evening. by the way, to patrick mahomes, we'll get 'em next time. that is our broadcast for this monday night as we all start a new week, and with our thanks as well. on behalf of all of the colleagues i have at the networks of nbc news, good night. thanks for joining us this hour. happy to have you here. we have a lot to get to tonight. the leader of the progressive caucus is here tonight, congresswoman pernilla jayapal. she will be talking about how much help the american people will get from the covid relief bill. the fight is on, frankly, among democrats right now on how big they're going to go on that in terms of trying to help people. congresswoman holds a lot of the cards in the fight and we will hear about her strategy and thinking and why she and her colleagues are insisting that the covid relief bill is, among

other things, the right place, the right time and the right way to push raising the minimum wage. the minimum wage has not gone up in this country in 12 years. president biden says he is committed to raising the minimum wage but he also has publicly raised doubts that it can be done as part of the covid relief bill they're about to pass in congress. this, of course, is a super consequential issue for the economy as a whole, but more importantly for millions and millions and millions of americans who would be affected by this. we will talk with congresswoman jayapal about that in a moment. you may also have seen tonight this developing story about sort of a nightmare scenario cyberattack on a water treatment plant in a small community in florida in the tampa bay area. it is a town in florida that's literally like 12 miles from the stadium where the super bowl was held this weekend, and in advance of this weekend, on friday, somebody hacked into a computer at this town's local water treatment facility and then used that computer they had

hacked into to try to poison the town's water supply. they actually did change the level of one chemical that is supposed to be at, like, 100 parts per million or less. they changed it in the computer system so it would instead be added to the water at more than 11,000 part, per million, which could have been quite catastrophic had it not been caught. it was caught. it was caught immediately. a plant employee basically watched the attack in real-time while it happened, while somebody hacking from somewhere remotely accessed his computer and changed those settings about that chemical additive. the local sheriff briefed on it today. the national press is starting to pick it up. the fbi and the secret service are now involved in investigating who done it and how this happened. we have one of the best cybersecurity reporters in the country here tonight to talk about that. she has been warning about a scenario exactly like this for years. nicole perlroth literally has a book coming out tomorrow on

these kinds of threats, and specifically on the international market for these kinds of hacking capabilities. nicole perlroth will join us in just a moment as well as that story, scary story out of florida continues to develop. of course, the trial of former president donald trump starts tomorrow in the united states senate, the only american president to have ever been impeached twice will now start his second impeachment trial. we now know that day one, tomorrow, is going to be four hours of debate about basically whether or not it is okay for the senate to even being holding this trial, given that president trump is no longer in office. that's ringing a bell, it is because you will remember there was already a vote in the senate on this not long ago. 45 republican senators, all but five of the republican senators, voted on this resolution in such a way that said it wasn't constitutional for the senate to go ahead with this trial, specifically because trump is no

longer in office. essentially they're saying on a technicality trump shouldn't face a senate trial for this impeachment. what, of course, was amazing about that at the time they took that vote is that the senate very well could have put donald trump on trial in this senate, second senate impeachment trial while he was still in office. they could have done that if they wanted to. it was republican senate leader mitch mcconnell who refused to do that. mcconnell refused to recall the senate so they could start the senate trial while trump was still president. they didn't start the trial until after trump was gone, and once trump was gone mcconnell voted with all of the other republicans to say, you know, this trial really should have started while he was still president and now it is too late. it is like if you are a gym teacher, made you keep running laps even after the bell went off and then sent you to the principal's office because you were late to the next class. you were the one making me run laps. go to the principal's office,

what did i tell you? i mean democrats would have happily acceded to trump being put on trial while he was still president. it was mitch mcconnell who stopped them from doing that, and now it is mitch mcconnell saying, well, it is too late now, he can't be trial while he is president for can he be tried after he's president. but senator mcconnell wants everybody to know just how much he wants donald trump to be held accountable for what he did. anyway, there will be four hours of debate starting at 1:00 tomorrow on the question of whether the senate is allowed under the constitution to hold this impeachment trial for donald trump even though trump is now a former official. the last time they voted on this one, rand paul put this up before the senate. some of the 45 republicans who voted "no" on that question and said it was unconstitutional to try trump as a former president, some of those republicans said they were only voting that way because they wanted there to be a debate on this issue. so this will effectively call

that question. the trial will start with that debate. we will see whether all of the republicans who voted that this trial shouldn't happen will still hold on that tomorrow. that vote will be tomorrow before the end of the day. then the next day, on wednesday, starting at noon, which is prescribed by the constitution, they will start presenting the case for and against the former president. now, in terms of president trump's -- well, the prosecutors, right, that's the house impeachment managers, there's nine democratic members of congress who are going to be essentially prosecuting the case on behalf of the house which has already impeached him. the defense team on the president's side has been a little harder to follow. he originally had a team of lawyers from south carolina. then he fired all of them. then he hired a couple of new lawyers. now apparently the president has just gotten himself a new defense lawyer, a third defense lawyer as of today. we know this because his name

appeared on the documents that were related to the trial that were filed with the u.s. senate. this new attorney for the president is a personal injury attorney. so maybe there's like a whiplash component or a slip-and-fall element to the president's defense we're not anticipating yet. perhaps there was an unknown fender bender on january 6th that the president wants you to know he didn't do. i don't know. he has a third defense lawyer who is, i kid you not, a personal injury lawyer. one other somewhat inexplicable late development tonight among the president's legal team is that one of his now three lawyers, mr. doug schoen, last week had asked the senate if they would please change the schedule for the senate trial to accommodate his religious practice. he's jewish and he strictly observes the sabbath, which means he is not allowed to work after sundown on friday or all day saturday. of course, it is kind of a big deal to change the senate schedule for an impeachment trial since these things are actually laid out in the constitution, but senator

schumer for the democrats, who is the first jewish majority leader in senate history and senator mcconnell for the republicans agreed. they mutually agreed they would accommodate mr. schoen's request, and therefore, even though it is an unusual accommodation, they would recess president trump's impeachment trial at 5:00 p.m. eastern time on friday. so just ahead of sundown on friday. they wouldn't reconvene at all on saturday. they would not reconvene until sunday afternoon. that's a very unusual schedule for an impeachment trial, but they agreed to it at the request of mr. schoen, the president's attorney. they announced it today formally they would go ahead with the no-trial-on-saturday schedule. they released the written resolution that formalizes it and everything. tonight after the resolution was released, after they formally agreed to it, mr. schoen, the president's lawyer, decided he didn't want that accommodation after all. he sent this letter saying, never mind, he really appreciates it, thanks for the accommodation, but he don't need it anymore.

it is now cool for them to hold the trial on saturday as well. he just won't participate. it is totally unclear why mr. schoen asked for that big change in the senate trial schedule if he didn't actually want them to do it. they said yes, and then he said, no, then i don't care, i don't want it. it is unclear as of now as to whether or not this means they're going to change the schedule back to the original plan. that will mean they'll have to change the written resolution laying out the trial rules and the schedule they were going to vote on tomorrow. it is just a bizarre turn, and the timing of it is bizarre, but that is just one of the strange things that is unfolding in the news tonight. on the eve of that trial starting tomorrow, the idea that you hear in conservative media and the idea that you hear among some elected republicans that the events of january 6th are so far behind us and, you know, trump's gone and this whole thing ought to be put out of our minds so we can move forward,

that argument, that mindset is very much undermined by the current news cycle. and not just current events, but new revelations in the news. for example, there was reporting by matthew rosenberg in "the new york times" this weekend that after trump's disgraced national security adviser mike flynn started advocating after the election publicly that trump should impose martial law, after he started advocating publicly that trump should order the u.s. military into the streets to, in his words, rerun the election in states that trump lost, after flynn started making that public case about what trump should do, according to "the new york times" this weekend, quote, trump raised the idea of putting mr. flynn in charge of the fbi and later suggested making him chief of staff, meaning white house chief of staff, for the final weeks of his administration. so here is the impeachment trial starting with president trump's new lawyers claiming that, you know, everything trump said

leading up to january 6th was just hyperbole, it was typical politics and rhetorical flourishes and he didn't actually mean what he said literally and he definitely didn't have any aim to try to overturn the election by force. that's what they're going to be arguing, right? but, yeah, there was that guy who was suggesting that trump should order the u.s. military to use force to undo the election for him and the president's reaction to that was reportedly to try to put that guy in charge of the white house, to make him white house chief of staff or maybe to make him head of the fbi. maybe he could do it from there. trump's reaction to flynn's suggesting that he has the military take over to undo the election was to try to put flynn operationally in charge of the white house. and, you know, if you think that this is all in the past -- you know, oh, it is ancient history, it was all a month ago, today in

arizona, absolutely remarkable story. republicans in the state senate in arizona today held a vote that would have allowed them to lock up the county elections board in a county that voted for biden instead of trump in november. this vote in the arizona state senate today would have declared the maricopa county elections board to be in contempt, which would have meant that the elections board could all be arrested at the discretion of the arizona republican state senate. we're going to have more on this later on in the show tonight because it deserves a lot more attention than it is getting. but apparently arizona's republican party is demanding this county that voted for biden, maricopa county, needs to hand over its ballots, individual voter's ballots to republicans in the state senate, and the county says we can't do that without a judicial order to hand those ballots over to anyone. the arizona senate republicans came within one vote today of threatening to lock up the members of that county elections board in order to get those

battle because they, what? were going to use the ballots to prove the steal! you know, #stopthesteal or whatever. you know, they're still fighting that war. arizona republicans censured the arizona governor for having the temerity to certify the results in that state. they are still tonight trying to overthrow the election results in arizona in part by threatening to imprison the election officials in maricopa county. trump refuses to let anybody describe him as a former president and arizona is still insisting that trump rightfully won their state and is therefore the president. that story took and uglier turn tonight just before we got on the air. we are trying to turn around tape of what happened in the senate in the debate.

you should hear it. it is -- ugh. i mentioned it was only one vote in the arizona senate that stopped them from trying to lock up the elections board today. you might remember in the more immediate aftermath of the november election it was only one vote on the state election's board in michigan, one republican member of that board who stood up and said that he had read the constitution, that he had read the rules and actually he wasn't going to go along with the republican plan in michigan to try to block certification of biden's win there. it was just one vote. one guy who stood in the wake -- stood in the way of that republican plot there to undo the election result in michigan. while republicans in michigan have now removed that guy from the state elections board, so he won't be there anymore to stand up and do the legal thing, this weekend michigan republicans chose a new vice chair for their state party. they chose somebody who actually personally participated in street protests outside the vote tallying site in michigan, demanding to be let in because

somehow trump must have won and it was all being stolen. that's who will now be the number two person statewide in the republican party in michigan. that's happening now. these decisions are being made now. republicans are not moving on. republicans in washington are like, you know, democrats, we understand you are very -- you were all upset about this, but you need to grow up, pull up your socks and move on. meanwhile, republicans in the states, they're not moving on. from what trump tried to pull off with the attack on the capitol on january 6th, they're keeping on with it. all of the people who were part of the whole stop the steal, biden isn't really the president, they're all getting elevated in the parties. people who stood with the election results and said, we shouldn't try to overturn the election by force, those are the people getting censured and thrown out of the party. who is not moving on here? but the impeachment trial of president trump for his role in the january 6th attack, that's

starts tomorrow. in the great state of georgia tonight, the secretary of state's office just announced they're opening a formal investigation into president trump calling state officials and telling them to change the vote tally so it would look like he won that statin stead of joe biden. the call in which the president told the secretary of state to recalculate the state results and, quote, find enough votes to make trump the winner, that's -- that call to the secretary of state is sort of lesser noticed part of the impeachment article against the president that was passed in the house. that will be the basis for his trial starting tomorrow. but in georgia, they're not only investigating that call to the secretary of state as potentially a criminal matter now, they're apparently going to investigate trump's other men asing calls to other state officials including the state's governor and a lower level employee in the secretary of state's office who the president personally called. all of these different attempts by the president personally to get georgia election officials to overturn the rightful election results so that trump could stay in office.

i mean it would truly be something for republicans in the u.s. senate to blow off and excuse president trump's actions in this trial starting tomorrow, to say it is no big deal, all right. we are moving on. we don't think what he did is that much of a problem. it would be something for republicans in the u.s. senate to say that while at the same time the president could soon be facing prison time in the state of georgia for those same actions as violations of state law. under georgia law it is a crime, a serious crime to solicit a person to commit election fraud. it doesn't matter if you are president of the united states when you did it and if senate republicans don't care, it is a crime in the state of georgia, one for which you can be convicted and punished, especially if you have the great wisdom to do it on tape. republicans in the senate don't want to hear it. they don't want to hear any of it. they don't even want the trial to happen, but they're going to have to start casting their ayes and nays tomorrow after the first four hours of debate.

for his part, president biden has now been asked multiple times, both directly by norah o'donnell on cbs this weekend and indirectly through the white house press secretary if he wants to weigh in on the former president's fate in this trial, whether he would vote to convict trump if he were back in the senate right now. president biden has refused to be drawn into these conversations, saying only that it is now a matter for the senate and not for him to say. what he says and the white house keeps reiterating is that what he is solely focused on right now is covid relief, is combatting the pandemic and passing the covid relief bill, the american rescue plan. i'll tell you, on that relief plan, the one part of it that remains an object of absolute fixation for the press is whether republicans will vote for it as well as democrats. certainly for the purposeless of score keeping and, you know, partisan competition as a

televised sport, that is an interesting question. i myself will be interested to see if any republicans vote for it. but on the other hand, who cares, right? it is called the american rescue plan for a reason. this is a thing the country really needs, something that new polling shows 9 out of 10 americans are in support of. 9 out of 10 americans support there being a new covid rescue plan. this is something we really need as a country. maybe republicans will vote for it, maybe not. what is perhaps of more consequence is what is going to be in this. what is going to be in the bill? whether or not there are any republican votes for the bill, it frankly is up to the democrats right now to decide whether the things that president biden said he wants in the bill are actually going to be in it, because while republicans are free to vote for this bill they don't need to in order for it to pass. so it really is up to the democrats to decide, will there be $1,400 stimulus checks to bring the amount of stimulus up to that $2,000 level that even president trump was demanding

before he left office, and that senators like johns on off and raphael warnock campaigned on relentlessly campaigned on when they won their seats to give democrats control of the senate. will everyone previously eligible be eligible for the next ones or will democrats cut a bunch of middle class people off from the checks? in previous relief agreed to by democrats and republican, the income threshold for getting covid relief was $75,000. anyone making $75,000 or less got a covid check. if they drop the threshold to $50,000, that would mean there are 40 million americans who got checks last time who won't get them again. why would democrats want to do that? i mean to be blunt about it, democrats are planning on campaigning against republicans who vote against this thing.

they're planning on campaigning against republicans who vote against this thing by saying, hey, look, the republicans busted the budget to give tax breaks to the richest people in the country, but when it came time to give out covid relief, they voted to stiff you. that's what democrats want to use as a political argument to really pressure the republicans on this thing. but then when the democrats in charge, the democrats are in charge and they can write the bill, they decide to cut 40 million americans off from relief? 40 million middle class americans who got help while the republicans were in control, the democrats cut them off? why would you do that? i mean that's a lot of things. great politics is not one of them. in this case the progressive caucus would argue that the quality of the politics here and the quality of the policy go hand in hand. pernilla jayapal is chair of the progressive caucus. they've been arguing that not

only should the democrats not cut those tens of millions out of the covid relief bill, she and her caucus have really led the way to fight for the covid relief bill to also raise the minimum wage, a hike in the federal minimum wage for the first time in 12 years. that would give us -- that would give 27 million americans a permanent raise. joining us now is congresswoman pernilla jayapal from the great state of washington, chair of the progressive caucus. congresswoman jayapal, thank you for joining us tonight. it is great to see you. >> it is great to be with you, rachel. >> let me ask you first at a personal level if you don't mind, i know you have been contending with covid. i wanted to ask how you are and how your family is. >> thank you so much for asking. i am almost 100% and my husband is almost 100%, and i just -- my heart goes out to people across this country, 450,000 who have died and people who are dealing with it because the effects do go on. we were two of the lucky ones, frankly, to even have as short of a recovery as we've had. so we're doing well.

thank you. >> good. i'm glad, i am glad to hear it. we've had our own challenges in my own family, and i know that those long consequences are a real thing. well, let me ask you about this plan for relief for the american public on covid. i think i laid out some of -- at least the way i understand the discussion. as far as i can tell, it is a point of interest, particularly to the press, as to whether or not a few or a lot or no republicans are going to join with democrats in passing this thing. but as a matter of content, it doesn't much matter. it is up to democrats who have the votes just in the democratic caucus to pass this thing, to decide what is going to be in it. you and your colleagues in the progressive caucus are really leading to make sure that the benefits are not cut down from what they were in terms of relief under president trump, and that important economic measures like the rise in the minimum wage are included. is that fair? >> that's totally fair.

you were right on when you said we shouldn't care whether republicans are going to vote for this or not because the vast majority of the american people support this package, republicans and democrats. so if we want to talk about unifying proposals, a big, bold stimulus package that raises the wage and gets checks out to people, puts money in people's pockets, deals with all of the issues that small businesses and families are facing, that is the unifying proposal. republicans, if they don't want to go along with it, that's up to them. but we now control, democrats now control the house, the senate and the white house. i grant you that it is a thin majority in both chambers, but the reality, rachel, is we've got to do what we promised. we have got to get these $2,000 checks, $1,400 in addition to the $600, out to people. we should not be cutting thresholds to $50,000 and $100,000. that makes no political sense. you outlined that. it also makes no policy sense because we are looking at 2019

numbers to determine this eligibility. everybody understands that tens of millions of people lost their jobs or had reduced income in 2020. so if you look at an income threshold from 2019, it is not relevant to what we're trying to do. this idea of targeting, i just call it restricting for no good reason. because if you really wanted to target, then you would need to look at the most recent data on income, which is not what we're using in this bill. so let's just get these checks out to everybody, and we did score a victory after a lot of pushing that the progressive caucus did over the weekend. we were able to secure at least the initial victory of keeping these thresholds the same. but we just have to be really clear, there are a lot of people who are hurting across this country, and reducing thresholds and talking about some fake targeting is not going to get

relief to people, on top of not being what we campaigned on. so that's the first thing. then the second thing on the minimum wage, i mean i represent the city that was the first major city in the country to pass the minimum wage, $15 minimum wage. i was on the committee that helped draft that proposal when we passed it back in 2014, and that's seattle, of course. so this has been, you know, such a big priority for progressives for a decade, led by fast food workers across this country. just over the weekend we were starting to hear all of the reasons why we shouldn't put $15 into the bill and, frankly, we had to push back very, very hard. we were able to work with leadership, with the chairman of the education and labor committee, and yesterday there was no $15 bill in the education and labor markup and today, rachel, there is. what does that mean? $330 billion in wages will flow to workers over the next ten

years. 27 million workers will get a raise, and 1 million workers will be lifted out of poverty. this is a core, important issue and structural reform that will also persist past covid. so it is one of the most important things we can do. i just have to smile from ear to ear, but i want to make sure that people understand we've got to get it across the finish line. it has to stay in the bill. the thresholds have to stay in the bill all the waugh through the house and into the senate, and democrats have to fight. we have to fight with everything we've got for these progressive, bold ideas that will bring relief to people. >> congresswoman pernilla jayapal, the chair of the congressional progressive caucus. i'm not sure a lot of people knew that the $15 minimum wage wasn't going to be in the bill until the work that was done by you and other progressives over the weekend to get that there.

thank you for helping us understand that and help us make that news and let everybody knows. as you say, it is the start of the process but laying out the stakes as clearly as possible. great to see you. good wishes on a great recovery. >> great to see you, too, rachel. to you and your family as well. it was heartbreaking and i appreciate you bringing it to the forefront. >> thank you. that is kind of you to say. thank you. we have so much more to get to tonight. stay with us. t to tonight. stay with us

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♪♪ you're watching msnbc. oldmar the a city on the west side of florida. about 15,000 people live there, half an hour from tampa. the stadium where the super bowl was played this weekend is about 12 miles away. as we were heading into the weekend, the super bowl weekend on friday afternoon somebody tampered with the drinking water in the city of oldsmar, florida. before the water leaves the treatment facility, they have a town treatment facility, before it leaves there and flows into

people's taps certain chemicals and additives are added to the drinking water to make it safe for people to drink. at 1:30 p.m. this past friday an employee at the treatment plant noted the cursor on his computer screened moved around. it pulled up the control for a chemical called sodium hydroxide, better known by lye. it is added to potable water in small amounts to regular the ph of the water. in high doses lye can be dangerous. it is the same chemical used in liquid drain cleaners. typically oldsmar adds lye in the amount of 100 parts per million on less. but on friday morning that water treatment employee watched the phantom cursor move the controls in the water treatment software to increase the amount of lye being added into oldsmar's water

from less than 100 parts per million to over 11,000 parts per million. it was obvious to this employee right away that his computer was being hacked. he immediately took control of the machine, undid what the hacker had just done before the water could be significantly contaminated. today the county sheriff announced that the water treatment facility on friday was unlawfully hacked. he said the fbi and the u.s. secret service are involved in an ongoing investigation. as of now there are no known suspects. it is unknown whether the hacker was located overseas or here in the united states. city officials made it clear today that even if that water treatment employee hadn't been so attentive on friday and hadn't seen the hack happen in real-time, it still would have taken at least a full day before that contaminated water hit people's taps. they say there are other safeguards in place that would have detected the strong change in the ph of the water, the contamination of the waterway before then. so they're saying that this kind

of attack on the city's water supply would have been caught some other way if it wasn't caught the way that it was, which i guess is comforting in a sense. but until we know more about this hack, including how hard it was to pull off, it really does raise all sorts of questions about, you know, how secure all of those safeguards really were. if you could hack the computer that added the lye to the water, could you have hacked the alarms that are supposed to alert people that the ph is wrong in the water as it is getting to people's taps? an attack on our critical infrastructure, on our electricity, on our hospitals, on the water we drink, that is the nightmare scenario for cyber warfare leading the conceptual realm most of us don't get into the terrorism realm that a lot of us think about all the time. that nightmare has never been fully realized in this country, but in oldsmar, florida, on friday we got one big step

closer. nicole perloff has reported on critical infrastructure attacks all over the world. this is what she had to say tonight after hearing the news out of oldsmar. she says, quote, i always put water treatment plants first in my stories in my line-up of remotely hackable infrastructure. it is because this is the attack scenario that freaked me out to most. to date these attacks have been near misses, yet we continue to see determined hackers poking and probing these systems. we are warned of cyber pearl harbor bombs, but water contamination is a silent though no less deadly threat. she has a brand-new book out called "this is how they tell me the world ends, the cyber weapons arms race." she joins us next. stay with us. she joins us next. stay with us

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♪ got my hair ♪ ♪ got my head ♪ ♪ got my brains ♪ ♪ got my ears ♪ ♪ got my heart ♪ ♪ got my soul ♪ ♪ got my mouth ♪ ♪ i got life ♪ i made a business out of my passion. i mean, who doesn't love obsessing over network security? all our techs are pros. they know exactly which parking lots have the strongest signal. i just don't have the bandwidth for more business. seriously, i don't have the bandwidth. glitchy video calls with regional offices? yeah, that's my thing. with at&t business, you do the things you love. our people and network will help do the things you don't. let's take care of business. at&t. to defend against dark forces attacking your organization, you need to see in the dark. to have the wisdom to understand multiple cyber threats. the precision focus to end attacks instantly.

on computers, mobile devices, servers and the cloud. join the world's leading companies in our mission to defend. cybereason. end cyber attacks. from endpoints to everywhere. ♪♪ for about a decade journalist nicole perlroth has been covering cybersecurity and digital espionage for "the new

york times", covering everything from russia's hacking targeting federal agencies and u.s. elections and the ukrainian gas company at the center of the first trump impeachment to north korea's cyberattacks against banks and hospitals to iran's attacks on oil companies and also on banks. she's also on the byline tonight on a story that feels unsettlingly much closer to home, the hacking of the town water treatment plant in a little city called oldsmar, florida, population 15,000. that attempted poisoning on friday, nicole perlroth tonight calls that, quote, the scenario, a cyberattack on a water treatment facility that contaminates a town water that has long been feared by cybersecurity experts. tomorrow, coincidence, this barn-burning culmination of nicole perlroth's years of reporting on cybersecurity is about to hit book shelves. it reads like a novel. it is not. it is called "this is how they tell me the world ends, the

cyber weapons arms race." in it perlroth lays out how the u.s. has gone from leading the world in cyber hacking expertise to being really quite vulnerable to cyberattacks from lots of places. she says, quote, the analogy to pearl harbor is a deeply flawed one. america didn't see that attack coming. we've seen the cyber equivalent coming for a decade, but we're experiencing instead is not one attack but a plague, invisible to the naked eye, that ripples across our country at an extraordinary rate, reaching every deeper into our democracy, our freedom, our privacy and psyche with no end in site. american computers are attacked every 39 seconds. only when there are highly visible mishaps do we pause for reflections. but the lessons from the most destructive attacks seem to be forgotten too quickly. we've normalized them, even as the threats grow higher, as the threats mutate into even deadlier versions as they hit us quicker than before. joining us is nicole perlroth,

author of the new book, "this is how they tell me the world ends." thank you for being here on the eve of public lags. i appreciate it. >> thanks so much for having me, rachel. >> i read everything that you write and i find your beat fans fans -- fascinating. i'm not the kind of person that wraps my head around these kind of details but you explain them so i can understand. can you tell me sort of how many alarms this water treatment plant in florida story has set off for you? how serious do you think this is? >> well, like i said, you did a great job explaining it. like i said, this is the attack i've been worried about for a long time. whenever i talked about the hypothetical event of a cyberattack hitting critical infrastructure in the united states, the one that always freaked me out the most was a hack on a water treatment facility because this is not something where an explosion would go off or a bomb. this is something where someone

getting into these controls like they did friday could actually contaminate the drinking water for large swaths of the population. now, in this case oldsmar's population is 15,000, but we should look at this attack very carefully. we should look at how they got in. we should try to understand what sort of mitigations would have been put in place if someone happened to not be sitting at their computer and watch their mouse cursor move around. it sounds like that contaminated water wouldn't have gotten into the drinking supply for another 24 to 36 hours and there might have been sensors along the way, but i thought you made a great point. which is that if they could get into these systems and they could access the controls, what was to stop them from maybe mucking up the controls themselves to make sure that those last-minute mitigations wouldn't work. you know, as you read from my book, we just continue to see these sort of escalating cyberattacks, and the one that

really -- what really brought this to mind was the attack in 2017 that russia pulled off on a saudi petro chemical plant where what they did was they actually dismantled the safety locks at that plant, the very last mitigation in a long line of mitigations that is in place to prevent an explosion. they were actually able to essentially neutralize those safety locks. so we know that's possible. we don't know what would have happened here if someone wasn't sitting at their computer, but we continue to have these big near misses, and it seems like each one just gets closer and closer and closer. >> i feel like the thing that i have learned from your reporting, particularly from the book, is that my initial instinct on this as a consumer of news is sort of wrong, or at least it is beside the point. my initial instinct is, yeah, how hard is it to do this? does that limit the number of suspects? how long is it going to take to figure out who did this and, therefore, what their intent was

and how they can be brought to justice? i feel like from your reporting i have learned that basically everybody can do this, that if it can be done, there's lots of skilled actors around the world and a lot of our lack of defenses as a country are because we came to believe that we were the only people who were working on this with any level of expertise. so we never built defenses into our own systems. now that everybody has the tools that we have, and i mean everybody in a hyperbolic sense, but lots of entities have that. thinking about the individual suspects' list maybe isn't the right approach here. >> yeah. i mean just like you said, anybody could have done this. you know, it could have been a bored teenager, it could have been a disgruntled employee, it could have been a nation state. you know, most of my reporting has focused on the nation state threat, but, yes, this is not that difficult to pull off. many of the people i talked to today called it a pretty simplistic attack. so, you know, one of the things

people highlighted was that this was on a really small facility. you know, when you are talking about a giant critical infrastructure operator like a pg&e, they're going to have a lot of mitigations and security measures in place. but where we're vulnerable is with these smaller utilities, these small water treatment plants, these small towns and cities, the smaller dams that hackers could get inside their control system, dismantle the locks on these dams and essentially cause a kind of cyber-induced tsunami. we've seen some of these. you know, a couple of years ago, i think it was 2013, we caught iranian hackers inside the bowman avenue dam. now, the bowman avenue dam is about 30 miles north of new york. it keeps back a little babbling brook and it wouldn't have done that much damage if they had pulled it off. i remember the day it happened, michael daniel, the white house cyber coordinator, got a phone

call from john brennan. freaked out because they thought it was the arthur j. bowman dam in or began, which if iranian hackers got inside that dam and basically messed with the locks that hold its water back, they really could have caused the equivalent of a terrorist attack. we keep seeing sort of the capabilities, keep getting better and better, and we keep seeing more and more adversaries probing at our critical infrastructure. there were more attacks on american critical infrastructure in the second half of last year than we had seen in the previous two years combined. so the threat is getting more frequent, and, you know, here is the bigger thought though, is the united states still is the world's top cyber superpower. we have the best offensive capabilities when it comes to cyberattacks. there's a reason why you keep seeing me report on russian

attacks and iranian attacks and chinese attacks. it is not because i'm ignoring what the msa or cyber command does. it is just that their attacks are much more difficult to detect because they're better and more sophisticated and more stealth y. the problem is that the united states lead has been slipping. we are now among the most targeted countries in the world by hackers, and we are the most vulnerable because we are so digitized. we made this decision as a society a long time ago we wanted as much convenience and access as possible. you know, first it was uber and then we developed uber of this and the uber of that. we wanted to control our whole lives via remote control, and that's also true for our critical infrastructure. we wanted to make it possible for software engineers to be able to measure the temperature

and the pressure and the chemical levels at our water treatment facilities from afar, but that same access makes us more vulnerable than most other nation states out there. so we have a big problem here when it comes to defense. >> yeah. all of these things that we think of as advances end up creating all new vulnerabilities in their wake. nicole perlroth, the author of this new book that comes out tomorrow, "this is how they tell me the world ends." fantastic title. cyber weapons. again, congratulations on this achievement, nicole. thanks for helping us understand tonight. >> thank you. thank you for continuing to raise these issues because they really are only getting scarier and worse as time goes on. so i am sure i will be talking to you soon. >> i hear you. i hear you. all right. we will be right back. stay with us.

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today in arizona the republican-controlled state senate took a vote on whether they should have the ee

legislated leaders of arizona's largest county arrested. they took a count on whether to have all five maricopa county supervisors locked up because the supervisor, five-member board, declared the biden won the election fair and square. republicans in the state senate are so sure there must have been massive fraud that stole the election from donald trump in maricopa they subpoenaed the board of supervisors and demanded they hand over the voting machines and ballots. state senate republicans said they would look at the ballots themselves and find the fraud themselves. the board said they can't do that, voter's ballots are secret by law. in response senate republicans moved to vote to hold the entire board of supervisors in contempt, which would have authorized the arrest of all of them. well, tonight the supervisors can breathe a sigh of relief, though just barely. the contempt vote failed by a single vote. one senate republican broke with his party. here is something you should see. when it became clear the

contempt vote was going to fail, one republican senator issued what sounded frankly like a threat. this is republican arizona senator kelly townsend. she is speaking on the senate floor remotely. i will warn you her virtual background is distracting but listen to what she says here. >> now it is going to have to go into the hands of the public. right now the last place this needs to be is in a place where the public is so lathered up over all of this. we need to do this in a way that is professional, legal and proper, not that the public's not, but they shouldn't have to do this on our behalf. so, public, do what you got to do. >> so, public, do what you got to do. the public is going to have to take care of this on their own because we didn't do it here. that lathered up public. do what you got to do. do what? what do you want the public to do here? i mean what they're talking about here is arresting the maricopa county board of supervisors. she is saying the public is

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thanks for being with us tonight. special coverage of president trump's senate impeachment trial begins at 9:00 a.m. tomorrow on msnbc and throughout the day and i'll be back here tomorrow night at the usual time. and tonight my colleague lawrence o'donnell will have a special hour about tomorrow's impeachment trial. it's called "trump on trial" and that begins now. good evening. >> good evening. we're going to begin with the world's leading expert on senate impeachment trials. that is, of course, congressman adam schiff, who was the lead prosecutor in the last senate impeachment trial. no one has more recent and relevant experience. he's going to guide us through whth