. good to be with you. i'm katy tur. there is an unsolved mystery in the skies above new jersey. as residents and local officials report drone spottings in the night sky. some as large as small suvs. so what exactly is going on? according to the white house, there's really nothing to see here. >> this time, the reported drone sightings pose a national security or a public safety threat or have a foreign nexus, the department of homeland security and the fbi are

investigating these sightings and they're working closely with state and local law enforcement to provide resources using numerous detection methods to better understand their origin. >> okay, so if that's the answer, that it's not a big deal, why are new york and new jersey lawmakers still so alarmed? senators booker, kim, gillibrand, and schumer have all sent a letter to dhs, the fbi, and the faa demanding a briefing on the drones. and now connecticut senator richard blumenthal is agreeing with two new jersey congressmen who say they should be shot down if necessary. so again, what exactly is going on? and if there was an innocent answer, why are the country's top lawmakers and officials all of whom have access to some level of intelligence not in agreement? joining us now, nbc news capitol hill correspondent ryan nobles. ryan, what are you hearing on the hill? >> reporter: a lot of frustration, frankly, katy. and it's interesting the way this bubbled up on capitol hill. this was a story that was

percolating, started online, and then more and more people kind of connected over the fact they were all seeing these mysterious spacecraft or not spacecraft, i shouldn't call it that, aircraft in their skies above their homes and wanted to know what it was. that led to them burning up the phones of their senators and congressmen's office, and what we saw play out on capitol hill yesterday was a wide range of both senators and house members, both republican and democrat, who were demanding answers from the administration. they want briefings. they want to be in the room and what they want out of these briefings is not some sort of classified conversation where they're given assurances that this isn't a big deal and just to let it go. they want to be able to take information out of that room and share it with their constituents that can calm their fears. right now, they don't feel like they're getting it, and what is really starting to bother them is that there's no indication as to when they will get that information, and i think that's why you're seeing the level of

frustration continue to rise here on capitol hill. >> it's weird, ryan, because normally, if there is an answer that is out there, you would see officials in agreement. i find it -- did you find it strange that john kirby of the national security council, doesn't seem to be on the same page even as democratic senators in the tristate area? >> reporter: yeah, because i think that the members of congress are getting the same answers that you and i are getting. and that is we don't think it has a nexus to any sort of foreign threat. we don't think that it's some sort of surveillance program that could hurt the average american. we don't believe it's a national security threat, we don't believe it's a public safety threat, but we also don't know what it is. it's hard for you to draw all of those original conclusions if you don't have the most important conclusion at the end of it, and that is what is this thing, or what are these things. the fact that despite this has gotten so much attention over the past week, the idea that

senator andy kim, a newly elected senator, andy kim from new jersey, could go out with a local law enforcement officer last night and find numerous examples of these aircraft in the skies above new jersey, despite the fact there's all this attention being paid to them, i think is another indication of just why people want answers as it relates to this. and i think it also, katy, when you talk about the disconnect between what's happening coming out of the administration, coming out of the pentagon, the faa, versus what we hear from members of congress who are directly accountable to their voters is there is just a general distrust of the federal government. that's from both republicans and democrats. it's not just enough anymore for the federal government to say don't worry about this. americans need evidence behind why they shouldn't be nervous about this. and that's why i think you see members of congress responding the way they are. they want to go to their constituents and say here's why this isn't a big deal.

>> to be clear, john kirby yesterday was saying a lot of the sightings they have been able to look at, to get a look at, were lawful manned aircraft being mistaken for something a little bit more sin sister or unmanned drones. sam brock, our colleague, has a little bit more on what exactly is going including video of these sightings. >> reporter: the reported drone sightings that have consumed new jersey. >> there's a drone. >> reporter: now expanding to buoy, maryland, outside of washington, where a group of four senators from new york and new jersey are demanding a briefing from the fbi, faa, and homeland security as soon as possible on how the agencies are working to identify and address the source of these incursions. >> we don't know who is sending them, who is controlling them, whether they are spying. >> i'm a little frustrated. there hasn't been enough transparency, letting people know what's happening.

it's allowing misinformation to spread or at least fear. >> reporter: as rose's luncheonette in new jersey, the drones are the talk of the town. >> a lot of panic in the area. >> reporter: the restaurant's owner says he was woken up by one. >> it sounded like a helicopter. look out the window and saw lights, you know, in the sky like a green light, red light. >> a pair of drones right here in front of me. >> reporter: about a week ago, the mayor sam morris investigated reports of eight drones flying by his government building. >> you saw them right over there. >> over the tree line. >> reporter: he says local mayors are demanding answers too. >> this smacks of a lack of control. and that makes people very uncomfortable. >> reporter: thursday, the white house downplaying concerns, saying the sightings are not military drones, do not come from a foreign threat. they aren't even sure if they're drones at all. >> it appears that many of the reported sightings are actually manned aircraft that are being operated lawfully. >> reporter: rob demiko is the former head of the fbi's counterdrone unit who says it

can be easy to confuse drones with planes or other aircraft. >> you suspect a large percentage of these sightings are manned aircraft? >> i believe probably 90% of them all. i think the other 10% drones that are allowed to be flying. >> reporter: whatever is swooping around in the skies, locals believe they're not getting the full story. do you get the impression the federal government knows way more? >> absolutely, without a doubt. >> there's that suspicion of the federal government again. joining us now, the mayor of montvale, new jersey. thank you so much, mr. mayor, for being with us. what have you been seeing out there? >> so, for the last two, three weeks we have been seeing the same thing. small drones. they are around the schools, around the reservoir, around the streets. we are on track to the airport, so we see small planes and yes, they do mistake them for a drone, but they hover and go up

and down. these are not planes. as recently as last night during the christmas lighting ceremony, there were two drones and then another one came and they were in sync as if someone has a computer program to fly them. they were right on top of us. >> so what do you want to happen? do you think they should be shot down? >> i mean, that might be dangerous, but someone should know. we went to a briefing with the state police and with the director of homeland security two days ago. they told us to share this information, which is really nothing. they said these are car-sized drones that stay in the air for about six hours. they don't emit any frequencies so they can't catch it, but they don't know where it is leaving from and where it is landing at. which is really, really scary. and there's a genuine fear at least in my community when they're on top of the reservoir that we drink from, i don't know if they're dropping anything there.

if they are surveying, all that is unknown. that's what's really frustrating. >> you say they can't be tracked. why can they not be tracked? >> the briefing we got from the state police superintendent, they don't emit any frequency. >> so they're not picked up on a radar is what you're saying? >> not picked up, exactly. i have a small drone, a handheld drone. if i fly it over 400 feet, i get a message i am in violation and drop to below 400 feet. at 400 feet, it's about the size of a penny. for my eyesight. these are the size of a small dining room table, small car. at least. >> the residents in your area you say are concerned about the reservoir. what do you have on the reservoir to make sure that it's not being tampered with? i assume you have real time sensors to make sure that all of the levels within that water are still safe to drink.

>> yes, so the water company does that for us. it is fenced all around, but these are flying so the flying on top of the reservoir, the schools, the electric substation, and the fear is that we don't know who is flying them. that's where my residents are asking, who are these? and why all of a sudden, and why they are flying in sync. there is an organized program that is making them fly that way. >> are you worried you might have some residents trying to take these things down themselves? >> i think if they come down to an eye level, i see someone throwing a rock at it, but i don't think they'll use anything more dangerous. >> one of the questions i have is if it were a foreign adversary, and so far there's no evidence pointed to that, no intelligence release that says that's the case.

if they were for nefarious purposes, why would they be lit up like that? if you were flying a drone and trying to do surveillance on another country to gather intelligence, i mean, ient don't know that i would put on a bunch of blinking lights, especially in the middle of the night. you would want to not only not be picked up by radar but not be picked up by the human eye. >> exactly. you would go dark. the fact that when they survey, they survey at night because there are no cars and there is no disruption. so that makes sense. the fact that they use lights means they are registered through the faa, you would think. but no one has, to my knowledge, as of this moment, said yes we know who they are. they are okay. don't worry about it. no one can tell us who owns these drones. and that's what's scary. >> one of the reasons this makes it concerning for folks, especially lawmakers, is that there were a bunch of drones hovering over military sites,

naval sites in virginia last year. and the pentagon had questions about that. there's still some serious concern within the pentagon about what exactly was going on there. there was also evidence that a student, a chinese student was flying some drones around there, and he was never charged, but when police stopped him and eventually let him go because they had nothing on him, he got in a plane and went back to china, this is according to reporting from the "wall street journal." so there's certainly a heightened level of concern out there. regarding the use of drones. if you were talking to somebody within the federal government who could address this stuff, what would be your suggestion in order to make your residents feel safer and also to make you feel safer? >> i think there's two things that they could do right away. number one, declare a no-fly zone for drones. if a drone is in the air, that drone is out there illegally. shoot it down. the second thing, there's about 700, 800,000 registered drones

that they can go and track. do you have your drone? it's some work to be done, but the only way to go back and track who is flying these drones, when i fly my drone, i get a message if i'm in violation. it's a handheld drone. >> maybe just not allowing drones, period, if we can't figure out which is an amateur drone and which is not an amateur drone. there's also a lot of privacy questions around just anyone flying a drone out there and what they can see and what people are entitled to on the ground. mayor, thank you very much. we hope you get some answers soon. we hope to get some answers soon as well. >> thank you. and still ahead, what china did to at least eight u.s. telecom companies and how it could impact you. how it's impathing you frankly right now, and what the nypd has learned about what luigi mangione did after allegedly

killing unitedhealthcare ceo brian thompson. first, though, what rfk jr.'s lawyer asked the fda to do just two years ago that might foreshadow how kennedy would run hhs, specifically on the polio vaccine. we're back in 90 seconds. you know what you don't see in psoriasis commercials? the thousands of real people who go undiagnosed. people whose psoriasis can look very different depending on their skin tone. as the makers of tremfya®, we understand that everybody's moderate to severe plaque psoriasis doesn't look the same. so, we undertook a first-of-its-kind study of plaque psoriasis in every skin tone. like hers and his and yours. serious allergic reactions and increased risk of infections may occur.

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that is, to start meeting with senators in his bid to be the nation's next hhs secretary. while the road to being confirmed never promised to be smooth, we're learning of yet another pothole. this time, it's his ally, his lawyer, in fact. a man who filed a petition two years ago requesting the government revoke its approval of the polio vaccine, a vaccine that has saved millions of lives. since it was developed in the 1950s. joining us now, senior scholar at the johns hopkins center for health security at the bloomberg school of public health, really good to see you in person. so happy that covid is over so we can finally have these conversations one-on-one. rfk jr., we have been talking about his issues with vaccines for a while. but this other guy, his lawyer, the person who is advising him on who to staff hhs with if he gets confirmed, is also not a believer in vaccines,

specifically petitioning to get the polio vaccine removed. why would anybody petition to get the polio vaccine removed? what could he possibly be worried about? >> i don't know. it's really hard to understand where the level of irrationality is in some of these individuals. polio vaccine is probably one of the most successful vaccines in the history of medicine. one that donald trump even said he loved. it's odd when we're on the brink of eradicating polio from the planet that this is the vaccine he wants to pull. this is a vaccine people clamored for. fdr was personally involved in getting that to happen. >> there was a parade when it was announced that the trials went well. >> there was a ticker tape parade. there were store signs that said thank you, dr. saulk. this was something that really that saved the world from something that was this scourge that people were afraid of every summer. now it's not even an issue in many parts of the world. >> what's the reasoning for petitioning to get it removed? why would anybody want it

removed? what is he trying to say might be wrong with it? >> he said he wants placebo controlled trials. >> how can you do that? >> you can't. >> explain why it's not ethical or safe. >> you would have to expose people to polio. we know this vaccine already works. >> kids. >> and jonah salk did that in the original trials. he randomized people in certain grades. one grade got the vaccine, other grades didn't. that was the big thing that got announced that led to the ticker tape parade. was not quite randomization, like one person gets placebo, one gets the vaccine. one grade got vaccinated, one didn't, and they looked at the results and it was overwhelmingly successful. that's what led to the elimination of polio, this golden age of vaccines with polio and that success story. >> let's go back to the foundation here in case anybody gets mixed up or gets lost. the issue that robert f. kennedy jr. has with vaccines is that he claims they're linked to autism.

is there any evidence whatsoever that vaccines are linked to autism? >> no, it's been debunked. it's actually basically a lie. there was a false fabricated paper published in a major journal that got retracted. the person lost their medical license, the person paid by trial lawyers to do this fake trial. everybody took their name off it, yet that mythology lives on, and that's where that came from. now it's something that people have kind of anchored to. >> why do they believe it? why is it that they believe the vaccine could be linked to autism? >> because there's not a good explanation for why children get autism. we don't have the cause for autism. people start to get diagnosed, their children get diagnosed around the time they get the vaccine. there's pure coincidence in terms of timing, and the human brain looks at something and one thing happens, another things happen after, and they make a causal link. >> what i find really especially interesting about this is one of the big success stories from donald trump's term was the

operation to get the covid vaccine out. he did it quickly, and it was tested and proven pretty safe. and it helped get the country out of the pandemic. operation warp speed, the big success story from donald trump's time. and instead of embracing it, he's running from it. >> that's one of the big paradoxes. president trump deserves a lot of credit for operation warp speed. he pushed all of those ceos to go faster, and he had this whole portfolio approach where they invested in multiple vaccines. that was genius in terms of getting a vaccine to the people quickly. they recognized that was the way out of the pandemic. he's not even able to claim a victory lap because he's sold his soul to a group of people that don't believe in vaccines. >> a quick question, if he did want to take a vaccine off the market, what's the process for revoking the approval for the vaccine? would it -- if donald trump decides or the fda decides they're done with something on monday, on tuesday, is it off

the shelves? >> no, it's a process that the fda would go through, through its committees, advisory boards and eventually -- >> it would take some time. >> it's not something they can snap their fingers and it's gone. there would be lots of pushback and lawsuits. >> doctor, really good to see you. thanks for coming to new york and saying hi to us. appreciate it, even on this cold day. >> still ahead, what congress can do to fix what even the ceo of united health group says is a flawed health care system. a senior lawmaker on the budget committee joins us. plus, what clues have surfaced in the search for this man, a missing americans, austin tice, in syria? don't go anywhere. yria don't go anywhere. i used to leak urine when i coughed, laughed or exercised. i couldn't even enjoy playing with my kids. i leaked too. i just assumed it was normal. then we learned about bulkamid. an fda approved non-drug solution for our condition.

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and see where it takes you. a judge will decide whether luigi mangione will be extradited to new york in a little more than two weeks given mangione and his defense attorney more time to prepare for the murder charges he is facing in manhattan. charges based on mounting evidence, nbc news correspondent stephanie gosk has the new working theory from police on how mangione allegedly escaped capture here in new york. >> reporter: this morning, a detailed new look at how police say luigi mangione planned his escape from new york city. after allegedly gunning down unitedhealthcare ceo brian thompson. the nypd says the trail went cold after he fled the crime scene on an e-bike into central park, and ended up at a bus

station uptown. authorities now telling nbc news' jonathan dienst it appears he hopped on a subway and doubled back in an effort to throw the police off his trail. police say mangione also had thousands of dollars in his bag. >> he was getting money from an atm. everything he did, he was paying for in cash. >> reporter: altoona police also recovered a gun the nypd says its crime lab has matched to three shell casings left behind at the crime scene, but an ongoing mystery is how he got the weapon. >> the gun itself, it is a ghost gun, it is a receiver that comes from a gun manufacturer from parts and then the gun was built up from a 3d printer. >> reporter: police say they're still searching for a possible motive. unitedhealthcare confirming mangione was not insured by their health plan, but investigators continue to look into whether years of severe back problems and eventual surgery may have played a role. >> he posted x-rays of screws being inserted into his spine, so the injury he suffered was a

life-changing, life-altering injury, and that's what may have put him on this path. >> reporter: as the investigation ramps up in new york, he sits in a maximum custody prison cell in pennsylvania. his attorney filed a petition contesting his detention, arguing the state has not proven mangione was in new york the day of the murder, or provided probable cause that he was responsible for the crime. >> stephanie gosk reporting for us. "the new york times" today, andrew witty, the ceo of united health care group, the parent company of unitedhealthcare, remembered brian thompson, while admitting the system is flawed. trying to acknowledge and quell the outburst of rage we have witnessed toward insurance companies since the murder. witty writes, quote, health care is both intensely personal and very complicated. and the reasons behind coverage decisions are not well understood. we share some of that responsibility, together with employers, governments, and others who pay for care we need

to improve how we explain what insurance covers and how decisions are made. joining us now, pennsylvania congressman brendan boyle, the ranking member of the house budget committee. i think one of the things that -- i acknowledge that witty is trying to quell some anger, some frustration, but i think one of the things that might make people angrier is this idea that everything has to be so complicated. why does it have to be so complicated? when you're sick, you go to the doctor, the doctor provides you medicine or treatment or you go to have surgery or an emergency, the doctor should be the person making the decisions on what you need, not the insurance company. >> i completely agree. here are facts that frankly are not complicated. united states spends approximately 17% of its gdp on health care. that's double what most other industrialized western countries pay. and what do we get for paying double what everyone else pays? health outcomes that are

somewhere middle of the pack, not nearly as good as those countries that are in the top ten. so most people's lived experiences are such that they know that the health care that we have in the united states is both overly expensive and not nearly as effective as it could and should be. >> how does congress step in to try to rectify that? >> this has been a 100-year battle. franklin roosevelt and harry truman were fighting for universal health care. they weren't able to get it. medicare in the '60s was the compromise in order to get full coverage for those 65 and older, and then of course, 15 years ago, the fight to bring in the affordable care act did a great -- achieved a great number of things. and made real progress, but we still have to do far more in order to bring down the cost of health care in the united states. >> so a lot of americans want a better system. and bernie sanders believed the system should be socialized health care, but that's not exactly so popular with a lot of

americans who maybe want to keep their doctors and are worried about what it would mean, they look at places like canada or the uk, and they do see some issues, long waits for scans and what not, even though their health outcomes are better than ours. by and large. is there a -- is there a balance between socialized health care and private health care that we have now? is there a way to blend the two and make it so that we're not having daily fights with our insurance companies over going to see the doctor? >> you brought up canada and the uk, two countries that do have fully government-run systems. but there are other country said, france, germany, japan, that do have hybrid systems, and i'm a pragmatist. 165 million americans have employer provided health insurance. that's not going to change. the idea that suddenly that would go to zero, i don't think is practical. but what you can do is have more of a hybrid system in the united states to make sure there is that basic level of coverage for

those who aren't covered. you also need to have government step in kind of what we did in the inflation reduction act, where we said that medicare would have the ability to negotiate the cost of prescription drugs. that's important to bring down the cost of those drugs, not just for those on medicare, but it has the effect where the entire market then sees the cost of those drugs drop. so in the end of the day, i think the hybrid model, which as i said, other countries have used successfully, is more of the way we should go. >> is this something people could run on politically? when we're looking at the outburst of rage, it's not coming from democrats or republicans. it's coming from people who are across the board. they're not political actors. it's like the very wealthy and it's everybody else. >> i can tell you, one of the two big reasons why democrats won control of congress back in 2018 was the health care issue. it was the attempt, the failed attempt by one thumbs down from john mccain to repeal the affordable care act or

obamacare. if we see republicans and president trump take another run at trying to do away with obamacare, i predict we will again see health care be one of the biggest issues in the next campaign. >> do you think you can work in the next session with your republican colleagues to make a fix? >> i do. i have a very simple bill as it relates to women and lung cancer. unfortunately, an increasing number of women who are nonsmokers are contracted lung cancer. i'm working with republican colleagues in order to make that law. >> let me ask you about the budget. you're the ranking member on the budget committee in the house. are we going to have a budget deal come early next year, or will we be facing a shutdown? >> i do not think there's a will on the republican side to shut down the government december 20th is the date by which we need to pass a new resolution. it looks like there will be a continuing resolution. >> a short-term one probably. >> to kick it into march. i have to say, i think perhaps my republican friends have learned their lessons from past

shutdowns and the reality is once we get into january, there's full republican control, so they know that they would suffer political damage if we have a shutdown. >> there's an interesting dynamic going on. you have the doge committee run by elon musk and vivek ramaswamy who they want to cut a ton of things from the federal budget. they want to cut it in half. >> like veterans health care. >> yeah, how do they do that without getting into entitlements? without cutting medicaid or medicare? >> their enemy is math. the math doesn't add up. i have been hearing for a very long time from my republican colleagues, we need to cut out waste, fraud, and abuse. but then when you actually see what they're looking to cut, it is literally veterans health care as well as some other things, particularly medicaid, that the american people rely on. >> your colleague jared moskowitz is going to join that committee. do you have any desire to, just to offer your own solutions? if they're offering ways to make the government more effective,

why not get on board and say here's a better way to do it? >> i will sincerely work with anyone in good faith if there are real ideas on how to make government more efficient. vice president al gore led that effort in the 1990s and had real success with it. that's something i'm interested in doing. the reason i started laughing about the doge, there is no department of government efficiency. it's not a real thing. i would love to work with republicans in good faith to actually identify real areas where we can make government more efficient, but i'm not going to go along with some completely bogus fake department that doesn't exist -- >> do you think we have too many environmental regulations? >> in the abstract, most people would say yes, we have too much regulation, period. but then when you get into specifics, that's where the devil is really in the details. you would have to look one by one. >> why does it cost a million dollars to put a toilet into a san francisco city? >> obviously, that shouldn't take place.

or why in some of these things in the defense department, do we see outlandish costs for very simple tools? so i think those things are real to look at. we know in the past like the clinton/gore led commission, there were real successes. i think that sort of approach is something that i could be supportive of. >> all right, congressman boyle, thank you very much for joining us. i appreciate it. >> all right, still ahead, secretary of state antony blinken made a surprise visit to baghdad today. what he's doing there and what the u.s. said it wants from a future syrian government. >> plus, one intelligence official has called the breach quite bad. what sensitive information chinese hackers got access to, and high your information is at risk. formation is at risk everyone customize and save hundreds on car insurance with liberty mutual. customize and sa— (balloon doug pops & deflates) and then i wake up. and you have this dream every night? yeah, every night! hmm... i see.

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secretary of state antony blinken made an unannounced visit to baghdad today, meeting with the iraqi prime minister to discuss the future of syria. blinken added the stop after telling reporters what the u.s. government would like to see from the new syrian regime. >> one that is inclusive and nonsectarian. one that protects the rights of minorities and women. one that preserves institutions of the state and delivers services to the people. one that deals with any chemical weapons it may find, to secure them and appropriately destroy them. one that rejects any alliances

with extremist groups. >> as syria's new leadership finds its footing, the search continues for the thousands who were disappeared before assad fled, including the fate of american journalist austin tice, who has now been missing for more than a decade. joining us now, nbc news chief foreign correspondent richard engel from damascus. what's the latest? >> reporter: so today, there were demonstrations all across this country. they were called for by the rebel government here. a government that is still in formation. and many thousands of people did come out onto the streets. some were celebrating, many were denouncing the former regime, and many were carrying photographs of missing relatives. this is a time when people are now finally free to ask questions. and demand answers. and search for their missing relatives. and it is also a time when people are searching for missing

foreigners because the foreign regime arrested many people who came into this country believing that they were spies, considered journalists to be enemies of the state. i was considered an enemy of the state for quite a while. and one of the journalists who is still missing is austin tice. and after many, many false leads and many promising leads, i have heard many of them over the years, we traced down one that was given to us by a former detainee who had remarkable amount of detail and says that he was held along with tice inside a syrian jail. american journalist austin tice has been missing in syria since 2012. his family has renewed hope he'll be found now that bashar al assad's dictatorship has been overthrown. this man, a senior rebel leader, says they're aware the assad

regime arrested tice. we have tried as much as possible to find information about austin, and return him to his mother. but we have not reached a result, he said. then, a lead. we spoke to a man now in dubai, he was an activist and citizen journalist arrested for filming anti-regime demonstrations. this is the first time he is showing his face on camera. he told us he was in a prison cell across from tice and last saw him alive in july 2022. on one occasion, he says, they punished me for four hours because i violated the instructions and looked at a detainee. we went to the location this morning. assad's former general intelligence prison. he said he memorized the location here. and he said you had to descend 27 steps to get to the right

area. 26, 27. it all checks out. he said the steps would lead to a row of cells about 100 yards long. this is the tiny solitary confinement cell where ahmed was kept with a tiny slot in the bottom. and just opposite, this is the cell where tice was kept. ahmed said most of the prisoners in this wing were foreigners. a calendar counting down days. this hand. it would have been absolutely miserable to stay here. look, there's still cockroaches crawling out of holes in the walls. we showed pictures of the cells ahmed, and he confirmed we're in the right place. he said tice was thin and like other prisoners, had his hair and eyebrows shaved off but appeared healthy, able to walk, eat, and communicate. we don't know what happened to

him after that. and katy, tonight, the fbi released a new enhanced photo. aged photo showing what tice might look like today at age 43. >> chilling to see those cells and the drawings, the handprint, the calendar. richard, it must have been personally, i'm sure, very difficult for you to walk in there as well. richard, thank you so much. >> still ahead, what u.s. officials are warning after chinese hackers breached eight u.s. telecom companies. olay visibly firms, lifts, and smooths wrinkles, by penetrating the skin, to boost regeneration at the surface cellular level. try olay. they get it. they know how it works. and most importantly, it works for them. at the surface cellular level. i don't have any anxiety about money anymore. i don't have to worry about a mortgage payment every month. it allowed me to live in my home and not have to make payments.

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sharing. it is one of the worst cyberattacks in american history, but industry sources tell nbc news that the majority of people whose phones and their metadata was breached have not been notified. as of now, there is no indication there are plans to. according to the white house, china's salt typhoon hack has now been under way for upwards of two years hitting at least eight of the major u.s. telecommunications providers. officials say only a few prominent individuals have been specifically targeted and that no classified communications have believed to have been accessed. but they are still warning all americans to only use encryption if you don't want hackers read your texts or listening to your

calls. joining us now, former director of the cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency and chief intelligence officer of sentinel one, chris krebs. all right, chris. a chinese hack that we have now been the victims of for more than two years. how does that happen? and how do we not know? >> well, i think the reality is that the chinese ministry of state security, who is allegedly behind this activity, this attack, is good. they are very sophisticated. they are very capable. they're very patient. very quiet. and they have been probing at all number of infrastructures here in the u.s. and elsewhere, and they have obviously had a great deal of success getting into various telecommunications providers. i think what's really -- well, the situation here is we have a bunch of systems that are a mix of modern technology and hybrid

legacy technology, and as i understand it, they just were able to pick off some vulnerable edge devices just sitting at the edge of the public internet and the enterprise, and they're able to walk right through and get into the telecommunications providers. >> what do they want with that sort of access? >> well, that's a great question because this is about espionage. we have talked before about how the chinese military is prepositioning for effect in aerocivilian critical infrastructure as well as our military critical infrastructure. the point there is destruction. the point here is intelligence collection. they want to know what the state department is thinking, what the white house is thinking. they want to know what the incoming trump administration is thinking. they want to be able to map out who is who in the zoo so they can run their own patterns of life and figure out if anyone is talking to chinese officials,

chinese reporters, chinese dissidents. so it's a very large catch everything and look for sensitive important information across the data sets. >> it's scary when you say not only can they now disrupt our systems, they have been able to hack into our grids and what not, but they can also surveil all of us. a couple of those two things together, that sounds bad. >> i feel like you're trying to trigger me here. you have heard me talk about this before. china is preparing for war. they are preparing for war. they are in our critical infrastructure. in our ports, in our water systems, in our grids, in our military systems. are we taking it as seriously as they seem to be? and i think in some cases i think the answer is no. but we have to up our game. the window of vulnerability is 2027 to 2032. where china has designs to go into taiwan, don't know if it's going to happen or not but they're planning for it. we have to take them seriously, take them at their word and prepare the same.

>> does that change what the new administration? do you have any idea why donald trump might be inviting president xi to the inauguration as has been reported? >> can't speak to that, but if you go and unpack project 2025, if you read the intelligence community chapter, the department of defense chapter, they see china as the pacing threat, as the preeminent threat. if you look at the nominations between marco rubio for state department, mike waltz as the national security adviser and a host of others, they have china hawks. there's going to be a significant pivot to china, a reliance on our allies in the indo-pacific region, including japan and india, to push back and contain china particularly when it comes to taiwan. >> they're preparing for war, which is not on my bingo card, at least for any of my guests to be saying today. chris krebs, thank you for that. leaving us on a good night before we head into the weekend.

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happy friday. it's 4:00 in new york. just days before donald trump's nominee to lead the department of health and human services, robert f. kennedy jr., heads to capitol hill to kick start his confirmation process. brand new reporting reveals that one of his aides has been waging war against one of the miracles