i believe it will move forward for the reason david sanger suggested.licans are looking at the results of the last election and there's no doubt that the president got 71% of the latino vote. it was the reason, part of the reason, that he carried states like nevada, colorado, florida. they are looking at their future. a state like texas in one or two cycles is going to be in play because of the large hispanic population there. so they are wanting to get right on the issue. in terms of the president's moves, my understanding is his staff has been meeting with the staff of the gang of eight right along two or three times a week. so there's been communication, but i think it's a very delicate dance because of what senator mccain encountered in arizona. i think the republicans are very sensitive to how this is orchestrated, and so the leak of that report was an unfortunate thing from the standpoint of trying to get something done. >> and, finally, i don't know if you're a golfer, but the best golfer and perhaps the most famous golfer in the world, tiger woo

david sanger of the "new york times." molly ball of the atlantic, and sari horwitz of "the washington post." >> award-winning coverage and adge sys, covering history as it happens. live from our nation's capital, this is "washington week" with gwen ifill. corporate funding for washington week is provided by -- >> we know why we're here, to chart a greener path in the air and in our factories. >> to find cleaner more efficient ways to power flight. >> and harness our technology for new energy solutions. >> around the globe the people of boeing are working together to build a better tomorrow. >> that's why we're here. >> additional corporate funding for "washington week" is provided by prudential. additional funding is provided by the annenburg foundation, the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. once again live from washington, moderator gwen ifill. gwen: good evening. congress wasn't even in session this week. yet the fight over spending and debt ra

joining me to discuss the developing background is david sanger of the "new york times." he cowrote today's front page story on the subject. joining us later is dune lawrence of bloomberg businessweek if and michael riley of bloomberg. they are learning everything they could. >> so far it's clear they've been into those systems it's not clear they've ever done anything to them. >> rose: why -- >> that's the remarkable question charlie. always the issue is intent and the degree to which the political leadership in china actually is knowledgeable about this and to what degree of control it has over it. because chinese command and control is not always what we image it from afar. in this case, unit 61398 which is the major cyber intelligence unit for the pla but not their own cyber operation. sort of their equivalent of the national security agency or our cyber command which is located at the national security agency in fort mead. >> rose: carmen alexander, is it. >> that's right. and the american facility is both about monitoring what's happening around the world and the ta

george, last june, david sanger in the "new york times" rang a story from his first months in office, president obama secretly ordered attacks of computer attacks that ran iran's nuclear enrichment facilitiefacilities. we have participated in cyber sabotage. and it turns out, what if china is thinking, we can compete with the united states or maybe we can just learn how to disable the massive infrastructure of our potential ally or edadversa? >> the united states does not participate, use its military intelligence services for economic espionage, we do not do that. it's prohibited. it would be crazy to say that we don't participate in espionage. but this is very, very different. >> i think gets to a fundamental relationship with the chinese. i think we have to make it very clear to them, that this cannot be business as usual. if they're going to continue to do this, there's a price to pay. we raised this with the chinese -- top chinese officials, they let it roll off their back. they don't admit to it. >> is the white house pressuring hard enough? >> i think they can do it more. i thi

back with us we have michael hastings of buzz feed and also david sanger, author of the book "confrontdent for "the new york times." he revealed stuxnet, the cyber weapon sent to iran and gary mcgraw, chief technology officer of cigital, a software security consulting firm. okay, so i guess the first question is and i want to maybe intentionally oversimplify just to litigate this up front. when people talk about the threat of cyberwar, i as a citizen, i don't know, i read what's in "the new york times," there's some classified information and my question is like is this pre-9/11 warnings of al qaeda or is this iraq and weapons of mass destruction? because it seems to me like it could be either. it seems to me like this could be a completely overexaggerated threat or it seems to me like maybe this is something that genuinely is really worrisome and problematic. >> i we need to be concerned about cyber activity, cyber attacks but it's not on the level of terrorism or 9/11.hype troubling. i worry that we've gone too far with this. >> back that up with david. why do you say that? >> well,

david sanger has covered this extensively. so what have we learned. >> the report was done by a company called mandian. we first met them in new york when they first came in to see who had been lurking in the "new york times" computer systems. a chinese entity not the one we ended about write about this was going in looking for sources. but "the wall street journal", the washington post, it's hard to find an institution that wasn't. the group that we wrote about this week was -- is known in the hacker world as comment crew. and what mandian did, the security firm here in the d.c. area was track back all of the forensic areas including unique addresses for a number of these commuters. it all came back to a single neighborhood in shanghai all to a big modern airport that the chinese have built and a unit of the people's liberation arm their cyber university equivalent of our national security agency has this big three-story building -- gwen: coincidentally. >> you have to believe that they're operating from inside that building

david sanger of the "new york times." molly ball of the atlantic, and times." molly ball of the atlantic, and sari

david sanger, he could have said i disagree with you about the surge.or mccain, you're my great friend, but let's talk about what's really going on. we have 66,000 troops at afghanistan right now. he didn't pivot. he didn't push back. he didn't fight. david brooks, your columnist in "the "new york times"" suggested to chuck this weekend that he should even go so far as saying to the president, mr. president, do you have second thoughts? should i withdraw? that's rather more than i would have expected at this point. >> you know, i think there were two remarkable elements to the testimony that former senator hagel gave. he seemed unprepared on basic issues. we were discussing iran before. he had a difficult time even articulating the president's policy that iran could not cane that you need to stop iran from getting a weapon. he tripped on that two different times even after being passed a note, but theb the second issue was why he didn't come back with senator mccain by saying yes, perhaps i was wrong on the surge. you may remember that senator hagel opp

as you know, foreign minister today talk of the council on foreign relations moderated by david sanger of "the new york times" of mother she said terms of the power in afghanistan that the united states is leaving without determining what you accomplish object is in chief at the border with pakistan has become less well managed. you describe a very construct is, happy relationship. is our policy in terms of afghanistan one of the sore points? >> i think what we're looking at now is clearly a sense in pakistan that has the drive down approaches, there are worries of course about how responsible this exit will be we are of course invested in making and ensuring that the region remains a stable and peaceful as possible. i think it is perfectly easy to understand why there is a calendar of imminent anxiety attached to the straw down and these imminent anxieties are informed by our counter with the united states in the relation to afghanistan 30 years ago and we still are living to tell the tale of the straightest they were left to deal with. it has shaped after danny society and brought in

david sanger there at the times.at we can safeguard america's security with far lower levels of nuclear weapons. we have about 1700 strategic weapons right now. and the president's plan would cut that by about a third. go down to about 1,000. that's still 1,000 hydrogen bombs on missile subs and long-range bombers more than we need to protect u.s. national security. >> bill: it seems that would do the job right? 1,000 of them. >> it would save us tens of billions of dollars over this decade and hundreds of billions of dollars over the next few decades. >> bill: would the joint chiefs go along with this? >> they have gone along with this. we know with a fairly high degree of certainty even when the president was negotiating the new start agreement the chiefs were comfortable going to a lower level. the chiefs can execute all of their war plans at the level the president's talking about which is about 1,000 nuclear weapons. >> bill: how do you get there? does this require -- are we talking about a new treaty with the s

as you know, your foreign minister did a talk at the council on foreign relations moderated by david sanger of "the new york times" and while they are in terms of policy in afghanistan, the united states is living with a determined that you accomplish objectives and she said the border with pakistan has become less well managed. he described a constructive happy relationship is our policy in terms of afghanistan one of the sore points? >> i think what we are looking at now is clearly what the foreign minister was addressing as a sense in pakistan as the drawdown approach is. there are clear worries about how responsible this exit will be that we are of course invested in making and ensuring that the region remains as stable and peaceful as possible. but i think it is perfectly easy to understand why there is a calendar attached to the straw down and these eminent anxieties are informed by our encounter with the united states in relation to afghanistan 30 years ago and we still are living to tell the tale of the kind we would have to deal with. it has reshaped pakistani society. it has broug