journal. join the discussion. >> which party will control the house and senate? live election night inerage as the results come from races around the country. here victory and concession speeches. and then we will get your reaction to the election, taking your phone calls. c-span. campaignary source for 2018. quite, a look at russian influence on the u.s. with bill kristol. jack bryan. greg miller moderated the event. hosted in los angeles.

all right, thank you for joining us. welcome our moderator, great moderator. is it russian collusion or a delusion. greg: i want to do a more detailed introduction of our panelists. , counterterrorism and intelligence expert. an analyst for nbc news and msnbc. he assisted in the investigation of the world trade center attacks. countering extremist ideology including the department of defense, the department of homeland security. if we are given any trouble on the stage, you are in charge. holton, thee

curator of the international spy museum. he has a phd from the university of maryland. his research centered on u.s. scientific and technological intelligence in the second world war and early cold war. then we have jack bryan. college, he did his first documentary with anthony bargaining. ourdain. his latest film features interviews with senator mccain. [applause]

virginia heffernan writes a weekly opinion column for the l.a. times, and a monthly culture column for wired to richie serves as host of trunk cast. -- trump cast. she received a phd in english literature from harvard. finally, bill kristol the editor of the weekly standard. political in commentary shows. he led the project for the republican future, where he helped shape the strategy that -- that led to the 1994 congressional victory. thank you panelists for being here.

before we get to our first question, i want to to sort of discuss what happened yesterday. the justice department revealed charges against a russian national, a woman accused of being the financial manager of a kremlin backed operation that in its own words sought to wage information warfare against the u.s.. the director of the national intelligence in washington released a new statement saying we are concerned about ongoing campaigns by russia, china, and other actors to undermine confidence in democratic institutions. these activities may seek to influence voter perceptions and decision-making in 2018 and 2020. ofew indictment, a statement warning, grave warning from the director of national intelligence, interference in 2016 did not end.

it is still happening. these are government officials very worried about it. in california, there was a reference to california in this indictment. talking about these talking points the kremlin troll factory was given in terms of sowing division in california races. one of the lines was for these trolls in st. petersburg to try and raise questions about the number of registered voters in various precincts and counties. with the message, all he legal voters must be kept away from the ballot boxes at distances quote the on artillery firing range. beyond artillery firing range. this is the message russia wanted to spread across our social media platforms. there talking about

collusion delusion. i want to start by asking our delusion? iny is the title for this panel who is diluted? deluded?ed -- x there are two pieces of investigative reporting. one is the february indictment of the ira gang by robert mueller. named the charge wishes conspiracy to defraud the u.s. we are talking about a fraud charge. actuallyor didn't they sit with russians? in a room and say one thing or the other? this is a very specific charge. i would question collusion

. sowing doubt about actual indictments from our department of justice, it is like you question a birth certificate. these are empirical documents. indictments. to anyone who has ever worked in the justice department knows these are brilliantly detailed, meticulous indictments. read on nothing else to the subject but the output, the court documents that come from that office. malcolm is not may be an exception but the rest of us are guessing what that exact work is going to be. there have been wonderful exposes by journalists. my fellow journalists have done a brilliant job. people who have worked with moeller, james comey. you don't get the real story until you read the indictments. to call it a delusion is part of

disinformation. suggests the president's favorite phrase, no collusion. mention thed greg recent indictments because this is ongoing. one of the phrases that was released into twitter was islam a phobic and retreated by ann coulter. .- islam a phobic -- retweeted. was we are all susceptible to this. some signs of the infection that is disinformation. iago in shakespeare always telling you your wife is sleeping with someone else. the liberals are a mob.

to get you insane. , even here,panels seem to reflect a commitment -- the idea that there is some cogent position by neo-nazis, some of whom are here, and we need to take it seriously is a byproduct of that kind of disinformation. the word delusion partakes of that. [applause] have specific questions for each of you. is there anybody who wants to try to take a stab at this one? looks like you might have a thought or two. is this on? >> this is kind of the big picture question. who are we going to believe? there was a panel tomorrow called the deep state that is going into these issues and ideas. the things we always grew up -- i don't care if you're republican or democrat -- you trusted certain elements within our government.

in some cases, it was the fbi. , the fbi was the fbi. the cia, sure, the latin american dictatorships here and there and we overthrew people we shouldn't have, but intelligence was given to policymakers was supposed to be beyond politics. now we are questioning basic truths. we can't even take that next step to have a conversation about important stuff. we can't even agree on it. argued when bill clinton about what the definition of the word is is. we don't even have the foundation for having some of the basic conversations that need to happen before we get to those later on. how do we have this collusion argument when we cannot even agree on core issues? let me turn to you, bill.

hopefully this isn't too naked a plug for my book. your role helping to shape the republican party. working for two different administrations. i want to ask a question that gets at where that party is now and how you explain it or diagnose it. in the bookcenes that has jumped out and got more attention than i thought is a confrontation in the middle the 2016 raise between john brennan and mitch mcconnell. is bringing classified files to show them what russia's doing. we have never seen like this before. we have to do something about it. mcconnell stuns him.

rather than saying, you are right, what is going on? he says, you are trying to screw our nominee. am i going to refused to condemn vladimir putin or accuse the kremlin, i will accuse the obama missed ration of a interference -- administration of interference. how did we get here? is a good question. you should ask mr. mcconnell. brennan had been a political agency director career there was suspicion of him on the hill among republicans. whates not excuse mcconnell said. does not excuse the obama administration for not doing anything. the new york times, didn't they publish a famous article?

people did have trouble processing i think the degree and purple. best purple. purposefulness. whether they colluded or were involved in a conspiracy, -- in termsngress of the republican party. i think the party was pretty anti-putin. the pressure within congress was for a more hawkish stance against putin. they stuck with the nominee. i don't want to blame everything on trump. he is partly a symptom but he is also a cause. wholee is a nominee, the play begins to adjust. we have seen it adjust in two years in a way that is

distressing to me. presidents are powerful. they shape parties when they are president. the degree of accommodation is shocking. -- mcconnell,very we don't really know that in terms of the internal the liberations. >> it is fair to say obama was looking for a bipartisan statement. he needed cooperation from republicans. he could have said more on his own. i think hillary clinton resents the fact he did not and i think that is a fair criticism. -- was it always this way or did we have some misapprehension about the extent to which person impulses would surface and overwhelm in moments

>> the parties have become more partisan and the country has been more divided, polarized over the last 20 years but to be fair. supportedican party president obama's foreign policy issues on afghanistan and actual intelligence issues. votedis the party that for the nsa policies that the obama administration wanted but couldn't not -- couldn't deliver. republicans were hawkish so when the administration went in a hawkish direction, republicans were there. they used to give president obama the authority to negotiate trade deals. i've got to say, there was a lot

lotartisanship, benghazi, a that caused resentments some of it just and unjust. i think trump is the key change. marco rubio jeb bush, where the clinton hillary denouncing the interference. it would have been a very different thing. is a big problem as nominee, and an even bigger problem as president. >> can i turn to you for a second? expertise on your the middle east for a second. arabia fired top -- five top officials and arrested 18 saying jamal khashoggi was killed in a fistfight at the

consulate in turkey. this happened after a secretary of state mike pompeo went to riyadh and trump said he wondered about the killers and then, the beating of an american journalist in not -- montana was celebrated. what in saudi arabia tells us about the way the rest of the world is reacting to this particular era in american leadership? >> i just came back from the rest of the world. i spent two weeks in london and paris giving speeches and helping get out the vote over there. is universal,s and this will come all the way back around to russia. because the president of the united states right now, donald trump, has decided that america will the longer be what america has been for 243 years and definitely everything since the

end of world war ii he wants to dismantle. alliance,e atlantic principal agreements, trade agreements, so riyadh had been watching this with the rise of their new young crown prince, mohammad bin salman. for the first time in american history -- and i lived there for seven years, in the united arab emirates prior to coming back to the states a few years ago. they saw a president of the united states who could be bought. to that, no president of the united states could truly, individually be purchased by them. barack obama couldn't be purchased, george w. bush. they had interests, but their interests were american interests. donald trump change that dynamic. they saw that he was a luxury businessman. they master luxury over there.

everything is luxurious. thissaw that the sky -- guy would work for his own interests, his family's interest is, and the united states' dignity, honor, and human rights could be purchased and that is exactly what he told them when he went to riyadh last year. he said the united states will no longer be considering human rights and other factors in your own nation as a reason to do business with you. another way of saying we are going to throw out all the american experiment and our poor -- foreign policy as it has existed since the barbary wars, and we are no longer going to live by american values, and the saudis love that. them and helped prince mohammad bin salman purchases government using u.s.

intelligence. jared kushner went there with u.s. intelligence. one aboveater, every mohammad bin salman had been arrested, including one of the richest men in the world. iss use of that information a power politics dynamic that could not be bought before. once that was done, combined press,s attacks on the they saw america going in a completely different direction, which is true. the way they have always wanted to see america go. could be like their subcontractors, and i have worked there as a subcontractor. you could be bought, paid for, and told what to do and now, they have done it. they have felt emboldened to get a u.s. resident in virginia who is a saudi citizen to send an fashion -- an assassination team to abducting and her murder him and they are surprised we are

getting upset. but they are just waiting for donald trump to cut the deal and there is a deal being cut because trump has essentially said we have their excuse. good enough for me. i call this the full kavanaugh, where you can just lie and that lie is acceptable and i'll call it a sufficient investigation. [applause] what does that have to do with russia? i wrote two books on this. i ambe so bold as to say the first person in the united states in media on july 25, 2016 to go on television. msnbc had no idea what i would say and i said the united states is under attack in a deep cyber warfare and information warfare aimed at splitting the democratic party in half and electing donald trump president. the other half of my first book

before the election, a plan to hack america. we are under attack. there is no delusion accept the people who no longer care about america's values. anyone who says this is just the way it was, adheres to donald trump's belief, these people are literally throwing out everything they believed before and there is a reason for that. the plot tod book " destroy democracy," i have three chapters on how russia uses information warfare. this is full kgbp. . it couldn't move fast enough in times of printing presses and newspapers. only computers and social media weaponize your freedom of speech. your freedom of speech allowed them to carry out a technique known in the nato cyber warfare manual as perception management.

clapped your reality. trump's information algorithm was created within the russian sphere of influence. that is why when he came out and started talking about for policy, the first thing he talks about is, they know it is -- nato is obsolete. everyone wondered where that came from. russia. the european union should be dismantled. russia. these are objectives of our adversaries, not of our nation. one third of the american public's perception of reality is engineered by foreign intelligence agencies, weaponize through our own information systems, propagated through your friends and family and now, we don't believe what we have ever

believed. rewed, and the only -- >> you can't be in the pocket of the russians and the saudis at the same time. when you don't care how you win, you'll take assistance from anybody and if that means treason, so be it. if that means the saudis come to you and promise you riches, so be it. if that means the israelis come to you and say we can engineer your social media -- i said this on television about 500 times and 2016. 2016 caret there are multiple dirty tricks schemes being investigated by the special counsel. not one, multiple ones. you've seen people commit treason for multiple reasons, not just one. you can'tt being,

have countries that think they will run his foreign-policy paying him off, especially something diametrically opposed as the saudi royal family and russia. state of the client iran. thedumb person in the room, russians aren't idiots, the saudi's aren't idiots, the israelis are not idiots. >> donald trump, and they know he is an idiot and therefore, they can play him. every human intelligence officer can tell you you recruit stupid people who are willing to look out for their own interests to betray their nation so yes, they can work with all three -- the old-school realpolitik people would have believed your three thesegical factors from

nations cannot compete with each other but when it is money, it works. >> i have a question for malcolm, actually both of you. how does a relatively small group of people advantageously spread across three states, how did they see strong -- trump as leader as he is beholden to these bookies? and a puppet or whatever else. constant source of humiliation to the country and they have made a laughingstock. i don't know as we come to the midterms how he still represents a republican patriarch in any way. he is so owned. >> i used to be republican. he doesn't represent conservatism or republicanism. he represents trumpism.

>> i want to get jack in the conversation here. if you haven't seen his documentary, i hope you will. he has a terrific interview with senator john mccain. you, onceke to ask you put that film to bed, what have we learned since then and what do we still need to learn about russian interference in 2016 at 2018 and the relationship with trump? >> i think that since it has come out, the only thing that has come out since the film that i wish was in it -- we go back through other times russia has intervened in elections in europe and show how they did it in ukraine, georgia, and figured out their playbook and applied it here. ukraine,he film, from paul manafort ran that camping.

-- campaign. russian oligarch ran against the pro-western candidate. wouldn't it be nice if we had a nice relationship with russia -- good relationship with russia and things like that. the molar investigation, there was a thing in ukraine i would have liked to have. the candidate who was running against manafort and the candidate, basically accused her of having some person that was a smalltime person in the campaign murdered. that would have been a good thing. out i think has yet to come -- there are two camps of that. one, and a lot of this will be done by journalism, certain things we already suspected or are out there. a lot of stories are coming out in the next few weeks that really nail down stuff that has been out there and we have heard about. i think there is another of

things we have not heard yet. it is my understanding there is a lot of stuff, names that have not been in the press, events we have not heard about, that are going to be included in what comes next. i also watched the other investigation, the district of new york and the new york ag. interestingot of stuff that isn't necessarily connected, but not disconnected from russian collusion stuff. ask if you want to can help us put what we went through in 2016 in a broader context, because what we have seen since then is really remarkable from russia. we have seen the attempted assassination of a former russian military officer in salisbury, england and his daughter being discovered on a park bench unconscious exposed to a soviet toxin.

we have seen it more recently, these indictments, efforts to target anti-doping agencies. efforts to target other regardsions and putin personal adversaries. he isare personal enemies turning russia's spy capabilities against. it is almost comical how bad the tradecraft has been. rental cars full of equipment, authorities look for the trunk and expose this plot. stories that would be assassins tell him about -- tell about, what is going on here? >> the mission is to redefine covert action.

the idea was to present some kind of plausible deniability. -- in 1953.row everyone knows we did it, but you can't prove anything. a lot of former kgb people we are associated with this own -- disown it. in the 1960's and 1970's, it was a professional organization. when they did covert action, you had a -- no idea if at all. . putin is more like stalin than anyone else. stalin was asked how you rectify that your tanks are not as good as anyone else. he said quantity has a quality all its own. that is what putin's offices are doing. they are just throwing numbers at the rest of the world. it is not like our

counterintelligence has gone so much better. is that they are bumbling and stumbling. chapman inemember 2010, the femme fatale that was arrested. god, they are idiots, while they were. the fbi tracked them for a decade before they rolled them up as they were getting too close to the hillary clinton campaign, which is interesting. have the timenot to spend five years at a kgb doingy to get good at espionage. the forget to turn off location on their twitter. to the point where it doesn't matter anymore because there is so much volume that you are going to get something

through eventually. >> i would also say it is more -- it is more intimidating if we don't care if you know. we are doing it and will not get punished for it. it, it ist away with effective then true covert operations where you get what you did, but you don't get the ripple effect. putin, as did stalin, new the trials were ludicrous. you never believed the confessions but it showed how powerful stalin was. >> stupid or clumsy enough to not work, for example.

's sergei scrip all thing -- sergei scripol thing, we captured the russians and traded them back to the russians. the trade was made for three of our assets and he was one of them. in the history of intelligence going back to the renaissance, if you made a spy trade, they were off-limits. you are agreeing they can live the rest of their natural life and we won't touch them. in five minutes of some really poisoning, he changed the world that had been around for 400 years. diplomats are supposed to be off-limits, but there is a video of an american diplomat in moscow getting the [bleep] kicked out of him as he is trying to drive himself -- drag himself into the embassy.

>> if i can make a point, all of this is correct because russia has adopted under putin what i wrote in my book, i called the d egaf attitude. don't give an "f." we talked about this at the spy museum. you have to ask yourself why? what is the intervening factor? what is the strategic play? about russia's overarching strategy, it became clear in the run-up of the 2016 election that in 2012, they had co-opted a very large part of the conservative movement. evangelicals were running conferences in russia, the alt-right was rising under steve bannon, which was positioning themselves like the russian political stormtrooper.

we literally have a fifth column in the united states that facilitated trump's friend's and russia knows they all are loyal to donald trump and by extension, to russia. it was always fringe. -- >> it was always fringe. it is mainstream. they are speaking in other panels here. [laughter] my point being this. you could not run an operational mission like that if you knew you were going to get rolled up 100% of the time. if you are transitioning that nation by requesting their belief that russia is an ally and you will own the mindset of 30% of the population, you are eventually going to be running that population. >> you are giving them way too much credit. >> i'm only going by what they

did. >> they are throwing [bleep] at the wall and something sticks. they are basically probing. jack's movie does a great job of this. >> i have a movie too, you know. not just malcolm's book. [laughter] >> there is a great book over there. what russia is doing is probing and that is what they have been doing for several years, throwing [bleep] out there and seeing what sticks. we are both ex military, that is what you do in reconnaissance. you broke for a weakness and when you've got it, you send everything through. happening, you see this probing. where can we get traction? where can we find people who are willing to put aside what they believe for money or influence or power. it wasn't, at first. -- trump at first. it was actually far left.

she's green, she's really left. far left thato she is back right, but she is left. that is where i have the problem with this broad russia plan. i think russia, as bad as they are at a lot of these things, is trying to figure out what works for the last five or six years and it turned out, the trump campaign worked so they went all in on that. >> you've read my books and the point i made is -- [laughter] >> i made a movie. >> there is a strategy on their part that is a decade-old and they have carried out operations in full since 2012 and we are now seeing what you might call

reconnaissance. i am seeing their activities are just being exposed, but their mission is complete and we know their operation supported the engineering and hijacking of mindset of one third of this nation and now, we are in trouble. >> we will get to questions from the audience in a minute or two, but one last wish to. i have hated the most on my book tour the last few weeks, which is what is going to happen next? what would you say we have who hasfrom moeller, spoken exclusively through his indictments so far, that can tell us anything about what happens next, including whether the dems win the house? >> if the democrats win the house, i am hoping like a lot of

whoever will let committees bloom and we will see in-depth probes into a monument's and everything you think -- em leading and everything up to the jamal khashoggi cover up. everything that we haven't looked into. i imagine this world where heavenly paradise, you'll get answers on some of these things. i think we have reason to expect we will have some of those committees. that is the first thing. the other thing i get optimistic about is thinking about robert mueller and the other women and men in his office, they do not take conspiracy against the united states likely and crimes against the united states --

slightly and crimes against the united states. i don't think there is an unreasonable chance that they will petition the department of justice to lift the convention or statute that say you cannot indict a sitting president. be alone in that, but i cannot imagine -- [applause] these guys who prosecuted the mafia, prosecuted enron, al qaeda, really went after some of the worst frauds, worst crime seeingyou can imagine, the extent of this administration's corruption and saying we hope congress does something with this report and if they don't, we can't. >> i know somebody who knows -- >> is it out of your book? >> it is in my next book. [laughter] -- i know somebody who has known robert mueller for 10 years and i make this statement

quite often. he says robert mueller has a hobby, by the way. he does something other than what you are seeing. his hobby is putting people in prison. said, there will be no punches pulled on this one. when you go for the king, you'd best not miss and i don't think he is planning to miss. [applause] >> let's get to the audience. why don't we start right there. >> thanks for taking my question. this ties in to what you were just speaking about. malcom, you are giving us hope for those who have been waiting and waiting in terms of the moeller investigation. at prioren hearing a lot ofd on msnbc chatter that his investigation will present something shortly after the elections. i am kind of wondering where

that is coming from and how confident we are in that timeframe, and piggybacking on what you just said, the hope that there really will be some action, something for the millions of us that have been waiting and frustrated all this time. i think we have some anxiety that it will come out, so we will keep moving on. >> there is a political dimension to that question. bill, if you don't mind tackling that for starters. >> robert mueller is an able man and has the resources of the department of justice and the fbi and upon demand, other intelligence agencies. i am slightly dubious on both committees investigating. if democrats win the house, i'm not sure they will.

resources and knowledge and ability between robert mueller and his team, and as much as i staffers, i think -- i don't know what is going to happen. subjectively, i don't know. i think trump will have to be defeated at the ballot box. not think he would be removed from office by impeachment or conviction of a crime. in the next two years. i think ultimately, it is going to depend on the public to resolve this issue. robert mueller may indict many more individuals after november but he could have much more

than we realize. a couple they are tangential physician in the investigation. they went are won't say much. i am sure you found this too. mueller knew so much more than we thought he knew. to the degree there was a real conspiracy and to the degree all kinds of people were involved up to perhaps and including the current president, i think he will find out what happened. so i think he will find out the truth. that is the good news. i am not sure the truth will set us free from donald trump in the next 24 months. that is the bad news. >> my question is for vince. do you believe or do you think that perhaps in the latter years of the bush years and the obama years that we were potentially too soft on russia

and not firm enough in standing up to them, that that allowed putin to field emboldened enough toe do what he is doing. with georgia, we didn't do anything with georgia, crime ya or the and ex-ation of the ukraine. do you think that inaction gave him the boldness to do what he does. >> you are not going to be very excited by the answer. we actually did a lot, and we squeezed with sanctions to the oint where -- the reason vladimir putin got involved in is election was he hated hillary clinton passionately. >> it is an hour and 15 minutes. you don't want it to be too long. >> but putin got squeezed. we don't go to war over georgia. sorry, guys. but the sanctions that were put on putin's cronies were

incredibly problematic for putin. his guys basically went to him and set you are in power because we are letting you stay in power. putin's actual hold on the presidency is much more send bus than we think. his buddies don't like him anymore, they could have him have an accident or a coup. and the rope he was squeezed, that is a way to really make putin hurt. and that is what was happening especially at the end of the obama administration and when hillary clinton was secretary of state. he blames her for a lot of things. the orange revolution in the ukraine he blames her for because of her speeches in response to what happened in ukraine. and a lot of the anti-putin movement like pussy-right and other things inside russia were focused more on the united states as being the boogieman behind all this. >> he took the traditional

strength of a president, which hurt them. it took their money. and he decided we are going to be adaptive, and asymmetric, and we are going to put a president in that will not be a traditional president and remove all of those new orleans. they did, and i think they won. >> it is a longer conversation, but i agree with you. we did some things, but we didn't do nearly as much as we could have done, either bush or obama. nd he was happy to see hillary clinton lose to donald trump. but i think he felt generally emboldened by our non-robust policies toward him. >> i just want to stay a word on behalf of sanctions and asset freezing, which was not a tool of the u.s. government earlier. it was just very hard to do. was on a panel, sort of an

exponent of the magniski act. broaduser who worked in ruggets for a long time with very rich people, that is why he is so effective because he is almost one of them, a whistle blower. he looked at this stuff quickly and said all you need to do is freeze this apartment. i can think of what it is right near the kremlin. lock everybody out of that. some glamorous apartment, and that drives them crazy. i don't know what they are. they want to be in a guildled bentley at the prom or whatever. tropez and t of st. the south of france. these are not people with much gravitas. they just want to take their mistresses out to france in a bold bentley, and if they don't, they cry in a corner. derepaska lost all of his

money. >> i was asked if you could do one thing with the u.s. intelligence community to punish them, what would it be? itched authorize the n.s.a. -- i would authorize the n.s.a. to seize their money worldwide. >> the most unsung of the intelligence agencies is the tiny group in the department of treasury that does it targeted, grab them and squeeze sanction work. they did that with terrorists too. but the minute president obama said ho-ho do we sanction, treasury said here. this is what makes it hurt. those guys are amazingly good. >> it has not entirely done its job, but everyone is accounting for the weird money laundering way. >> my question about cybersecurity and the future of politics, elections, news media

and et cetera. is there an adult in the room anywhere in our country that has any checks and balances? is there a defective strategy in play? does anybody know a way to keep unattacked the way it has been? >> this elect wasn't won or lost on cyber. he had an i.t. guy tell him the wrong thing and he clicked on the wrong thing. the n.s.a. is the best organization in the world by far doing cyberoffense and defense. >> i am talking about creating bots, voting machines, testing the tabulation. is there an adult in the room? >> well, there are some. i think the voting machines thing, now we have paper battles in 40 of the 50 starts, back up battles.

i talked to some people who work on this stuff. it is hard. the offense is ahead of the defense at this point. you can have the adults in the room, and if you want to disrupt sony or our election debate or steal stuff from financial company, the defense would have -- we have museum destruction stuff where we can threaten them. but do we want to get into that with them? we have more to lose. i think cyberis a huge problem going forward as an actual policy matter even if we had good people making the policies. >> the problem is it is a public-private policy. you need facebook, twitter and others to do something about it. and until they do, you can bot people to death. the seth rich thing was prop gated because it is of facebook and targeted facebook.

that was less to do with the russians and more to do with the fact that people aren't and facebook nt aren't looking to take that stuff down. that is really problematic. >> not to mention it that we are susceptible to it as a society. i would put my tiny into cents in here to say that i think d.h.s. and other agencies are working hard, it is hard to get a total government effort when the president treats it as a hoax and dismisses it. it does rob the ability of these institutions that can do more when their efforts are discredited from the top. >> hi. there have been some really interesting discussions today just around the objectives of russia and meddling, cyberwarfare, whatever you want to call it, probing, getting the sanctions dropped, et cetera. but army asymmetric warfare group actually defines hybrid

warfare as having the objective be a regime change through not con eitheric things as opposed to rolling through a gap with a million tanks. i am wondering if that really is the golf as the senior chief was talking about, making america essentially not america anymore, then is conspiracy to defraud the united states really the right legal or other framework we should be following here? not that i am blood thirsty -- >> because we are not at war. as you say, this is asymmetric information operations designed o craft a new reality around the opponent's population. by the way, i am quoting the nato information war milano right now. -- war manual right now.

the purposes of it though is to craft that reality in order to create and favorable operational environment for another nation to essentially run that nation by remote control. that has happened, mission accomplished >> no, no, no. >> 37% of this nation doesn't believe a damn word we are saying. that didn't come from anywhere. >> the point of the question. there are two kinds of regime change. one is actually replacing one regime with another you prefer. but the other is causing chaos and weakening the regime you don't like. i think it is much more the latter with the russians. i think they have the notion that they can cause a huge weakening and divisiveness in the united states.

and they have done that. that i certainly agree with. >> we have like two minutes left. let's do a rapid fire. >> the people most surprised about trump winning were the russians. they thought we were going to have a weak hillary clinton president. so it is not like they thought they were going to win this thing. >> over here. >> given the revelations about maria's attempts to infiltrate the n.r.a., is the sbl with the russian collusion more the unique donald trump ability or the conservative movement and institutions? >> yes, and yes. >> donald trump is recruitable. he is a dream for human intelligence officers. his vulnerabilities are literally written in the k.g.b. erational recruitment milano want. al you a narcissistic person.

they went n.r.o., went after val gel cassell, the ault right, and other factors to create peep who would be susceptible to this re-engineering of the way their world is. >> there is a lot of stuff on the left, too. >> it serves the question was the problem with the plane crash was there a warning light that didn't go on or a fire? what was the press aspect? well, they are automobile pressing. we wouldn't find ourselves in the situation we are as a country unless we had that amalgamation of things come together to do that. >> jack, great documentary. really fantastic. everyone should see it. a quick question for everybody. is there are times when it looks like trump is clearly in the pocket of the kremlin. , has performed in helsinki

and his twitter feet. today he said he was withdrawing the i.m.f. treaty, which is going to mack the rudy gays mad. you lead us to an obvious conclusions that he is compromised. to each of you, to what extent do you actually believe this man is compromised by the kremlin, and do you actually believe he is taking or has taken some sort of instruction from them? to what extent? >> to a fairly large extent. when we talk about it, we think of it in the abstract. and we don't get into what that means. nap on's brother was running spain, he did a lot he didn't look. are we going to argue that he wasn't a puppet? no. others did things that putin didn't want. when i think of somebody being compromised or something like that, there are two things.

one is how they compare to the other potential candidate. in this case it is obvious. and the other is not can i completely control this person. does donald trump wake up thinking about his orders from vladimir putin? no. but are there things he has to avoid? he has to negotiate around those things in a way that he is not considering what is best for america. he is considering what is best for him. i think that is clearly -- i mean to me clearly an issue and a problem. do you think -- and you make a good point. i think it is counterproductive for us to think of it as being a robot operated puppet. it is very human. it is all about personality, and so it is complicated. but there certainly is compromise. but yeah. >> do we have time for one more? this has to be the last one. go ahead. >> thank you. so from a cybersecurity perspective, we have probably the best intelligence agencies

in the world. we have data collection methods through nodes on the internet lines and everything along those lines. to it is a systemic failure from all of these agencies to allow all of these things to happen. how do we grant or independence back from a subversion tactic that has basically worked? >> i worked at the national security agency, and i can tell you right now they are the commensurate organization. they are the best organization in this world. but they work within law, and those laws are generally issued through leadership and orders by a person who is running the intelligence community according to our national interests. like uses stishe warfare cyber warfare like we drink

coffee. hey openize all of these old k.g.b. information warfare techniques. they know democracy cannot keep up. auto charissa can. they can use it as they see fit. how long did it take to us stop the concentration camps in world war ii and the mass murder? you have to go through a war to stop that. they understand we are not going to do that. so long as they are not shutting off powers on power plants which kills people, they know that we plaintiff a discussion and a debate about it. and whatever their objective is, they are going to get away waist it. >> and they can't do that. this is not an intelligence question, it is a political question. malmel come is can dead on about that. the white house in many cases were very good about being

reactive, closing the barn door. you look at 9/11, coming later on. being proactive is dull. the government is not dined, the senate is not designed to be proactive a lot of things. the n.s.a. is going to do what you tell them to do. ey have capabilities far beyond what they are told to do. one wrote talked about the government of the united states, that congress limits what the intelligence agencies can do, and it is their job to come up to the line. they have been you could talking about offensive steinbrennerer, and sometimes the best defense is aed good offense. we are still the only country in the world to have a siberia attack that had physical damage.

>> they don't run the packs. this is not like previous ational security challenges. some were dangerous, and they tried it for advent yourism. the government said we have the nuclear snearns and the strike capability. they fix a problem. you have to get your tech companies in with cyber. cyberis a weird situation in he sense -- and this isn't a bad things. vulnerabilities in the private sector are vulnerabilities for the country as a whole. it is not obvious how the government orders facebook to do a, b or c. >> thank you, panel. great job. >> thanks, greg. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2018] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its captioning content and

accuracy. visit ncicap.org.] >> which party will control the house and senate? watch c-span's live election night coverage starting tuesday at 8:00 p.m. eastern as the results come in from house, senate and governor races around the country. hear victory and concession speeches from the candidates. then wednesday morning at 7:00 a.m. eastern, we will get your reaction to the election, taking your phone calls live during "washington journal." c-span, your primary source for campaign 2018. >> next a look at the economic impact of refugees and other my grants, and the particular effects of immigration on the u.s. the brookings institution hosted this discussion.