>> coming up live today, a discussion about the u.s. relations, starting live at 11:00 a.m. eastern and later that michigan bureau of elections meets to certify the election results. there board is required to certify the results today. watch live coverage at 1:00 p.m. eastern also here on c-span. >> today, live, a conversation with former president obama and his newly published memoir reflecting on his life and political career.

the former president, live today at 11:30 a.m. eastern on book tv. ♪ >> with joe biden as president-elect, stay with us for the live transition of power. ♪ host: journalist and author garrett graff joins us now, currently the director for cyber initiatives for the aspen digital program at the aspen intitute, here to talk about the white house transition process and implications for national security. garrett graff, beginning with, when there is a transition, what national security information is shared?

guest: when the gsa administrator ascertains that a president elect -- all of those words being the specific ones in the legal process -- that unlocks a series of government transition funds and office space, emails, government cell phones, as well as two major sets of information. one is the ability for the transition team to access classified information. the second is to allow agency review teams from the transition to begin to meet with government officials and both of those are very vital assets. se are very vital assets.

a lot of focus on whether president-elect biden is getting access to the president's daily intelligence briefing but in many ways, it is the not taking place that these are national security problem. you have 4000 presidential employees flooding into the federal government over the 2021 and none of them are learning what they need to learn. all of these different staffers and agencies, how long does it take them to get up to speed? the actual answer is it will take months or a year or so

in the best of circumstances. presidential transitions are always fraught, there are always moments of particular insecurity as a new administration and new officials learn the ropes of these very important and complex geopolitical roles. what we have seen now happening not the best case scenario for obvious reasons. in the best of circumstances, the presidential transition would have 77 days to figure that out. timethan 1/5 of the total has elapsed for these officials to begin to learn their roles before they step into office at noon on january 20. to have you respond to we hamilton, john bolton, the former security advisor to the

president, talking about the dangers of not passing on this information from the current administration to the incoming one. >> we need a better process for transitions between one administration and another for national security officials, so its nation does not lower guard every four or eight years. believe the united states is vulnerable to attack or corruption because the transition is not unfolding in the usual way? >> i do not think we should be a -- apocalyptict about it. every day that goes by that the transition does not proceed in an orderly fashion leaves us more vulnerable. i speak as a veteran of the days werecount, 37 lost with no real ability for the team to interact with the government and the 9/11

said that might have been a factor not being ready for 9/11 attacks. no one can really know that and all like would say is, do you want to take the chance again? >> this is where we have a very clear sense of what the worst-case scenario is. it takes a while and we looked at this along with the rest of in theircommission work and the bush administration really did struggle through 2001 to wrap its arms around the u.s. government in those initial months. they have lost those days to speak with their counterparts, and they lost those days in terms of access to intelligence, the ability to have classified

conversations with counterparts. seen by the 9/11 commission after the fact as a toential contributed factor the government's ability and lack of ability to respond adequately to the threat of al qaeda over the course of 2001. we think about history, i think we somehow separate the 2000 recount in the 9/11 attacks, that warning nine months after president george w. bush took office but the truth is the recounts had a big overhang. it was a big part of the transition, the way george w. bush's presidency was viewed over the course of 2001. on the morning of 9/11, florida atush was in an elementary school and there

were actually protesters outside that morning nine months after he took office, complaining about the recount. this was much more truncated in actuality then i think we viewed historically 20 years later. >> what are the top ones that the president-elect and his team should be concerned about and that trump administration folks should pass along to them? guest: it is a great and important question. is a historical aspect worth considering, and then there is a specific complexity that joe biden would casefaced under the best transition scenario, which is,

he is going to accept the presidency in under two months with a raging pandemic that the u.s. government has all but given up trying to wrestle economy, anding massive and unprecedented logistical paths ahead of distributing what we hope is one or perhaps two covid-19 vaccines over the course of 2021, to the entire country. any of those three would have been a tremendously challenging moment. president-elect biden, that is plateerything on his geopolitically. if you go back and look at the

presidential transition into thousand, the main geopolitical issue on the table was, at the time, really the threat of terrorism. you talk to advisors on both sides of the administration and .hat is what were worried about in 2008, there was the counterterrorism challenge and also a new cybersecurity challenge. the complexity and vulnerability of the internet was coming in the nation was beginning to realize the problem cybersecurity was going to be geopolitically. when you look at the 2016 transition, you have a terror threat from isis, a cyber threat adversaries of the united states, china,

assia, iran, as well as pandemic morning. one thing worth going back and the obamag was administration had lived through and was deeply focused on the pandemic. they ran the obama administration outgoing officials even ran a joint tabletop exercise with the incoming bush administration counterparts -- the incoming trump administration counterparts, in order to try and prepare them for a pandemic. we know the trump administration took none of those lessons or in the extensive

but when youbook look at what the lessons are, they give you a moments pause about what we are living through right now and geopolitical threats we are not talking about between the outgoing administration and the incoming administration. in short order, without getting thereep in any of them, are a handful of top geopolitical threats president-elect biden will be focused on in the first months of his administration even beyond the pandemic, stalling economy, and one is the rising , which has been one of for theconsistent areas

trump administration's forceful policy, probably a policy that in many ways, president biden would pick up and continue. the trump administration spent in a norma's amount of time focused on iran with nothing to show for it. betteris in a than when the trump its maximumon began

pressure campaign. in many ways, iran is a more destabilizing and worrisome force on the world stage particularly in the middle east. then it was when trump took office four years ago. going from obama to trump, president obama told president-elect from that he thought the biggest and most important issue on what was going to be the hardest issue for trump to get his arms around was going to be north korea. that is very much the case today. again, you have a country that programllicose missile that apparently in the last couple of weeks, unveiled new missiles that we do not have a good strategic sense of, and a keyhis is going to be regional and geopolitical concern going forward. big question of russia, which is something that trump has been very scattershot over over the last couple of years. both in terms of embracing vladimir putin, as well as the

instability that russia ukraine anding and a rising tide of cyber issues emanating from actually hitting u.s. hospitals in u.s. health care systems in u.s. schools right now in the pandemic. will be a challenging geopolitical landscape for president biden and hour-by-hour's they are not doing what they should be doing to allow the transition to move forward is getting harder. the one good piece of news in biden left thee

white house just four years ago and if anyone can make the best of a very bad situation and dangerous situation, it is joe biden coming into this with a unique understanding of the role of the president. train in mississippi, republican. to find out,wanted i wanted to talk to the lady that was there before in georgia but ithis pipe breaking wanted to ask the gentleman, the middle east is in a better since trump got an office than one biden left it. i think you'd be lying to yourself if you say anything other than that. >> let's spend another minute talking about the middle east.

the trump administration the push to normalize relations between israel and a number of regional countries, which definitely has loweringin terms of the temperature of the region. see are the two ately destabilizing forces work. iran as the trump administration holds out on the , that the obama administration and foreign nations jointly negotiated in of the obamas administration and then you have still ann civil war

incredible humanitarian toll on spillover ofnd the whichrian refugee crisis, we have seen less of in the news in the last year, but it does not mean the crisis has abated. in some ways, the middle east is apparently more secure and in some ways, the middle east is deeply insecure and one area where you will see joe biden take a different path is confronting saudi arabia as a regional power. saudi arabia during the trump aninistration killed american journalist, jamal khashoggi, and faced very little cost to that.

i think you will see joe biden attempt to reset some of the relationship with saudi arabia. ron, new hampshire, democratic caller. you for your program. an awesome show. i may. question if the obama transition, obama congratulated trump one after trump's win. he had trump at the white house giving him briefings for two days, and that was a tough loss for obama. onto socialism, it seems that republicans continue to push this thing. if you are for a few socialist programs that help the poor, the sick, the elderly, it will turn our country into a socialist country. do not vote for a democrat

because they will turn the country into a socialist country -- host: we will try and stick to the topic here. vicedent-elect biden and president elect kamala harris are getting briefings because of kamala harris's access for members of the senate intelligence committee. is that a good substitution? not and it is worth looking back at the traditions put into place after 9/11. we saw earlier those comments in the wake of 9/11 and the 9/11 commission report, about unique of aligence challenges presidential transition, which is why george w. bush put intoous time and resources

a helpful and collegial and thoughtful presidential transition process in 2008. obama administration was very much prepared to carry on that mission and tradition in 2016. said, the the caller gsa very quickly ascertained was the winner. you saw hillary clinton the morning after the election admit that. trump was welcomed to the white house very quickly. the briefings began quickly. the apparatus of government was -- preparedly rapidly. the landing teams, from his transition. that was, in many ways, from the

obama side, exactly how a transition was supposed to be for -- supposed to be set up. the trump transition at the time did not really fully take it manage of that. you might remember there wasn't a norma's amount of upheaval within the transition immediately after the election. heading the transition pre-election was sort of cast election and it took a while for the landing teams to arrive across government. triedama administration to make this work at a very specific micro level, putting the incoming officials through fewe talk pandemic just a days before the inauguration to

try and prepare them for what they saw as one of the biggest likely threats to face the incoming trump administration. lynchburg, virginia, independent. caller: i have a couple of statements i would like to make and i hope you hear me out. to go smoothly since president trump got his briefing from president obama when he came in, you can tell trump cares nothing about the american people. that.did, he would do 200 years of transfer of power between one president and the other. problem whohe would rather go y

golf then tend to covid-19. host: robert, let me hear from max as well, in naples, florida and we will get a response. caller: good morning. i want to echo what the two previous callers said, the to before me. -- the two before me. i would like to ask the gentleman what harm could possibly occur, even assuming were.s. results overturned, by giving the president-elect and vice president-elect full access to the information? they are loyal americans and they are devoted to this country and i can't see that there would be any harm whatsoever by there being briefed and the country would benefit against what the risks are.

risk: yes, so the literal is that there is a limited funding, transition and so once that money is spent, it has to be replenished. as you say, that seems to me to be a decidedly manageable risk in the grand scheme of the need to understand exactly how the federal government works. this is arguably the most complex company in the history of the world if you look at it. trillions of dollars in annual spending. millions of employees. and physical presence in every state and territory of the united states.

as personnel and needs and equities in almost literally every country in the world. this is a huge enterprise. there are going to be 4000 new will havethat biden to select in order to get his arms around this government, and under the best of circumstance, it takes is smooth transition and possibly still a year or two for his administration to get up and running and be able to really understand how to do its job well. throughe are not living the best case scenario and hour-by-hour, taebaek day, it matters whether joe biden is day by day, it matters whether joe biden is able to carry out this role or not. the: the headline -- host:

headline, why biden is crowdfunding his transition. theree to leave it >> life today, a discussion about u.s. russian relations, live starting at 11:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. later the michigan bureau of election needs to certify the state election results, the board is required by law to certify the results today. watch live coverage of the meeting at 1:00 p.m. eastern here on c-span. >> today, a live conversation with former president obama in his newly published memoir reflecting on his life and political career. he is interviewed by washington post