. the quality of discourse on their platforms. the quality of information that's shared. it is a subtle difference. but the way i see it, it is not about the content, it is about the manipulation of the whole

system. >> >> if you look at the united kingdom, the only area of in thee with videos united kingdom, was an area in where the news report was identified, rather than the film itself. the challenge then for the british government will be to say okay, if somebody can do this, you can too. this is an fake news or hyper russian content, it is actually information that is inciting people to commit offenses. violence. so the area of responsibility there is hard, for them to do targeting of that sort of content to riyadh host: that's a fair point. righthink you make the distinction, and settlement violence is one kind of category. -- incitement to violence is one kind 06 category.

disinformation is a channel that democracies have faced for... >> i agree with that. the company's responsibility -- there is another category. , the citizensthem come of the tools to know whether this is true or not. but the jihad in recruitment videos, they are another part of the. unit that this organization is making very powerful fake films about politicians, and there should be responsibility to identify who is doing that, and maybe do something about it. host: damian, you raised a very good point about the jihadi recruitments. incitement -- it is understood. let us follow the logic of that. we know that we had problems in ferguson, missouri here in the united it's a couple of years ago. the russians were sending out inflammatory messages, both to white supremacists on one side, and the antifa types on the other side.

that -- there could be a case made in that that was incitement to violence. would this fit in your possiblyon of proscribed activity, or not? damian: i think it depends on the nature. we had the terror attacks in the united kingdom last year. if it is inciting someone to join a terror group, that clearly would fall in that category of hard, offensive content. if it's misreporting of the event, sewing confusion and hey as to what actually happened, or not -- >> confusion, hatred, whatever follows there from -- >> yes that is difficult. , that will include some information that people find offensive, as well. i think we have be very worried about saying, well, whether we should run this on news tori or not. >> that is correct. >> i am not advocating it, but how to interesting, is

understand whether the people at disseminating this misinformation are paid for by the russian government. >> certainly in the case that happened in the united states, black lives matter, one of them was not at all local. being able to identify whether it is a member of your community or not, that is actually having that view, just identifying the source could be extraordinarily helpful. >> that is what is so insidious about these examples. is that it is causing democratic governments to be confused about whether they can adhere to their own expression values. the point here is that transparency and identification of who is behind these messages , rather on the content itself, is what really matters. host: so none of you would find a restriction on free media, a requirement that the sourcing of any message be there? in other words, the geographical location? damian: take the election and the united kingdom.

i wouldn't have a problem with that. material, an election and election periods, if it's paid for to be targeted to somebody, it has to tell you who that piece of communication is there to promote, and who paid for at. >> the paid for is the least of our problems at this point. so on the extremes, i think there's going to be broad agreement. incitement of violence or terrorism, you can regulate. pre-election period, paid advertising in general, political advertising -- i think where the really difficult parts are, we couldn't agree on example by example is the nonpaid, the creation, the stoking the fires of differences in society. -- the creation of dissonance. damian: there was also the

challenge of the fake accounts. facebook would say, it is against their policy to have , their financial report says that they have seen about three or 4% of the accounts are fake on the website, but we all know that it is much bigger than that. so the question is, what should you do then, to make them police their platform more effectively? host: is restricting bots restricting free speech? >> no, not necessarily. >> free speech is the right of a human being. host: some people might argue that a person who happens to be a billionaire has the ability to project his or her voice far more broadly than a person who's not. so, is restricting money a restriction on free speech? >> no. we should have massive party financing rules. >> so you're saying restricting bots is like restricting money. >> that's right.

>> i would put a finer point on it. i think that bots have obviously been a massive part of the problem and the manipulation. i think a blanket rule that you cannot have bots online doesn't make sense, because there are applications of bots to do any kind of realtime updating, weather, news. there are positive applications of bots. so it's not blanket banning. it is bots that are fabricated personas and manipulating the discourse. >> that we are never going to get to the level of detail. we have to air on the side of caution. give up our weather news for the bots that are doing damage. host: actually, i think i mean, you're the only one on this panel that is technically competent in this area. no offense to you -- [laughter] is it possible to distinction between good and bad bots?

eileen: you mean under the surface or before there out there? in other words, you can make a distinction between bots -- and police it, or supervises, is what i'm saying. eileen: we all have heard idea that technology can be used for good or ill, and that's how you evaluate it. it's how it's used. same thing for bots. whether you can police it under the surface, i cannot answer that. doug at what you will get into the judgment, the same question of judgment, to determine which ?ne is good or bad unfortunately, determining whether the information is good or bad. eileen: here is a distinction. it's not the content, it's the manipulative effect. it's the same distinction. that you couldn do it really easily. onse companies are built running ads. they understand at microlevel details, so they can do it.

i cannot believe that if they wanted to, that they cannot identify more of the bad actors. there's a part of my constituency that tweets the weather every day. what they don't do, is send 1000 tweets about trump in two hours. that is a distinction that i would drop. aw. host: i think we've come close to exhausting this topic, so i went to raise something i think our folks here would find interesting. we've had many unusual things happen over the last week on the international scene. and one of those was president trump's slamming the germans. i saw some advantage and some disadvantage to that. certainly, i am opposed to your well.

was that a positive contribution, or a negative factor? >> so i'm thrilled that president trump has taken that position, because i also am against north stream two. but it does come from a different place. i think it comes from a place for president trump where he's interested in the competitiveness of the u.s. l & g market and having that pipeline in place is a negative element of that competitive strength that the united states has to ship lng going forward to europe. i don't think we should read into it as a foreign policy position. i think it's a very clear economic policy decision on the part of the president. i think about, that in germany, fortunately or unfortunately depending on what side you are on, what the president says has to have the opposite effect. so i fear that president trump coming out strongly against north stream two, has the effect of strengthening the german will to go ahead with north stream

two. i think it was very interesting this came up and president putin used it to show that, you know, we're good competitors. we're not foes or enemies. i'm competing for the gas market and so are you, may the best man win. i found that somewhat dispiriting, to have something which i believe is a very policy issue,ign to be dealt with as a competitive issue between two different soft drink brands. think president putin was very happy to hear president trump say that. there is something ironic about him criticizing other countries about the closeness of the ir relations with russia, given his own statements today, which so i lead us to believe -- do think that there is an issue about the growing soft influence that russia has over politicians and decision makers in the eu. >> i would also just add the

overlay, that the real import of that comment was to embarrass angela merkel and going back to the idea of undermining our transatlantic alliance, undermining nato and undermining the post-world war ii order. that was what it was really about. host: i agree with that. and i would point out that the reaction in russia was several kinds. on the one hand, it was a visceral criticism of it. but then putin's reaction is the smart play. to turn it into a geopolitical matter, to merely a commercial matter among friends, which of course is the line he was trying to sell to trump. missing the entire point of nord stream two. damien: you look at this last

week and say the ability of the president to pick up the phone to a leader in europe and say i , i really think he should do this, i think it was important and it has been diminished by his behavior this week. host: sad but true. all right. we have like seven minutes left. if anyone in the audience has a question, i think we have a microphone. we do have a microphone. yes. okay. >> hi, suzanne spalding. i was the undersecretary of the department of home land security, responsible for cybersecurity and infrastructure protection including election infrastructure security. i'm now with the center for strategic and international studies, where i am looking at leading a project to look at all the ways in which what russia is doing undermines public trust and confidence in a fundamental pillar of democracy, namely, the judicial system, the justice system. we know as all of you said that what we see here has been going on for quite some time elsewhere

, and particularly ukraine, it has been a proving ground, sadly, for dick nixon against the u.s. i am wondering if you saw similar measures targeting the judiciary? we certainly are seeing them in hungary and poland and elsewhere. >> you know, i cannot say that i have. i think the judicial system in ukraine has been unfortunately most affected by corruption. simply, corruption and a lack of follow-through and rule of law again, i will allow the russians . again, i will allow the russians to share the blame in terms of being often much of the source of the corruption. notkraine, but they're responsible for the corruption in a ukraine, ukraine is responsible for that. i think the judicial system, the biggest risk has been that not , not direct russian interference. >> michael martel, cyber research with the national security archive. folks have been talking about

transparency on the location of posts. it's fairly easy to spoof location online using vpns. at a certain point we then have -- to make this effective, we would have to target vpns, virtual private networks, which are used by activists in places like russia, china and iran, at times, with american encouragement to be able to practice free speech of their own. so at what point do we decide that tradeoff is worth it for the west? host: anyone want to comment on that? it's a good question. >> simply say, you asked the right question. it really is a tradeoff. there are costs to doing that. and even though there are benefits just as with the bots question. so, you know, that's what democracies, democratic governments are supposed to do. they're supposed to address the hard questions, freedom, security, democratic process and rule of law. i don't have a compr

to that particular technical question, but that is what we have to do. we can't throw one thing under the bus in the name of protecting democracy, we have to do it all. natalie: i lean towards saying, we have to save the democratic system first. so i would lean towards , unfortunately dealing with the , vpns. i've also seen that in many of the asia wakenings, people were -- it the arab spring, people were targeted, even though that they were using vpns. so it wasn't the ultimate protection in those situations. so i guess, i would say, i on am balance. >> i say we call them continuous. >> another question over here? >> hi. i'm lee block. i'm a student at american university. my question is as follows. i'm curious how multilateral institutions, say the eu or the

world trade organization can counter russia as it uses corruption as a method of soft power in its foreign policy. damien: i think there is a lot more we can do to call out russian corruption, than we do. we have had some changes into the law and united kingdom to prosecute money laundering and institute unexplained wealth from people who suddenly come into a lot of money in the uk. i think another organization you can mention is fifa. you know, football is -- soccer, i should say, is very open to money laundering and supporting the strategic interests of very wealthy individuals who seek to hide their money and move it around the world. the football transfer market and

the role of intermediaries in the sport is a hugely successful tool for doing that. no surprise that fbi and the investigation of agencies, looking at money laundering in the caribbean. the question is whether you can get consensus among the multilateral organizations to take these things seriously. the riyadh >> we have to -- transparency and transparency. the imf has a rule in each one of the countries they're working on to make sure the transparency rules in the country whether that is auditing state owned companies in ukraine or putting the treasury of the country online, you can continue to do that throughout the countries that are working with the imf. you can have more and more transparency in the united states, in the so-called advanced countries with regard to the source of cash that is being used, especially in real estate markets. i repeat and said this earlier today, in london and the united states, the ability to buy through corporations, through companies that have been set up yesterday, real estate property and transfer hundreds of

millions of dollars into these countries, is a major source and a lack of transparency. we need to practice what we preach. i'm not suggesting the imf tell this to countries that are having economic troubles, we need to do it ourselves. but i think a lot can be resolved with transparency. host: question over here? >> thank you, very much. ukrainian legal group. commend yourto question -- comment on your question on why russia doesn't use soft power. there are a number of reasons. the main reason is corruption. money which can go for soft power to make the country a the pockets of russian bureaucracy, and that is it. that am have the money to make russia effective, because it are keeping the money for

themselves. host: thank you. one more question and then that's it. >> i'm from foreign policy magazine. i have a question for mr. collins. in the u.s., in the wake of the russian interference and elections we've seen, this mueller investigation is indictments, and arrests. but in the uk, it's only recently coming into light. i'm just wondering has the uk been caught on the back foot by possible russian interference in the bags it vote, and what is aliment planning on doing to investigate it? damon: good question. there are several investigations. my committee, we're part of the committee which is leading the parliamentary investigation and is looking at different types of fake and knees, and also looking at issues of russian affairs. it has also been part of the information commissioner's investigation into data usage and elections. she said, for example that, is evidence that data script from

facebook by cambridge analytica was accessed by people in russia. so they can follow a data trail and see who is doing that too. with regards to individuals like iron banks, information has come out in a lot of investigations, and investigative journalists identified that information and getting it into the public domain. they play an important role. i know the people involved in that have also shared that information with the national crime agency and so i hope they have the information they need to conduct their own investigations. as you probably know, unfortunately, the agencies and the u.k. tend to be less forthcoming about what they're doing. i don't intend to update you on the work that they are engaged in. that's why i think my position and the most important thing we can do is put in the public domain what we have. we hope that encourages the agency to do more. host: thank you. i'd like to thank you all for being here this afternoon. i will just make two more points. one, the program we're going to be doing following russia interference in the ukrainian elections, we're doing it with the transatlantic commission. also we're doing an event on i

, i think, the 19th, on russian efforts to corrupt american courts. so if you're interested in that subject, come back here in a couple days. thank you very much. [applause] ♪ liven's washington journal every day with news on policy issues that impact you. coming up tuesday morning, arkansas republican congressman french hill discusses trump administration trade and tariff policies. california democratic congresswoman karen bass talks about the u.s.-russia summit. and author and from a presidential speech writer curt smith talks about the relationship between the u.s.

baseball. and be sure to watch washington journal live at 7:00 eastern tuesday morning. joined the discussion. ♪ >> tonight, it is my honor and privilege to announce that i will nominate judge brett kavanaugh to the united states supreme court. >> mr. president, i am grateful to you, and i am humbled by your confidence in me. >> brett kavanaugh of the united states court of appeals for the district of columbia circuit is president trump's nominee for the supreme court. >> i am pleased with the nominees the president has chosen, and i look forward to supporting his nomination in doing whatever i can to ensure confirmation. if judge kavanagh is confirmed, women's freedom to make decisions about their bodies, reforms to our health care system, the quality of our air

and water, and much more will be at risk. frankly, i cannot think of anybody who is more qualified to serve as the next associate justice of the supreme court. announcer: follow the confirmation process on sees than through congress, as he needs with key senators, the senate confirmation hearings and vote. watch live on c-span, any time on the c-span.org or listen on the free c-span radio app. trump and earlier today after more than a week long trip in europe which included the 2018 nato summit in belgium, and a visit to the united kingdom. earlier today, he was in helsinki to meet with russian president vladimir putin. after a series of bilateral meetings, the two leaders took questions from reporters during a joint news conference. reporters during a joint news conference.