it's alex stamos, chief security officer for facebook. as we went up to the 2016 election, this is not a job in retrospect you wanted to have. and we talked about how the evidence started coming in that the russians were both hacking our elections and then using young kids to try to mess with our minds through facebook. and the frightening thing about this interview was he said nobody's trying to stop it. the republicans have blocked any plans to try to halt this. facebook is making some efforts, but not enough, and it's too late to stop it for the midterms this year, but we got to start working now if we don't want the russians to hack us in 2018. listen to what he had to say. >> you were chief security officer for facebook in the 2016 election which seems like a pretty tough job, especially in retrospect. when did you start getting a sense that something was going definitely awry with russians hacking our leaks? >> the actual attacking didn't happen on facebook, but what we saw against the dnc, john podesta, we saw them create fake pers

for anyone who might not know, alex stamos was a yahoo!. u spent three years at facebook and now you're moving on two different things. i do not know if they are better. alex: i have been so bored. >> it has been a dull year for you. we might have a hard time figuring out what to talk about. it has been quiet at facebook. we will kick it off easy. let's dive in and talk about russia. it is a light topic. alex: the country, a beautiful place. i wish i could visited. you know how people have maps of every state may have been too? i have the map of every -- every country i can never go to. >> yesterday, your former boss sat in front of the senate intelligence committee testifying about facebook and russia and interference in the elections and solutions moving forward, mark zuckerberg made the comments that the idea that facebook has impacted the election is crazy. i would love if you could take in a life the day that you realized russia had interfered. alex: there was not one day. first spotted russian negativity in the spring before the electi

. >> alex stamos is a fascinating guy.on because he was in the trenches at facebook. it was him and his team who discovered russian influence. just days after he left he sat down with me and he had a dire warning. take a listen. >> the political polarization on election hacking is a horrible problem for our country. the reason why we're not in much better shape in 2018 than in 2016. how can you move on and fix the problems? two years after pearl harbor, the united states quadrupled the size of our navy. two years on from the election and people are still arguing whether we were attacked and i find that amazing. >> in your opinion the room. what do you say to them? >> the first, there was a concerted campaign by the government of the russian federation to influence the election. that campaign to drive wedges into american society has intensified. we have the risk of turning our elections into the world cup of information warfare where everybody wants to have a piece in it because we have not demonstrated we will punish comp

for anyone who might not know, alex stamos was at yahoo! as the chief information security.ou went to facebook in 2015. you spent three years at facebook. now you're moving on to different things. i don't know if they're better yet. >> i've been so bored. i wanted to get into the 2:00 a.m. phone calls of academia. >> it's ban dueen a dull year. we might have a hard time figuring out what to talk about. it's been quiet at facebook. >> sports. >> that sounds fine. we'll kick it off easy. let's dive right in and talk about russia. it's a lyiight topic. >> the country. it's a beautiful country. i wish i could actually visit it. i have this map. you know how people have maps on their rvs of every state they've been to. i have a map of countries i can never visit for the rest of my life. unfortunately, that's the biggest by land area. >> that's unfortunate. maybe things will change. >> not the only one. >> probably true. so obviously yesterday your former boss sat in front of the senate select intel committee, testifying about facebook and russia and interference in the 2016 elect

>> alex stamos has also said that it's too late to safeguard our elections -- >> this year. >> the midtermis year. he said too late. maybe 2020. but in terms of social media, while it's much too late to effectively rehabilitate the elections, you see what he is saying right there. election security for the 2018 midterms. there are four straightforward steps the u.s. can take to prepare for potential attacks in 2020. he says we need laws. the big problem here is that congress has not laid out what all social media companies need to do, not just facebook and twitter, the big ones. there are also so many small ones. i think there are two big things we're going to see today. one, foreign interference. there are going to be discussions about that. and number two is are these political platforms bias, these algorithms bias in some way? here's what we're expecting the executives to say. you'll hear sheryl sandberg saying things along the lines of we took too long to spot the problems, we took too long to react to the problems. jack dorsey's going to say we've done studies, we don't see any biases

painted by the former security chief of facebook who just resigned from that position a month ago alex stamos left with a memo that said that he feels the us are have already has failed to protect the upcoming november midterm elections he is pointing the finger not only at facebook and the other big tech companies for not doing enough to combat this and acting quickly but also at the government saying that the obama administration failed by not publicly acknowledging russian interference before the two thousand and sixteen election and now the trumpet ministration has still yet to wholeheartedly except that this meddling continues and the response to all of this today coming from the senate intelligence committee members is that there are so. strong hints that government regulation is coming with one senator saying that the era of the wild west in social media is now coming to an end. for us in washington d.c. as heidi mentioned there is a lot of concern that more groups may target the u.s. midterm elections we have a special page up already on al jazeera dot com on the vote we'll have exten