>> charlie: welcome to our program. we begin this evening with a philosopher slavoj zizek who has created controversy around the world. >> if you're a sinre liberal, start thinking about this. how really to save the freedoms that we enjoy. >> charlie: we include with misha dpleen dark market, cyber and you. >> that could have resulted in some for of nuclear accident. so what's important is there's a

state or states which have developed this technology. but b th're saying to the rest of the world, not only do we have it but we are prepared to deploy it and we are prepared to risk a nuclear accident as a consequence. once that came out then everyone around the wld said okay gloves off. >> charlie: philosophical arguments and cyber hacking when we continue.

captioningponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> charlie: slavoj zik is

here. he is a philosopher who describes himself as a complicated communist. the new are youic described him as the most dangerous philosopher in the west. he has written topics like carl marx and kung fu panda. i'm pleased to have him here at this table and this initial conversation we'll try to understand not only where he came from, what does he believe and his observations on what he sees today in terms of the political environment. so welcome. >> thanks very much. i'm arneed to be here. >> charlie: it's a pleasure to hav you here. >> for a long time i watch pbs. it's much better than all those other channels. >> charlie: on behalf of pbs, i thank you i hope occasionally you'll be amused and occasionally you'll find something you le. >> i go through channels like pbs to get rid of this european

arrogance, you know. we arrogant europeans. especially in this present to watch education or whatever public tv, more social needs so that they are cutting off all intellectual tv programs. europe is much worse than united states. >> charlie: in terms of its intellectual arrogance. >> no, no, no, in terms simply through the vie vastity of intellectual lives to be americans. >> charlie: do you like america? >> why not? absolutely sincerely. although i must add, it's an amusing remark, please don't take it too seriously. do you know who was absolutely fascinated with america. >> charlie: who? >> stalin. wh he was asked in late 20's, can he define the ideal profile

of a bolshevik communist, and he said a combination of russian fidelity to a cause and american dynamic pragmatic spirit. >> charlie: why are you fascinated by stalin. >> it's a very sad story. far from me beg any way cryptostalins, i think stalins phenomena, something so terrifying. things went so monsterrously wrong. i don't sacrifice living people for the idea or however. this is way too simple for me. things went so terribly wrong from fascism. >> charlie: there wasn't any specific group, there was everybody including each other.

>> absolutely. aware of the monstrosity, the most dangerous place to be, look at the name in the center community from 34 to 37. >> charlie: one by one. >> 80% boom, boom, boom. it's not, this is already the wrong perception. some elite group of fanatical communists killing ordinary people. no killing each other. >> charlie: in fact the man doing the killing, they went boom boom to him. >> yes. at the end. but this is why very pbably if not orgized the death of stalin. because pairly knew what stalin was doing. when stalin nominated a new police boss he immediately nominated someone who was

formerly just secd in command but whose task was to prepare and negotiate to get -- so he's next. he's next in the line. >> charlie: tell me what you do. >> i'm lucky. there's irony in it. my ironically gratitude goes to communist regime. do you know y in the early 1970's, 1973 when i finished my boast graduate studies i was accepted to be assistant professor. >> charlie: this was where. >> in yugoslavia. then immediately, like a couple months after there was a counteroffensive of communists, the last indian summer of communism. so i didn't get the job. for six seven years, i was unemployed but it wasn't too bad. i was doing translations and so on, supported my parents.

and then a miracle happened. then they got me a job at some marginal institute for social sciences. the idea was i'm not a complete idiot so they gave me a job but marginal institute to prevent public interest and contacwith students. and still there, at least a permanent sabbatical. i could do whatever i want. >> charlie: you're known around the world of american students. you're high on the list of people that they wanted here. >> to hear it's okay but i don't like to lose too much time with debates and very philanthropic you know. most of the people are boring, stupid. i don't like to lose time. they told me you should debate with students and discover new ideas. maybe, maybe not. maybe it will be a loss of time, who knows. >> charlie: isn't there a dance place named afterou in

buenos aires. >> nevern my lif and it's not a matter for just once a year, never did i dance or sing. i'm psychologilly an idiot. >> charlie: you never could nce. >> no, no. it's the obscenity of suggestions, i cannot do it. >> charlie: why do they think you're the most dangerous phosopher for the west or why did one writer say that. what is it that you do or say that makes people think you're dangerous. >> it's some things that i wrote about violence. connected with what the author misread is my sympathy. it's absolutely not here for stalinism and regimes. sorry but i was some kind of dissident. enough not to get a job, no. plus my, although it's very

ambiguous, my critical stance to watch politics of the politics from the state of israel to watch palestinians. although my position is very differentiated. i totally agree with those who claim that you should never compromise. it is for me the primordial level form of ideology. you have some social conflict and you try to resolve it by blaming some outside intruders and so on. >> charlie: looking for an outside scapegoat. >> do you know why i brought on this the danger of these politics. i think something terrible happened lately. i thought you and others intelligent people also noticed it. first it was brady the crazy guy from oslo who was not so crazy. yonoti it is a strange case

of zion anti-semitism. on one hand she was on the sid of the palestinians and at the same time, for example she writes in europe there's not so many goose. in the united states that's a manifesto. you have six minute jews to march and so on -- what if something similar for example here on fox tv with glen beck. he was fired. at the same time prozionists and what i really am terrified with is that some hard line zionists the state of israel are ready to make a pact with this kind of zionists. the idea is we tolate your internal -- if you allow us to play the same game with

palestine. and it makes me very sad for the jewish peoplehom i like immensely. i think that something that the way they're thinking palestinians will decide their character, will they become just another nation state or what made them so great in the history of humanity survive. but again somethingn crazy times. this is misread -- whatever. >> charlie: i hear you. tell me about this film, the forthcoming film it's called the pervert's guide to ideology directed by so fee. >> we did the first one which did relatively well. pervert's guide to cinema. and now we repeat the same rmula. we think mostly the formula is documentary clips from well-known films. and just giving a twist to them.

for example one, the ideological critical. for example one we really liked and it worked well. also james cameron's titanic. >> charlie: then we saw avatar. >> yes. you remember the final moments when leonardo dicaprio's character is dying and freezing. and kate notices he is dead she pushes him away into the water while shouting i will never let you go, i will never let you go. it's arazy. and from here i propose crazy but i think accurate reading of the film. it's not really even a love story, it's a variation on that reactionary motive of captain courageous. a rich spoiled girl is in a life crises and the function of leonardo dicaprio is to bring

some of the lower class vitality to restore her ego, literally. he draws the image of her and then after doing this, she can disappear. it's a little bit like if she goes home and he goes down. i love doing this immensely. i'm not saying i loved the movie but in a way i admire kung fu panda. it's what i admire in the movie is the following. everyone noticed it. on the one sense the movie mobilized that military mystique. kung fu warrior discipline all that stuff. at the same time the movie's totally ironic, making fun of its own ideology. what is so fascinating is that although the movie makes fun of its own ideology all the time,

the ideology survives. and this is how it functions. if i'm permitted to tell my favorite story, a wonderful anecdote about the copenhagen guy which best except fies. i don't know how it is here but in europe it is a superstitious eye actual for the evil spirits don't enter the house. >> charlie: you see it in barns throughout the south. >> in europe. so he asked what do you mean you're a scientist, do you believe in this. of course, i'm not crazy, i don't. so he asked him why do you have it there. >> charlie: he wanted to find out. >> he said of course i don't believe in it. but i put it there because i was

told that it works even if you don't believe in it. that's unfortunately out of the ideology to date. >> charlie: or i'm hedging my bets. i would like to know you don't have to believe in this b believe still like think about -- which always fascinated me. things like santa clause. you ask the parents do you believe in santa clause. they will tell you, i'm not crazy. then you ask the child do you believe he will say no, i'm no crazy i just pretend because of my parents. soven if no one believes in , i think this is crucial to understand how things function today. >> charlie: what's the role of philosophy you think in the 21st century. >> i don't exaggerate it. but also i don't under estimate it. let me be very clear. first i claim that the time of philosophy is coming quite. look just at the ethal

questions we are debating. is it permissible or bio genetic manipulations. these are simply new dilemmas where let's face it, you cannot simply apply old traditional wisdoms or rules. we have to think. at the same time i don't think philosophe can bring ready-made answers. but philosophers can do something very important today. this is no less important the correct answers. they can allow us to ask the righquesons. >> charlie: exactly. that's exactly right. >> you think that today look at for example ecology, look at racism tolerance. we have a serious problem but the very way w formulate the problem, it's part of the problem. for example, for example tolerance. >> charlie: you're singing my song. >> yes but you see --

>> charlie: how you ask the question determine the answer. >> i think this is our task. so friends -- nonetheless with some kind of superstitious respect, at wall street they ask me but they ask what to do. no, i don't know what to do. i don't have ready made answer. >> charlie: you went down to speak to the people at occupy wall street. >> yes. >> charlie: they all wanted to know. tell us, help us understand what to do. and you said no. >> no, no no. >> charlie: what did you tell them. what was your message to those people that are down there. >> it's ti to think that my basic message was, and i think it was totally correct that they shouldn't fall in love with themselves. oh what nice time we have here. this immediate freedom starting back to old hippie days. no, the true problem is the day after. what of these will be translated into our daily lives really made

some changes and so on. and for this, there are no fast swer which is why on the other hand, i also don't totally agree, although it was probably well meant with what president bill clinton said. these protests are okay but they should translate into demands what they want. no. it's a little bit deeper. we all know that our societies are approaching some particular deeper bad luck dilemmas from ecology to, you know, capitalism, intellectual property, bio genetics. these are deep problems. and i'm only want to take this very, make this very clear so that i will not be perceived as kind of a nostalgic idiot. i'm only a communist in the sense that communism is for me the name of this problems which are problems of the commons. like nature out there is our

common ground. >> charlie: right. >> and so on. >> charlie: i got you. >> i'm not communist at the level of answers. i'm the firstto admit 20th century. >> charlie: comment in the area of marxism and leninism. >> we can learn something of marx but not the sense of like the lenin is not the answer. there was some good things here and there, are education blah blah. but basically let's face it it was a fiasco >> charlie: why was it a fiasco in your judgment. i don't have a clear theory and this is why i'm obsessed with the stalin phenomena. i think it's really mysterious how some things i disagree with or liberal critiques. look, at the beginning of october evolution, we have a tremendous amount of potential.

it's liberated. we need society exploded, and then we don't need to walk it current. it's something much more terrifying than fascism. let me simplify. fascists were bad guys who said they planned to do bad things. what a surprise they did it. >> charlie: yes. >> but this is why in fascism or especial naziism. stalin comnism have to fight with disappointed communists. at the same time, le me be clear. >> charlie: the gulag started early. >> at the same time i'm not saying at the beginning everything was okay and so on. you know this type story. if only lenin would survive two years more, no, no, no. ere was a kind of at least general tendency that lenin is to become stalinism.

but that's what makes it truly -- >> charlie: it had to become stalinism. >> it had to in a i with a. i don't think there was a real alternative in the see of if only -- >> charlie: gorbachev thought he could reform communism. this was his own. then yeltsin came along and said no. with gorbachev was it reformable in your opinion. >> no, absolutely. the other hand you know the problem with yeltsin was he did it in a very cathartic way. likef you look at how the chinese did it, they started privatization capitalism in a very intelligent way. they started with small consumers industry. very slowly expanded. the russians did it exactly the opposite. they started it with banks and natural resources so we got the most non-productive capitalism which you can imagine.

new rich guys tycoons -- >> charlie: the oligarchs. >> the old goshes. >> charlie: here's an idea that you propounded which is the notion that while capitalism and mocraticky has gone hand in hand. china with a kindf capitalism you may not see for the first time in history democracy follow. and that that may be a threat to the order in itself. >> what i'm saying is that again, i'm not just saying i'm a capitalist. let's be serious it's the motion social productive order in the history of humanity. let me be clear some radical leftist will lynch me for saying this. can yo imagine in the entire history, humanity, an era in

which so many people leave such relatively free lives and safe lives let's say in western europe in the last 50, 60 years. let's recognize wh belongs to the dead. what i'm saying is these times are passion. these times of democracy being, sorry, capitalism able to aim that -- >> charlie: before you run into a democracy. >> what happens for me, let's be clear. we have a capitalism which is more dynamic productive, at least it looks now. >> charlie: and democracy in the united states is in a sense a paralysis. >> yes. >> charlie: over making decisions that are in the interest -- >> and again, i don't think, i don't believe those say if china

were to ha democracy, it would have been even better. unfortunately it wouldn't because it's not just china. look at -- started these reforms. he visited singapore. here you are attackinga key point. my german friend a philosopher, when he asked himself a beautiful question, can we imagine the weak person from our time they will be building monuments 100 years from now in the future. because he invented so-called capitalism with asian values which means to take authoritarian capitalism invented the formula. and even -- said this is a model for all. >> charlie: that's exactly right. >> this is what i worry about. >> charlie: more than that sent lots of chinese to singapore to find out how it was done and bring it back.

i'm not saying you liberals are traitors, what i'm saying is if you are a sincere liberal, start thinking about this. how really to save the freedoms that we enjoy. >> charlie: let me move you to the arab spring and what your observations are about what's happed from tunisia to libya. >> basically i think it's extremely positive thing. because you know, we in western europe at least inear all the time with these in arab arab. the guys you can mobilize them and mask only on, religious fundamentalism, nationalism. here we got what we wanted, a secular revolt for freedom, democracy and so on. >> charlie: not a bad ideology at all. >> what do you mean by ideology. >> charlie: i don't know, you tell me. it's about dignity, it was about responsibility, it was about freedom. >> freedom, solidarity and all those things. it was a wonderful event.

>> charlie: okay. but it wasn't religious based. >> no. it clearly becausement. >> charlie: there's no ism behind it or not. >> what do youean by ism. charlie: fascism or some other kind of ism. >> what my problem, i don't believe in this like for me ideology often, like i don't think there's some kind of innocent out of all ideologies consciousness or whatever. aren't we all the time in ideologies in the sense of you can say no isms t you can look closely what people are demanding. you can see what they took from the error you been tradition and the western tradition. >> charlie: do you think they're defining some new -- >> yes, potentially. >> charlie: socialism could have been another. air usual spring may very well evolve some new idea of --

>> may. >> charlie: and what will prevent it from doing that in your judgment. >> the combination of i think instead of foolish supporting it, all the compromising stance of the west. for example it's clear in egypt that now, are i'm not saying it has to happen but the most probable. the most probable outcome. and i pray that it will not happen extends from egypt and back between prussian brotherhood and the army. kind of an exchange. the brotherhood gets ideology germany in exchange the army keeps its corrupted -- >> charlie: keep the power. >> yes. cause remember something. the army is still 100% the old mubarak ay. >> charlie: indeed. the people in control of the army were put there by mubarak. >> yes. totally. so you see herewe set an

example of how a space. >> charlie: ut they did not come to his aid at the crucial moment. they did not come to save him at the crucial moment. >> because he made a judgment that this would require -- >> charlie: or as they say he knew which way the wind was blowing. >> too much pressure. for me, arabs are sensitive to this. how can you preach democracy to arabs and foolish stand by saudi arabia. i'm sorry to tell you but when we speak about racial freedoms or sexual freedoms, it is different from saudi arabia. in bahrain, there was a genuine revolt. >> charlie: yes. >> saudi arabia intervened there. i don't remember any details. >> charlie: do you know the

administration, the obama administration would say and others would say the european administration would say you have to judge these on a country by country basis. >> yes, but this is just a nice way of wisdom to say ruthless anso on. how the west intervenes -- >> charlie: it does not have to be a philosophy that has no exceptions to it, does it? >> no. but nonetheless it's typical where the west did interven what's precisely the wrong place libya. no sympathy whatsoever even when we were wiessing this horrible scenes of qaddafi being basically led. no sympathy forever for him. but in contrast to egypt, syria. well we said the democratic people's movement with program. from the very beginning in libya, it wasn't clear who these

rebels are what. you see what you get. now we learn two, three weeks ago that the main military commander of the libyan resistance is kind of the al-qaeda man. where we ended the army -- not in the sense of supporting qaddafi. >> charlie: they hasn't come at the time there would have been a huge massacre. that was their argument. the qaddafi army was march challenge on to benazi. that was the humanitarian and in fact the humanitarian turned into something else. >> this is the problem. no, but what, what's so horrible for me is how precisely the case where the revolt was not a clearly democratic secular revolt. precisely that. the west enter venes.

it's sad. >> crlie: what's going to happen to this movement that you see that's developing in terms happening in wall street happening inities. does it have as they say legs. does it have the capacity to grow into something? that has power. it's not sure yet. >> it's not sure yet. now it's not yet the time to make utopia in the bad sense for power or whatever. it's time for reflection. it's time for the basic questions. this is for me the tragic thing. we all feel something is wrong with the system. we have even a vague idea. >> charlie: dispaty. >> yes. we know it's going to be just solved by a little bit of social democratic legislation. >> charlie: it has to be what. >> more radical i think. >> charlie: what would radical be? >> it's very clear. some deep transformation of ino

the capital system itself. re i don't think is a clear idea but we have to think about it. i'm afraid you can say okay we not not even imagine it. here i have two problems. first one is did you notice how in what strange way to date the impossible function. like if u speak about science, everything is becoming possible. you know like through bio genetic or cloning, we will live forever or replang organs, blah blah blah. whatever you want. >> charlie: yes. >> everything will be accessible to us through iphone blah blah blah. so here everything is possible. but when you say let's raise the taxes and spend a little bit more money for healthcare. impossible. my friend translational fred james said we can well imagine we do it daily over the catastrophe movies. we can well imagine the end of

the earth but we cannot imagine a small change in capitalism, no? and the important thing is know to engage in some crazy destructive experience, but to open up the space of thinking. it's difficult this because we know how the 20th century attempts fate. i don't have any big formula. even ironically often said that there are people accusing me and kind demogog. i'm modest. i'm just saying this is why i like intelligent conservatives. not rich consevennives. honest conservatives are the ones who openly confront the deadlock and don't play games with some easy solutions or whatever. >> charlie: thank you for coming.

i hope we can do this again. >> i'm really proud to be here and i hope i at least helped in dispelling some of these ideas that we and my friends have some i don't know dark terrorists plans. we are much more modest than it may appear. we are just saying we are approaching a crises. it's not no cause for panic emergency or whatever, but to start thinking. >> charlie: and asking the right questions. >> yes. >> charlie: misha glenny is here, he's a historian, journast and has covered the ball by balkans. his new book takes us through the world of cyber crime and hackers. it called darkmarket, cyberthieves, cybercops and y. >> always glad to be back.

>> charlie: i got to know about the balkans and then you wrote about mcmafia about organizized crime around the world. what got you to this. >> the organizized crime book mcmafia was really about the balkans initially because i came to the conclusion that the wards in yugoslavia were intimately linked with the emergence first of a local large criminal fraternity to cooperated across the ethnic lines, albanians and curred and so on. i followed those tracks across the world because they were with other transactional organizations. one of the places i ended up was brazil. when i went to brazil although i looked at narco trafficking and gang culture, i stumbled across the fact that brazil was a major

incubator of cyber crime. >> charlie: let's dene cyber crime for a second. >> there are pillars of malfeasance, there's the big one of cyber security and cyber rfare. the bulk of cyber crime is what we call high volume low impact which is the trade in credit card and debit card details, perhaps bank accounts, perhaps identity theft which is already becoming more sinister as far as victim is concerned. but you also get huge big scale crimes >> charlie: when you want to tell the story who was the architect that you chose. >> charlie the first thing i decided to write about cyber crime. i walked into a brick wall whih

is computers for a great majority across the world but two it can be very boring. the first thing i said i've got to write about computers without actually writing about computers. which is why i decided to focus on checking down the darkmarket was a website that lasted for three years. it was a criminal super store. you would be vetted as a member because of course you had to be a criminal. and you could buy and sell credit cards, you cld buy and sell viruses. you could download tutorials on how to commit cybercrime. it was a forum for bee keepers except criminality was your main interest. what i did was to track down the sort omaster minds of the site. some of whom were in jail and some ofwhom were still outside. i was able to do that because one of the five administrators

was actually an undercover agent of the f.b.i. and so that's what, so i write the book as a sort of thriller of you know which one is a whodonit. where do all these guys come from. who are these hackers. >> charlie: and? >> they're all smart. they a deloped their has beening skills when they're sort of 14 to 16 years old so they develop their hacking skills and their criminality before they've really got any sort of moral campus so they get deeper and deeper into it. a lot of them of course have social disabilities. they're not very good at communicating ything in the outside world. >> charlie: no social skill >> no social skills but they have these incredible computer skills. and so when they get into the world of computer criminality, they find an environment that loves them where they get affirmation, where people say god you're good at what you do, you're absolutely fantastic whereas in the outside world they look at people in the eye and they often have difficulty making relationships with the opposite sex and that sort of

thing. and so this is a world whe they rangeupreme. >>harlie: it's their love affair. >> it's their love affair. now those are the people who are the really skilled hackers, the ones who often demonstrate characteristics which we would associate with something like as berger's syndrome -- who is the cousin of borak. simon is the most fantastic researcher into people, particularly who have some form of spectrum disorder whe it's as berger's and so on. the courts refer hackers to simon for his expertise. i said look this is what these guys are like and he says well

they're on the spectrum, they're on the spectrum there's no question about it. so i felt that what we need to start doing is investing a bit of money into researching these people because because before the incident a lot of these guy would not have been criminals. the internet is what has made them, gave them a place to be criminals. en there's a breed much more sinister, much more criminally inclined. they have great criminal ability but they have this tremendous ability of what we call social engineering. manipulating people, persuading people to do things on the computer which is objectively not in their o interests. >> charlie: some of these nefarious groups connected to vernments? >> well, we have a patent here, brazil russia india china. we have the btt countries. >> charlie: really. >> oh yeah.

this is where a lot of the malfeasance starts. i have to say it's gone all around the world. when the soviet union collapsed, people still had the benefit of that soviet education. and what did that soviet education concentrate on? it concentrated on math and the sciences. and all of the hacker guys who i've got to knowhey are all natural mathematicians or physicists or chemists. >> charlie: as well as the education. >> absolutely. the other key thing about russia, the one thing was they couldn't hit russian institutions but also the kgb demanded that if they required hacking capacity for a national security purposes as happened in 2007 with a massive cyberattack on alstonia and in 2008 a collateral cyber attack on

georgia during the russian-georgian war. the kgb would come knocking at the hackers because ty want to know absolutely everythi that's going on in the internet. there's no secret to the kgb. they say we need your capacity and we need u to do this or that. >> charlie: same thing true in china. >> it's organized in a slightly different fashion. so you have basically e kgb responsibility, fsb responsibility in russia. the people's liberation in china and they have this more informal thing whereby they actually pay a lot of computer users to actually the main activity is to refute arguments made about chinwhich the leadership disagrees with around the net. within that large army they have an elite core of hackers. what they concentrate on of course is the second pillar of

malfeasance. >> charlie: they make a lot of money. >> that's right. >> charlie: which brings me to the third which is cyber warfare. leon pinetta when he was seeking confirmation and got a unanimous vote for secretary of defense, he said in his intair gairgs at the senate committee that was looking into his confirmation that if there was a pearl harbor, it would be cyber warfare. that's like the fifth dimension of war from sea, land, air and space. >> the fifth dimension. and the first was man made. >> charlie: yes, indeed, indeed. how did that happen, the cyber warfare. >> we've seen examples of it --

which was specifically targeted against the -- >> charlie: explain to us what it was and how it worked. >> what it was is a very sophisticated virus because it has so-called zero day exponents. that means it's very difficult to spot once it's infected. what it's designed to infect. it was targeted at a specific time of industrial plummet. within that it looked right at the motor which regulates -- >> charlie: of the subterfuge. >> that regular lates -- regulates e pump, the water going around it. it just sort of arbitrarily up down up down. >> charlie: and they did it through the insertion of a usb. >> because they're off line. >> charl: you can't reach them that way. >> you can't reach them.

it's a combinaon of cyber weaponry and traditional intelligence because someone went through the defense or there was an agent working on the insi who put it in. so that could have resulted in some form of nuclear accident, right. so what's important about stark net is that s there is a state or states which have develop this technology but bthey're saying to the rest of the world not only do we visit but we are prepared to deploy it and were prepared to risk a nuclear accident as a consequence. once that came out, then everyone around the world said okay, gloves off. we're all going to start accelerating our signer offensive weaponry programs. and the problem with that is that what happens if they slip out and get into the wrong hands, for example. they're in the wrong handsn the first place. so that one of the things that's happened in the last tend days whhis really fascinating is a

group from europe, a hacker grp called the chaos computer club. they discovered in the wild an extremely sophisticated surveillance program that has been developed by the bavaria police in southern germany but it was then ruled -- and they deployed it and it's incredibly inintrusive everything you do on your computer. and the constitutional court in germany said that was illegal and the bavarian police couldn't use it. they stoed using it. but now it suddenly appeared on the wild net and that means anyone with sort of, you know, medium to advanced computer skills suddenly has ts incredibly powerful tool which is very very difficult to detect. and they can look at yours, they can look at mine, they can lk at governments. >> charlie: and the bavarian police. >> well because you know, institutions when they're told that they have to, they have to sort of modernize and beef up

their cyber capacity, they willow casely get carried away with themselves. at the time the it hadn't been defined in germany whether this sort of software could be used by police or not. so there's a trial and error. but this is the thing about cyber work. he likestarks net. there is of course no framework or network to prevent a proliferation. one really important fact about cyber weaponry is this. if we have conventional weapons, your opponent has 20 warheads you have 25 warheads. everyone knows where those 25 are. you can use deterrence. the problem about cyber your

access is the vulnerability of your opponent. in order to know what your asset is, you have to go in and look at the opponent's vulnerability. so it is almost by definition a preemptive sort of weaponry. and that's why you will read stories in the papers in the "wall street journal" a couple years ago revealed that there were chinese sleeper viruses on the electric grid in the united states. that's why he people get so worried about the possible digital pearl harbor. but these things may already be there waiting for a trigger. >> charlie: like a mole. >> like a mole. but in terms of russia and the united states, the one thing working against this happening and it's a very powerf force is economic interdependency. because if china was stupid enough to bring down the united states electric grid. >> charlie: the financial system in america. >> the financial system in

america. >> charlie: new definition of collateral damage. >> exactly. >> charlie: the commo assumption it was israel and perhaps the united states. what d you think. >> the minority body of opinion represented primarily by jeff car. he's a very serious investigator into cyber warfare on the west coast. and jeff argues that it was actually developed by chinese. his is a minority position but whenever jeff car says something you have to take it very seriously. the majority opinion is that it was probably deployed by israel but the united states may well have been involved in developing it. and then within that kind of subset, there are people who argue that it was a joint project. borrow the most convincing source that i've spoken to in washington about this is suggested that the israelis nicked it from the u.s.

they stole it, and that from the presidentdown, everyone went bananas that this happened. >> charlie: you had soces that told you -- >> i had a source that told me that one of about five sources that i've spoken to. it sounded to me, i mean he sounded the most credible,ut you know, we simply don't know. very few people do know. >> charlie: so if there's a hack on the iranian site is it likely to be a military attack or do they think -- >> i think at the moment what we see now is a combination of conventional weaponry and cyber weaponry. >> charlie: what's a combination of those two. >> you remember a couple years ago when the syrian nuclear reactor was taken out by the israelis. they sent a cyrus to takeout air defense radar. israeli jets come in, boom it's

out. >> charlie: is that the way they did that. >> that's the way they did that and that's what i mean by a combination. of course inverted we've got a bit of a problem because there's anothegreat story that came out a couple weeks ago in wired magazine about the infection of the drones over apakistan. >> charlie: what do you mean by infection. >> a virus. the air force and cyber command can't get rid of this virus. >> charlie: the consequences of that will be. >> the consequences of that will be if it were to do anything, but they are monitoring it very closely and it's not doing anything. it means that somebody has managed to get a virus on to the drone system when the drone system is off line. now how did that happen and what if it was a slightly more sophisticated virus and it was a virus that could start maneering that drone elsewhere.

the f35 coming up, the big plane, that's going to have something in the range of 30 million lines of code written in it. you know. and not much can go wrong with that. and there's so much thateople can intervene into that code. the whole part about this whether it's cyber crime or cyber security, our dependency is extreme now. you remember when it went down a couple weeks ago. i was in london and in washington and people were banging their heads against a brick wall because they couldn't check their e-mailor half an hour. >> charlie: you have to have more than one device. >> what happens if something really serious hapns. >> charlie: this is extraordinary. this book is called darkmarket, cyberthieves cybercops and you. you will be teaching at columbia. >> that's right. i'm teaching a course on crime and transition.

>> charlie: did you ever imagine when things were going on in the balkans -- >> the reason i feltthat, and this is something that was actually it wasot ruled out that since president tavich won the eltion, he invited both the c.i.a. and the f.b.i. they were part of the team looking for these guys. >> charlie: so that's where -- >> so actually, you know, once -- the current president, president tarnich asked the foreign intelligence agencies. once they're in the serbs are clearly not draing their feet. they really went for it.

they went hard and they went hard and the decision was made every time when she said go in and get her. and thank god for that is all i can say. >> charlie: i wanted to see them in the same cell and have that cell tapped. >> i once interviewed, i was sort of off the record theguy who ran the prison and he told me an amazing story pause all of them kroate -- they showed respect. it was really bizarre. >> charlie: at the gue. >> yes in the prison. they were mixed together. and there really is -- there's a marvelous play to be written. >> charlie: i was thinking the same thing. all right, thank you, misha. darkmarket is the book. thank you for coming by. great to have you in new york.

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