target the iranian nuclear facilities we know it's been six years and the government still using stuxnet in a still using flame and they still haven't admitted to it so we have this new directive that we just got out today posted a great article on it and it is classified so we don't really know everything about it we have people from inside the white house speaking to reporters in washington saying this is what we've been told this is what we've seen and it says that ok washington you can go ahead you can actually said be more aggressive you can go and attack other systems if it means it's going to prevent america from well being the victim to what america's already doing to everyone else so personally i think it's dangerous we've already been warning that ever since we've you know me or may not have launched these attacks and around and perhaps other countries were in danger of copycat attacks you know everyone in the congress close the intelligence community has said that and during today's hearings on the senate senator feinstein i believe actually said that i can't talk about becaus

i don't know what it is absolutely ok all right real quick just in what andrew was talking about stuxnet which a lot of people i don't think are aware of but it is something that i think your viewers will care about stuxnet is actually designed to prevent collateral damage so you know in a strange kind of way and i'm not speaking for the administration for sure right no but in the strangest kind of way this is a cyber attack that was testing whether or not you could just tack a foreign nation state in a way that doesn't create collateral damage if you take that in the physical world it's like saying let's just let's have a drone shoot a missile but it's not going to kill any civilians and that's really what i think the testing is happening around which you know from the. positive work that is there is a definite effort to attack a government and take down the government grid without actually hurting the citizen who's who would otherwise be considered collateral damage service i was always out laterally damage with a shot of ron yeah we just found out last week that chevron was in fact yo

attacks on iran's nuclear facilities even on its broader economy and so forth so we are not trying to stuxnet olympic games and so forth that you see reported in the press so i think it's fair to say that both israel and other countries do that do not want wish to see iran achieve nuclear weapons are prepared to resort not only to economic sanctions political isolation but also. military and covert options to delay the program but in israel's case it's a there's a consensus as far as i can tell in israel and it's not just prime minister netanyahu it's the defense minister ehud barak who comes from the left of the political spectrum it is in israel they are united and i think they reflect the general consensus that while israel should not rush into a military attack that israel should exhaust every other option because any other option is better than a military attack but as a last resort whenever that time comes and that's something only the israeli defense planners and political leaders will know they will not share that with any of us unfortunately but when that moment comes i believe they

banks for the stuxnet attack that i will talk about momentarily. and our power grid. what is the risk? well, one is that terrorists want to break into our power grid. those of you that have lived a few days without power, as mark and i did in d.c. when a few trees knocked down our power lines, well, there are already, according to a number of the experts, foreign nation states that are in our networks, in the power system. the operation aurora, a few years ago, proved that a cyber attack can bring down the power grid with a cyber attack on one of the systems causing it to literally shake itself to death. and if you've noticed, you can't go to wal-mart and pull these power systems off the shelves. it takes a few months to get them back. a few months without the systems could be a $700 billion impact. the intelligence community in the u.s., they are afraid, too. they warned that already they should -- nation states are in our power grid. as you've already heard from john harrington, for the first time that i recall a sitting u.s. secretary of defense has warned of a dig

you have the stuxnet taken media by storm, iran, now a nation states are starting to throw it up and forth -- does that change the way that the intelligence industry is operated? or is it still business as usual, even though it is more in the limelight? >> i will tell you that it does not change how they do it as much. literally cyber is another part of the intelligence business. there is a lot in the media -- there really is a lot in the media. everybody is informed by that information. some situations may cause them to change decisions, postures, practices, policy. some do not. it is really dependent upon the event, who was involved with it, what the issues are. like the newspaper reporter. you take the event, compare it against that, and you have to make a decision as an organization. >> to follow-up, has it at all changed, that it is more small- scale attacks? or potential large-scale attacks? not saying the united states did stuxnet, but large-scale attacks in that nature. >> i would say there are multiple large-scale cyber activities in the federal government. >> my question is

classified and secret and not available to the public they use examples like what we saw with the stuxnetvirus that computer virus developed by the united states and israel jointly it caused quite a bit of damage at an iranian nuclear plant you know this we want to say something similar happened of virus that infected computer and software in programs here in the united states that you know the government needs to be able to act and to do so without being open about it what's your response to that well i don't think we doubt that the n.s.a. is. position they have expert computer security individuals working for them their expertise is unquestioned as well as the people working in cyber security there are at the top of their field these are incredibly intelligent individuals however i think that our government is based on public accountability and regardless of what actions are taking maybe the different safeguards need to be built in notifying the public after the fact so that they're able to effectively counter maybe a dangerous virus or something however that transparency needs to be bu

government has been attacking iran this nuclear infrastructure using stuxnet flame and a program that's been called the olympic games under the bush administration the white house has refused to actually acknowledge that they are involved in this and just today we find out that the president has finally said ok well this is when you can attack this is how you can attack and we now know that what might seem like. offensive actually assault on other computers is now just being considered a necessary defense mechanism by the pentagon and so the u.s. is about to be able to get away with a lot more when the president signed off on i mean it's interesting in what he was talking about it's called presidential policy directive twenty and essentially we have heard that you know the new frontier is now cyber security all of us we've discussed how you know secretary defense leon panetta has called it you know he's waiting for cyber pearl harbor and the reasoning isn't that this isn't a problem obviously we you know this is something where we need to put it if you build up infrastructure we need to

. >>> speaking of special operations, chevron says its systems were at one point infected with stuxnetat's that computer worm designed to attack iran's nuclear weapons program. nobody admits to it but it's widely assumed that the united states or israel's defense forces created that virus. chevron tells the "wall street journal" it did not do any damage and one can make an educated guess, the united states government could have helped chevron get rid of that worm. >>> lastly, corporate raider carl icahn talked with cnbc about netflix. he said he might actually subject that company to an unfriendly takeover. one way or the other, he says, the company is undervalued and should be an easy company for someone to snap up, particularly considering interest rates are so low. >> thank you very much, scott. >>> well, new this morning, first new jersey and now new york. drivers are going to have to get in line if they want to fill up their tanks in new york city and long island. gas rationing is just getting under way today. this morning police are out in force at gas stations to make sure no on

one of the things that happened over the last couple of years is stuxnet. it is an example of malwear or virus. it was an intrusion into an already existing i.t. system. the iranian government's system that they utilized for purposes of developing their nuclear weapon system, at least that is what is suggested in the public press, and according to the public press, whatever this was that was interjected there led government for a period of time, gave off false signals that everything was ok to those who were operating the system, and then at some period of time carried out commands that were contrary to the integrity of the system, causing, as reported in public articles, the centrifuges in the nuclear system to basically destroy themselves. why is that important? the first example we've seen publicly of a physical destruction of a system, i would call that in the nature of crit krall infrastructure -- critical infrastructure, as a result of a cyberattack. we've seen suggestions of other such things. whoever did that, thank god they seemed to be on our side