sec. jean-pierre: i would have to connect with my colleagues, i don't have anything to share beyond that one time connection. thank you, everybody. have a good one. >> if you ever miss any of c-span's coverage, you could always find it on c-span.org. there is a timeline tool that makes it easy to quickly get an idea of what was debated and decided in washington. to scroll through and spend a few minutes on c-span's points of interest. >> the house will be in order.

>> this year, c-span celebrates 45 years of covering congress like no other. since 1979 we have been your primary source for capitol hill, providing balanced unfiltered coverage of government. taking you to where policy is debated and decided, all with the support of america's cable company. at c-span. 45 years and counting. powered by cable. agency, also known as america's cyber defense agency. jen easterly served as a director since 2021. explain the role it plays when it comes to election security and what you are doing now. guest: great to be on c-span. love it. cisa, we are the newest agency in the federal government. we were stood up six years ago to play two key roles, america's cyber defense agency and the national coordinator for critical infrastructure security and resilience. we protect and defend the cyber

and physical infrastructure americans rely on everyday for water, for power, for transportation, for communications, for health care, per finance and the infrastructure that americans used to cast their ballots and ensure those ballots are counted as cast. that came out of 2016, the russian attempts to interfere with the election. after that, infrastructure was designated as critical infrastructure. cisa was designated as the federal government lead for election infrastructure security. we know states run elections. what we do is we bring together support from the federal government to ensure state and local election officials have the resources they need to defend their election infrastructure. host: when it comes to security, what takes more time? where are you mostly focused? there are bigger threats coming from the cyber site attacking u.s. elections over the

infrastructure and the physical devices and places where we vote? guest: i should say based on the work we have done over the past eight years, with state and local election officials have done, the american people should understand our infrastructure has never been more secure. to your point, the threat environment has never been more complex. there are serious cyber threats, ransomware, denial of service so you cannot get the websites. there are serious physical threats to election officials. there is a range of serious threats from foreign adversaries, from russia, iran, china. they are using different tactics. they are focused on two main goals, to undermine american trust in our democracy and our confidence in elections and to sew partisan discord. pending americans against each other. we are focused on the full range. we are working with election officials since the beginning of the cycle to provide physical

assessments. we have done nearly 1200 for physical security, 700 for cybersecurity, 200 exercise to work with officials in a full range of scenarios where you could have incidents or disruptions. we have done hundreds of trainings the help election officials reduce risk to election systems and processes. host: there's an article in the business section of the new york times. hi russia, china and iran are interfering in the u.s. election. are they taking different paths? is one of those concerning to you than the other? guest: the more active -- they are more active and using more sophisticated techniques. in some cases they are powered by generative ai. they are more rapidly generating fake media personas, fake websites so they can spew this propaganda out into the u.s. they are using unwitting influencers to get their message out legally.

-- lively. despite the threat environment, no matter who you vote for you can have confidence your vote will be counted as cast. why am i saying that? a few things. to prevent little interference voting -- digital interference voting machines are not connected to the internet. really important to understand that. to prevent digital manipulation, over 97% paper ballots. it's a guarantee near zero human manipulation. there are multiple layers of safeguards, physical security, cybersecurity, testing of equipment, postelection auditing to ensure election infrastructure is safe from compromise. the last thing americans should understand is every state run selections differently. different equipment, different processes. the same goes -- saying goes if you have seen one state election, you have seen another

state elections. it's a great strength. it means it is not possible for a bad actor to tamper with or try to manipulate our voting systems in a way where you can have an impact on the outcome of the presidential election. certainly not without being detected. host: you talk about what americans should understand. do you meet with both campaigns? do they understand the level of security you are talking about here and the safeguards in place? guest: absolutely. most of my work in the past three years has been on the ground with election officials. both parties. election officials will tell you this is not a political issue. election security is not. it is not republican or democrat. it is a national security american issue. we work with all aspects of the campaigns so they can take advantage of our voluntary services. we have cyber expertise, physical security expertise. that strong partnership with all

of the states, territories i believe has made a difference in improving our election infrastructure. host: have you met with donald trump or the trump campaign to have this conversation? guest: my team meets with all folks on the campaigns and from the partisan organizations. most of our time is spent with election officials who are running elections and ensuring the security of election infrastructure. we meet with anyone who was to take advantage of our expertise and advice. host: jen easterly with us for about another 10 minutes. the phone lines as usual. (202) 748-8000 for democrats. (202) 748-8001 for republicans. independents, (202) 748-8002. what do you make of ballot dropbox is being burned or set on fire in oregon and washington?

guest: they are working very closely with local law enforcement and the fbi to identify the criminals involved and hold them accountable for these crimes. it's important to understand elections and certainly the presidential election is a very complex event. you are talking hundreds of thousands of election workers, tens of thousands of polling places. 150 million plus americans voting. they are going to be disruptions. they are going to be incidents. the good news is election officials have prepared for this. they have trained for this. they have done exercises for it. they are ready to be able to deal with a full range of disruptions. when it comes to criminal also have good ballot tracking in the states. they can tell whether or not they've got those ballots. gning up voters as we saw happened in pennsylvania, those

things will be caught and investigated. those who did it will be held liable. host: you mentioned pennsylvania. october 25, the update that cisa put out about bit of circulating purporting to show ballots being destroyed in pennsylvania. guest: as we noted in the statement on friday, that was russia. russian manufactured, fake video. we can expect to see more of those. we have been warning about this for months now. one thing we have tried to do learning lessons from the past is get with the intelligence community and fbi can be more proactive. they put up a webpage this week that shows all the updates from the intelligence community that have been declassified about foreign adversary activity. we have seen russia, iran, china. by the way, we have seen disruptions. we have seen indictments against

russia, indictments against iran for the hacking operation against the trump campaign. there are massive efforts going on to ensure the safety of our election. host: there are more fake videos out there. when did we get a specific threat advisory from cisa? this one was going viral. guest: we were focused on the fact this was -- it went viral but also it was clearly, as we look at it, similar to what we had seen from russia before. we talked about the advisory that there was another video against the vice presidential candidate on the democratic campaign. we are seeing a lot of this. we have written about them. we are trying to empower the american people with the information that they need to be able to make a smart decision about having confidence in the integrity of their vote. host: we appreciate you stopping by.

we want to get to a few calls. carol on the line for democrats . caller: you had a show on a few weeks ago. during the call in it was just the poll workers. probably close to 17 different calls. it was about 30 minutes long. most of the full workers have worked several elections. just watching that made me feel very good about the security of the election and at the polls themselves. the same people. i see the same people when they go to vote. they are always working the booths. that is the first time anybody will touch a valid. if anything would happen, it would start there. we are safe at the polls. we are worried about the cybersecurity from other countries.

is this agency you are with part of the federal government? guest: thank you for the question. i'm glad to hear comments about poll workers because i have spent a lot of my time in this job getting a chance to work with election officials and to meet with poll workers. frankly, it is humbling to see people who are willing to stand on the front lines of our democracy. it is not for pay or fame or glory. they are doing this for democracy. thank you for raising that. when anybody goes to the polls, you should think your poll workers. cisa is part of homeland security. we are a nonpartisan, nonpolitical agency that is focused on protecting and preserving the infrastructure americans rely on. host: the segment we did was an hour-long segment. it was 22 callers. one of the poll workers have been working at the polls, the

first time was 1968. guest: it's amazing. people have this in their blood because they want to make sure they are playing their part in protecting our democracy. by the way, if there are skeptics out there who lack confidence in the security of our elections, sign up to be a poll worker. that is such a great thing to do. host: tony in texas on the line for republicans. caller: i really love c-span. still can't get -- i have a question for you. have you considered putting the drop boxes in a postal vehicle and organizing it better that way? securing it in a postal vehicle? nobody will burn down a mail truck. guest: thanks so much for the question, tony. as you know, states run elections. every state has the ability to run things differently. i know that states that rely

heavily on drop boxes -- you probably know washington or washington is all mail-in voting. there are things being put in place to ensure the security of those drop boxes. having seen this issue around incendiary devices, they may look at other steps they can take to ensure the integrity and security of the drop boxes. i will tell you there are a lot of things put in place to do that. there are anti-incendiary devices. that is why in oregon the incident -- it saved all of two or three ballots. only two or three were damaged. there are ways to deal with this stuff. great to come up with some of these ideas and hopefully election officials will continue to put in place measures to ensure security --as much acute as possible. host: trent from monroe,

louisiana. caller: this is not my issue. can we talk about paper ballots? my next-door neighbor was the cfo of centurylink. he is steeped in this cybersecurity business. i think he would disagree with everything you are saying. host: why do you want to talk about paper ballots? it is part of election security. caller: it seems like there is no problem. france can do it in one day and everybody feels good about it. guest: a couple of things. i agree with you. it is really important. this been an increase in paper ballots. over 97% paper ballots. most of the country, including all the battleground states have paper ballots. if there are any places where it is close they will be records that can be counted and

recounted to ensure accuracy. look, to your point about cybersecurity, as the director of the cybersecurity agency and someone who's been doing this for decades i am happy to talk to your friend. my point would be because of the multiple layers put in place, and it's not just cybersecurity, it is physical access control, procedural controls, checks and balances, pre-election testing of equipment and postelection audits, that is how i can say with confidence they would not be possible to hack into machines in a way you can have a material impact on the outcome of the presidential election. certainly now that being detected. it's really important to understand the machines americans use vote are not connected to the internet. that should hopefully give you

confidence, maybe not the confidence i have but there is massive protections and that is why i say our election infrastructure has never been more secure. host: i know you have to run but cisa is tracking postelection threats. what are you watching for there? guest: elections are not over when the polls close. it may take officials a few days to get a final result. if things are very close there may be recounts, audits similar to what was done in 2020. we all need to be patient. we want to get an accurate result. one of the things we have been warning about in the reports is that our foreign adversaries may take the opportunity in the days following the election where they could be uncertainty about who the winner is to really create that wedge to undermine american confidence in the legitimacy of the vote, sew

partisan discord, formant violence. we need to be vigilant. we have a role in protecting and preserving our democracy and the foundation of our democracy is our ability to vote, to have free and fair and safe and secure elections. we all need to come together to preserve that sacred right. that right. host: the agency is cisa, and jen >> c-span's washington journal our live forum involving you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics and public policy from washington, d.c. and across the country. thursday morning, former white house press secretary sean spicer talks about campaign 2024 and political news of the day.

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