Sunday School 7/19/26: Extra Credit

For your Extra Credit this week, I spent time in the Face the Nation (CBS) classroom, focusing on the election security issues we've been discussing since the FOTUS addressed the nation in a televised and widely streamed chat last week. Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) joined Margaret Brennan for a bit; I recapped some of his chat with ABC's Jon Karl in yesterday's Sunday School post. 

Brennan opened this part of the discussion noting that it's "been public for years" that our intelligence folks determined China tried to influence our election by changing what we think, not by hacking or anything like that. She asked Warner, a long-time member of the Senate Intelligence Committee (IC), if it had ever been given any evidence backing up this statement from Trump: 

This evidence shows that the election system we have dangerously exposes – and really exposes like levels never thought possible, to hacking, exploitation and foreign interference. 

"Absolutely not," Warner said, adding that the speech was full of "absurdities and falsehoods," and said that "the only election that Trump is concerned about is 2020. That was the election that his administration was in charge of," and that he "forgets or just omits" Russia. He confirmed the IC hasn't received any report from the administration's analysis of the 2024 election.

 After itemizing moves by the administration, including cutting funding for the Cybersecurity Agency (CISA), abandoning the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), which allows states to share voter information to help identify duplicate registrations, deceased voters, and so on, and tanking the Election Assistance Committee (EAC), Warner said this:

Why is he doing all these things? I believe it's because Donald Trump intends to interfere in this year's elections. He knows, if there is a free and fair election, his policies will be rejected at record levels.

Brennan asked (twice) what Warner meant by interference. 

Whether that takes - I think that what we just saw was, this was the opening shot, the opening shot of trying to undermine Americans' confidence that their vote will be actually counted and mean something... I fear as well that if he tries to pull something that could potentially - he's not ruled out bringing ICE to the polls. He's not even ruled out the idea of trying to bar certain voting machines.

Brennan then turned to CBS News contributors David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, and Chris Krebs, the former director of CISA during the 2020 election cycle. Notably, Krebs was fired by Trump for saying that the 2020 election was secure, and that's where Brennan started this segment, asking if anything he heard from Trump changed his assessment.

Not - not at all. In fact, I would say that it further bolsters my confidence in the security of the 2020 election, between what has been released, disclosed last week, and all the information and the results of court challenges and other things in the intervening six years.

Brennan, noting that Trump was particularly aggressive towards Krebs, asked him to describe "the Chinese role in the 2020 election." He said there was an "honest debate and discussion" about China's intent across the intelligence community.

But ultimately, when it came out in the intelligence community assessment that was released in the spring of 2021, it was that China had a preference, and that they were not in favor of President Trump, but their efforts were principally limited to influencing the American public, seeking to pay journalists, media. But it was an influence effort...

A method, he said, China has been using since the early- or mid-2000s. It's not new, he said; "they did turn up the heat, and they are still doing it today. He said, "we have a significant and serious counterintelligence and counterespionage problem with China." And, responding to Trump saying folks did not disclose anything to him, "or to anyone else" or to Congress, Krebs offered this:

In January of 2020, there was a National Intelligence Community memorandum about the 2020 election that talked about the vulnerabilities we saw on systems and the work we needed to do there, but it also talked about the intent of adversaries. And there were countless memos after that...a lot of these products were in senior executive and policymakers' binders, their intelligence binders every single day. We used those to get out there and talk to the American people. I wrote an op-ed in September of 2020 for the general public that discussed various threat actors, including China. So, I have a hard time believing that it didn't get up into the Oval.

Brennan, before leaving this topic, said. "As China was described as attempting to influence, it was Iran and Russia, primary actors directly undermining the election in some of those 2020 statements. It sounds like you're saying he didn't read the memo" (emphasis added). Krebs agreed.

Sunday School 7/19/26

 I spent a little time wandering the halls at Sunday School yesterday, and thought I'd recap some of what was going on in ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos classroom. Jon Karl was in the host's chair this week, and spoke first with Energy Secretary Chris Wright.

Karl mentioned our attacks in Iran, after the deaths of two service members, and wondered if there was more retaliation planned. 

Yes, look, the president’s mission is essential for peace in the Middle East and peace in the world. And that is to prevent Iran from achieving nuclear weapons and to degrade their ability to terrorize their neighbors and the world and global commerce. So, yes, this mission will go on until the mission is done.

Karl repeated that he's asking specifically about retaliation for the deaths of two Americans, and Wright, again, answered a different question.

It’s tragic to lose American lives, but this is a mission that will save countless lives going forward. His focus is on degrading the Iranian ability to terrorize the world, to hold world commerce hostage, as they are doing right now, and to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons. That is unchanged.

The conversation switched to oil. Wright says we are now "assuring that -- that oil and gas and other products can flow through the Strait of Hormuz, with or without Iranian cooperation" while we continue to "degrade" their military and, at the same time, look for a diplomatic solution.

President Trump wants to end it with a peaceful agreement with Iran, but it takes two parties to do that. If they’re -- if they’re -- if they’re ready to do that, that’s the way it will end. If not, we will continue to assure flow of traffic through the Strait without Iran’s cooperation.

Wright strongly disagreed with Karl's contention that traffic through the Strait was effectively stopped, and tossed out some numbers, saying around 7,000,000 barrels are moving through the waterway and slightly less than that through "bypass pipelines," which he said was 2/3 of what moved through before the war and "dramatically up from where we were" the last time he was on the show back in March. And he said that "almost all the public data" he's seen is wrong, adding that

... we count the volume of oil that goes through. The ship numbers are down more dramatically. But, of course, we’re flowing larger tankers now to keep the world markets as well supplied as we can.

Switching gears, Karl noted the president's stated focus on election security as a "top domestic priority," but questioned why his budget cuts $700M from CISA, the cybersecurity agency. Wright said he "wouldn’t look at the inputs, the money spent. I’d look at the outputs, the quality of United States cybersecurity. That’s never been higher than where it is right now under President Trump."

And then, I guess because it's mandatory to do so, Karl asked whether Joe Biden won the 2020 election. Wright said, "He was president for four years. Clearly so," and then, when pressed, said, "Look, I'm not an election evaluator, but it sure seems to me like he did."

Senator Mark Warner (D-VA), the ranking member on the Senate Intelligence Committee, was the second interview. Karl opened by asking how the president should respond to the killing of our two service members. 

Well, first of all, I join with all Americans in condolences to these soldiers. Remember, as we think about this five-month war, this is a war of choice. As a member of the Gang of Eight, there was no imminent threat from Iran against America. So, Donald Trump chose to go to war. It took him two weeks to lay out what he thought his goals were going to be.

And then, he ticked through those goals. I'll condense his response:

• Regime change: We got a worse crowd than before. 
• Getting the enriched uranium:  It's still there... 
• Getting rid of Iran’s missile and drone capability. Obviously, we’ve not been successful there.
• The Strait of Hormuz: he sees " no path in the short term how the Strait is going to be settled."

He expressed his frustration on the drone point in particular, including that they're inexpensive in comparison to our using $2.5M missiles to shoot the drones down, and that the president has refused the offer from Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy to give us the technology to build our own drones.

In the end, here's where Warner landed: 

This war of choice has been a disaster. It has been a disaster militarily. It has been a disaster in terms of how we’re viewed around the world. It has been a disaster to our friends and allies who have questioned whether we will keep our promises. I’m anxious if it takes a classic Donald Trump move, declare victory tomorrow and be done. But the continuation of this war at this pace will be a continuing disaster.

Karl wondered what happens if we do leave; the Iranians are firing at ships in the Strait, and at our bases throughout the region, and asked how we end it. Warner mentioned "diplomacy negotiated by diplomats who actually know what they're doing," an obvious shot at Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, a couple of real estate developers who I think don't even officially work for the government. He pointed to the JCPOA, the Obama deal that Trump ditched, as an example of what worked.

But we're not going to  - I don't believe anyone thinks we're going to bomb Iran into submission. And I sure as heck do not believe that - short of troops on the ground- that there's any meaningful way forward to get out that enriched uranium.

Last question on this topic: does Warner agree with cutting off all funding for the war? He says the Department of Defense will ask for more money, and that we're depleting some of our stockpiles, but he also notes

there is $89B...that DOD is sitting on that has not been allocated to specific programs. There are shortages in the region. DOD, use that money first to replenish our supplies. And if the president wants to continue this war, come to Congress, make his case to the American people and to Congress rather than continuing what I think now is, frankly, an illegal action, because he never went through that process.

Turning to the election and the president's pitch the other night, Karl wondered if "there was anything new" in what the president released. Warner said that, over the last decade as chair or vice-chair of the Intelligence Committee, "there's probably no issue I've been more obsessed about..." In that time, his main concern has been Russia, "far and away" the most prominent foreign country in the game, "usually on behalf of Trump." And,

Iran has been very active as well, usually against Trump. North Korea has been active. China’s got the capabilities, but they’ve been more -- less about which candidate and more like, 'can we just make Americans lose confidence?'

And what about the Chinese getting those 220 million voter records?

Well, listen, I'm much more concerned about the fact that the Chinese hacked into the OPM data a number of years back and got personal information about anybody working in the federal government. I'm more concerned about the fact that they tapped into many insurance companies and have got personal information about all of us.

They have incredible data capabilities. And again, the secretary, respectfully, our cybersecurity activity is CISA. It has worked with the private sector. He's cut it like mad. We have another part of election security, and remarkably, Jon, a lot of this election security apparatus was set up, done under President Trump's first term. They did a good job.

The "another part" of election security he's referring to is the Elections Assistance Commission, from which Trump fired all the Democrats and forced out the Republican commissioners. 

... it works with local registrars, state registrars, making sure we vet voting machines... You know, this guy is not looking for a secure election because if we have a free and fair election, he and his allies are going to get beat historically this fall.

Karl then asked about "this so-called SAVE America Act" and how Dems are opposed to it, and he asked Warner if "requiring photo ID to register to vote" is something they should get behind, based on polling that around 80% of all Americans and 71% of Dems say they favor it. That led to a discussion about what Virginia, where they both live, requires. Ultimately, you show ID to register, you don't need to show ID to vote, and they allow 'affidavit' attestations, which can be challenged. Warner says that constitutes voter ID of one form or another. 

Karl asked again if we should have a national standard requiring ID to be shown. Warner pointed out the irony of what happens now.

If you can show any photo that (w)as government-stamped, it would be fine. Certain states will say, we're going to let you show your NRA gun license, but you can't show your student ID. If you're going to have a set of IDs, let's have it across the board as long as it comes from some official point. But this is not about voter ID. The SAVE Act is about voter disenfranchisement... 

Lisa Murkowski, a host of Republicans, don't want the SAVE Act because they know it's anti-voter... the folks who have mail-in voting, Utah is as Republican a state as anyone. They've done mail-in voting for decades. Donald Trump wants to decrease voter participation and undermine confidence in our system.

I know one thing that would improve people's confidence: if the folks who come into the classrooms actually answered the questions they were asked, and if the people asking the questions focused on what's important. 

Jon Karl did a reasonable job from the host's seat, except for the attempted 'gotcha' he asked Chris Wright about the 2020 election. But neither Wright nor Warner addressed the question of how America should respond to the deaths of Americans in the past few days. In response, an "if it were me, I'd..." would provide information and possibly lead to an interesting follow-up or two.

What would you like to have heard from Wright and/or Warner?  Drop a comment! And if you're interested, you can find my thoughts on Trump's remarks here.

Sunday School 6/6/21: Extra Credit

Let's dive in to the Extra Credit with Chuck Todd and his interviews with Senators Mark Warner (D-VA) and Roy Blunt (R-MO) on Meet the Press. Warner was first, and was asked about cybersecurity. To a large degree, he echoed the thoughts of Sen. Angus King (I-ME), who was featured in yesterday's Sunday School. And so did Blunt - there wasn't a lot new there. 

The conversation around Blunt's opposition to a January 6th commission was interesting. He said he was never in the "I'll support it if it's bipartisan" crowd; rather, he felt that "we know what we need to do here" and that a commission would slow that effort down. There's a two-committee bipartisan report coming out next week, and, "we, I think, are going to be happy - I think you're going to be really pleased with the report you see." 

Blunt is "concerned we're losing faith in the election system" and "it's important to have a bipartisan belief that the election system does what it's supposed to do," and he was "pleased to see" that Sen. Joe Manchin (??-WV) also thinks "we need to move forward on election reforms."

Blunt said he "really can't analyze" whether Former Guy believes the nonsense he spews, but says that he had the right to take it to court. The courts didn't buy the argument, 

and so, we moved forward, and we continue to move forward. I do think President Trump is an incredibly popular figure in our party, certainly a political figure in my state. I'd like to see him get focused on the 2022 elections. There are plenty of things for Republicans to be talking about besides the election process itself...

Boy, if this is how the Rs define moving forward, we're in a boatload of trouble if they regain the majorities in the midterms.

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was on Face the Nation with John Dickerson; cybersecurity came up there as well. She sees the international community pulling together to address the issue, including asking countries like Russia to provide intelligence and law enforcement support. It's a test, she says, to see how involved the governments might be with the criminals perpetrating the attacks.

On the insurrection and a commission, she says we "somehow need to look into" what happened, that "it was a terrible stain on our democracy," and that our "really terrific system...was tested on that day."

... And so, we have a tradition of these citizens, these elders, if you will, of the country to help us through times like this. The problem right now is there isn't enough trust in Washington to get this done in a way that everybody will- will trust the process. We do need to know what happened on January 6.

Dickerson pushed back, pointing out that the Rs blocked the commission. Rice said the problem is, there's not enough trust in Congress,

because we have constant discussions about how am I going to simply push you aside and do what I want to do. So let's just recognize that we are not in 2004 when the 9/11 Commission was constituted and worked and try to find a way to get to a set of answers about what happened on- on January 6th. I would prefer that this were not the case, but maybe we have to think about ways to do this outside of our electoral bodies.

And on how we teach American history, including the Tulsa Massacre, and the things that led to the civil rights movement, and yes, also American exceptionalism, Rice started her answer with this:

American history was in part shaped at its very beginning by this birth defect of slavery. Do I wish that the anti-slave forces had won out? Absolutely. But they didn't. And then we had after the Emancipation, we had a Reconstruction which gave way to Jim Crow.

She said she was eight before her family could go to a restaurant or to the movies, and she was 12 before she ever had a white classmate. 

So, yes, I know America's troubled past and that troubled past continues to have an impact going forward on how we see each other. When I hear the talk about structural racism, it really gives me pause and it gives me pause because it doesn't tell me what to do.

She's talking about things like medical outcomes for people of color vs. whites, which she said "clearly are still disproportionate." And how our education system "is really serving poor kids and minority kids very badly." And how minorities and the poor don't have the choice to move to a better district, with a better house, or go to private schools like people of means can.

I want kids to know about Tulsa. I also want them to know what that Black community did to overcome that horrible massacre. I want them to know about '63 in Birmingham, but I want them to know that the mayor of Birmingham today is a Black man who grew up in a poor community. So I want them to see the forward progress of America as well on these issues. And I want us as a country to do it together because I don't want this to be black against white, my weaponization of my identity against yours.  

Dickerson asked for clarification on structural racism, asking if it's "not that it doesn't exist, but that the term itself doesn't get you as far as you would like?" She said she's stopped using the term "because I don't know what it means anymore," and that it's become a barrier.

Do I think that there are impacts of race that are clear in American life? Absolutely. But, you know, the other problem with it is it sounds so big and impenetrable, as if we have to jettison the system somehow. And with all of its problems, having been all over the world and having seen how people deal with difference, I will tell you that America deals with difference better than any country I've ever visited. 

And that's at least the third time in a past couple of weeks that I've seen someone say that we're better than the rest of the world when it comes to this kind of stuff. And yet, I can't imagine Condi Rice saying that 'being better than some really awful people' is good enough for America - can you? 

See you around campus. And, by the way, I hope you're vaccinated.

Sunday School 2/28/21: Extra Credit

In yesterday's Sunday School, I gave you excerpts from five of the seven senators who were in the classrooms. There was nothing surprising in any of those interviews, and I suspect the other two - Rick Scott (R-FL) and Mark Warner (D-VA) - were equally unsurprising. You can check out their interviews on Fox News Sunday. 

Today, I want to focus on Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's chat with Chuck Todd on MTP. President Biden and Trudeau had a virtual meeting last week, in which Trudeau spoke highly of the state of things in the world, according to this article in The Guardian. 

Among other things, he said that "US leadership has been sorely missed over the past years," and added, "And I have to say a we were preparing the joint rollout of the communique on this, it's nice when the Americans are not pulling out all the references to climate change and instead adding them in." 

Chuck asked Trudeau about the 'leadership vacuum' he alluded to, and the PM said the issues the two countries are facing are things that "we naturally have to work together on," and he sees there being an active engagement between our two countries - and he's happy to see us re-engaging.

I think certainly there were things that were more challenging under the previous administration in terms of moving the dial in the right direction on the international stage. But, at the same time, you know, we all have democracies that go in different directions from time to time. And the, the sweep of the work that we need to do together as, as allied nations in the G7 and elsewhere, continues to be really important.

Chuck wanted specifics on global policy initiatives that Biden can help move forward. Trudeau pointed to COVID, saying the Biden approach is more in line with the Canadian approach - science, and protecting the people "as the best way to protect the economy," and supporting people as we move through it. Other things he mentioned? the US rejoining COVAX, rejoining the fight to address climate change, and on "the tremendous economic opportunities" linked to clean energy and clean jobs, and how those will help the middle class "and those working hard to join it."

Trudeau was asked about what's behind the low number of Canadians being vaccinated, compared to our equally unimpressive numbers.

Obviously, it's not going as fast as, as everyone would want. We all want this pandemic to be over yesterday and to vaccinate everyone as quickly as possible. But we're confident that in the coming weeks, hundreds of thousands of vaccines every week, millions into the coming months. We are going to have everyone vaccinated probably by the end of the summer. And that is something that we're, we’re very positive and excited about.

He also said they have contracts with multiple vaccine makers, with three now approved in Canada (Pfizer, Moderna, and now Astra-Zeneca) and hopes to approve more of them in the coming weeks. In the meantime, he said, they must "just keep hanging on" like everyone else is doing. 

Where we've got a slightly less warm and fuzzy relationship is on the Keystone XL pipeline, which was shut down by Executive Order on January 21st. Chuck asked Trudeau to make the environmentalist case for the pipeline, to help those of us who are against it. He said we probably haven't noticed how much Canada has done in fighting climate change, even as they recognize that "the world still relies on fossil fuels right now." But it's about balance, and transforming the energy mix to reduce carbon emissions as much as possible. So, while he KXL decision was disappointing, there's a lot than can be done.

So, Chuck asked, does this mean it's now a done, and done dead, deal? Trudeau said they're more interested in making sure we're moving forward "in ways that are good for both of our countries."

I think there's so much we can do together that I don't spend too much time worrying about the tension points. It'll always come up in our relationship, but we'll work through them, particularly given the alignment on so many things that we're able to bring with this new administration.

Two last questions, the first of which was about Trudeau's reaction to seeing the Capitol riot back in January. 

Dismay. A reminder of the fact that democracy is something we need to keep working at. A reminder that none of us are immune from polarization and anger and frustration. Certainly, there is -- there was a real sense that we all need to be careful about what we say and how we, how we lead as a way of trying to bring people together and unify people. But that was a, that was a scene that Canadians watched with consternation and horror and, and real concern.

As did I, and almost everyone I know. I say almost everyone, because some people have made no comments at all about it - and I'd hate to assume that they were fine with it, as were a very limited few to admit that. I don't want to project that on anyone. 

And the final question: What's the metric for reopening the border? 

 I think there's an awful lot of different metrics we need to look at on, on border and on keeping Canadians safe from Covid-19. Obviously, case counts, presence of variants, hospitalizations -- all these things factor into the expert analysis. Our public health experts telling us what the right measures are and how concerned we have to be about, about variants. Obviously as vaccinations increase, we’re all hoping for good news and to get through this. But we'll continue to engage with the, with the White House and with the administration on the best times to start releasing border measures. But, for now, we all need to keep safe, and that means keeping them in place.

I can't wait for them to be safely relaxed - it'll mean both countries are in a better place with the pandemic, and with vaccines, - and it'll mean that we can make trips across the border for photography and other adventures. 

Masks up - and I'll see you around campus.

Sunday School 12/20/20: Extra Credit

Yesterday's Sunday School focused on the Biden folks who were out and about. For your Extra Credit today, we're going to focus on the massive hack which apparently kicked off months ago, and was only more recently discovered - or, at least, more recently disclosed. 

Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) was in the classroom with George Stephanopoulos on This Week. Warner agreed with many others that "all indications point to Russia" as being the culprit in the hack, even though the president said it might be China. Warner also said "thank goodness" FireEye came forward, otherwise we might not have discovered the attack. (We'll hear from FireEye later in the post). And, Warner said, 

... I think this raises a whole host of questions of how did they get in, stay so long, how do we make sure our government agency, for example, CISA, that's supposed to oversee cybersecurity, there's not even a requirement that private companies or for that matter, even public agencies, have to affirmatively report that kind of attack or intrusion to CISA. We’re going to need to look at a whole new set of rules...

The attack may be ongoing, he's not sure - but "they got in and were in for a long time." Warner talked about being able to get into a "supply chain" and then move from one company to another and "ultimately get down to some of our most important innovation tools being discovered by our adversaries." And he said when the president tries to deflect or is not willing to call out our adversary, he is not making our country safer.

Warner said it appears that only non-classified networks were breached, and that we've got a lot of work to do - "literally weeks" to find out how extensive the attack was, and "potentially months" to remediate the damage. He also said we need better funding and better rules for this kind of thing.

I sometimes think we disproportionately spend on tanks, ships and guns when we should be better protecting on cyber. And I think not only America but, frankly, our FireEye partners, NATO, others, because there are international implications of this attack as well. 

We had the benefit of our 'mutually assured destruction' from the nuclear perspective, he said, but we don't have similar thinking around cyber. What happened falls somewhere between espionage and an attack, 

And I think the only way we're going to be able to counter it is not only better cyber hygiene, better protocols on how information must be shared if you are attacked, and then making very clear to our adversaries that if you take this kind of action, we and others will strike back.

Finally, George asked about our own hacking, our own espionage, but Warner answered a different, unasked, question. 

The level of indiscriminate attack launch, as Secretary of State Pompeo said, by potentially a Russian spy agency, this is as broad and as deep as anything we've ever seen. And the idea that that should go unanswered would be very bad American policy and, frankly, simply invite Russians or others to continue these kind of malicious activities.

Over in the State of the Union classroom, Jake Tapper's guest was Christopher Krebs, who led the US Cybersecurity Agency during the time of the hack. Tapper cited Trump's comments I linked above, and Krebs discounted the president's view.

Everything I have heard... it's Russia. I mean, they are - they're exceptionally good at this, particularly the foreign intelligence service, the SVR. They're good. They're quiet. They're deliberate. They're patient and they're careful.

Krebs said we're "just getting our arms around" the scope, and while there's been a lot of talk about SolarWinds, an IT company that provides software services to many companies that were hacked, he thinks it's probably bigger than just them. He suspects there are more companies compromised, and

in fact, my old agency issued a report to that effect just the other day, that we are looking for other ones. And supply chain compromises are particularly hard to defend against.

Tapper asked why didn't anyone catch the hack sooner. Krebs said first, the Russians are very talented; second, a supply chain attack is very hard to defend against; and third, we've got "a lot of old antiquated, legacy IT systems that are hard to defend" in our 101 federal civilian agencies.  But there's more. The National Defense Authorization Act (which the president has threatened to veto)

... would give CISA, my old agency, the authorities to go out and really aggressively hunt and look for these adversaries. And that's what we're going to have to do to get certainty and to the other side of this, is really deep-diving into these agencies' systems, looking for the Russians, and going hand to hand combat almost with them and get them out of those systems.

He agreed that "yes, it happened on my watch at CISA. And we missed it." The key now is doing the work to make sure we get them out of our networks, and "that it never happens again." That's going to take Congressional support, resources, and the authority to do what we need to do. 

Krebs says the Russians are more interested in intelligence, in policy stuff, diplomatic stuff, negotiations and so on, rather than in "destructive types of attacks." That said, we need to be "very careful with escalating this," in making any kind of retaliatory attack of our own. We need to talk with "like-minded countries" about what's an acceptable response. 

Final question? What does he think about Trump meeting with Rudy Giuliani, Michael Flynn,  Sidney Powell "talking about martial law to overturn the election, making Sidney Powell a special counsel, et cetera?"

I think I have said it a couple times this week in a Senate hearing on Wednesday, but this is not the America that I recognize. And this is just beyond the pale.

And, from the Face the Nation classroom, we've got Margaret Brennan's discussion with Kevin Mandia, the CEO of FireEye, "a cybersecurity company that protects clients against malicious software and investigates hacks."  That's the company Sen. Warner mentioned in his comments, which discovered the breach.

Mandia said this was different from the over a thousand breeches his company responds to a year. He described it vividly, saying

This was not a drive-by shooting on the information highway. This was a sniper round from somebody a mile away from your house. This was special operations. And it was going to take special operations to detect this breach. 

He also said he thinks these are the same folks who were messing around in the 90s and early 2000s, not a "one and done" threat, and said that it's a "continuing game in cyberspace." As to when it began, suggesting it was

In October of 2019 when code was changed in the SolarWinds Orion platform, but it was innocuous code. It was not a backdoor. Then sometime in March, the operators behind this attack did put malicious code into the supply chain, injected it in there- and that is the- the backdoor that impacted everybody.

He also said that it's true "over 300,000 companies use SolarWinds," but around 18,000 companies actually had the malicious code in their networks, and then only around 50 were "genuinely impacted." 

When asked about attribution for the attack, and whether he agrees with others that it was Russia, Mandia said it was "definitely a nation behind this." And after some more very vivid descriptions, going even beyond his earlier drive-by analogy, Brennan pressed him on the Russia question, saying

But you know better than anyone that there are only a very few number of nation states capable of what you are describing in terms of skill. Russian intelligence, specifically the SVR, has been repeatedly pointed to by officials. Is that who you believe did this?

He thinks "this is an attack very consistent with that," and that we're going to get the attribution right. We can either "speculate it or we can do some more work" to nail it down, to "put a neon sign on the building of the folks that did this."

And I'm very confident as we continue the investigation, as it gets broader, as more people learn the tools, tactics and procedures of this attack, we're going to bring it back and we're going to get attribution. Not ninety-two percent right, not 'consistent with,' but a hundred percent. Let's just get it right so that we can proportionately respond, period.

Brennan explained her push on attribution, suggesting that to prevent this kind of attack from happening again, we have to know who did it. She, too, mentioned the president's muddying of the waters by disagreeing with his own cabinet, and asked Mandia how we keep something like this from happening again.

He said we need to "have doctrine," like we do for the use of chemical weapons, so people know the rules of the game, and if we don't, he thinks it will just get worse.

We're going to see the borders continue to be pushed outward in cyber attacks-- to the point where, when do we finally do the work--when it's already intolerable, when it already got so bad that we have no choice but to respond. But like you said, it starts with doctrine. With doctrine, you have to get attribution right. And with attribution, then you have to do a proportional response to whoever the actors were. 

So, feeling better, or not so much?  I can't decide.

See you around campus, after the holiday.  I'll be looking for your masked family celebration posts on social media - don't let me down!

Sunday School 12/2/18

Today we'll spend time in the CBS Face the Nation classroom, since we missed them on last weeks' rounds. As I'm sure was the case in the other classrooms, there was a considerable amount of time devoted to remembering President George Herbert Walker Bush, who passed away on Friday at the age of 94.

Host Margaret Brennan talked with her CBS colleagues Bob Schieffer and Norah O'Donnell, as well as with his former staffers  Secretary of State James Baker, who was with him on Friday, and Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney. Both shared personal and professional memories of 41.

Elsewhere on the show, Brennan talked with Sunday regular Senator Mark Warner, (D-VA) about Bush first of all. Warner outlined a distinction between the Bush brand of Republicanism and the current version - the key difference being moral character.

President Bush was a class act and I think he realized, and reflecting on this program this morning, American leadership is critical. But that leadership needs to be both economic, military but also moral leadership... He always knew that America was stronger with alliances and the rest of the world looked to that American leadership in all those realms, as I mentioned - militarily, economically, but also morally, and I think it would be -- all of us as we reflect on his legacy to remember that those lessons are still important for all of us to keep in mind. 

They also talked about the Senate Intelligence Committee, and about Michael Cohen's guilty plea for lying to Congress; that all came about because the Mueller team asked for a transcript of Cohen's testimony before the Committee.  Warner noted that if you lie to Congress, they'll go after you and they'll make a referral to Mueller if necessary - and that a number of referrals have been made. He also noted,

I think if I'd been a Republican delegate going into the summer of 2016 I think it would have been a relevant fact to know that actually Donald Trump was still trying to do business with the Russian government; maybe that's why he was so reluctant to say anything bad about Vladimir Putin.

Even though, of course, Trump denied as a candidate and continues to deny any prior relationship with Russia or any business dealings with them - at least until this week, when he describe loose and very cool business practices.  And, he pointed out that it can be argued whether whatever happened was a crime, but the president's still a liar.

Brennan wondered whether Cohen was ordered to lie; Warner doesn't know but thinks it's a relevant question. She also pressed him a little on the referrals he mentioned, asking if that meant the Committee has told Mueller that "a number of Trump associates are lying and we have proof of it." He was non committal on details but that they have an ongoing relationship with Mueller, but that the Committee is a counterintelligence investigation vs. the Special Counsel, a criminal investigation. And, that

...We want to make clear that lying to Congress is a crime. 

Next up, the unpronounceable USMCA, the new trade agreement that's so much like the old one, NAFTA (see how that rolls off the tongue?)  Warner thinks, without having fully reviewed the new agreement, that it could probably have been renegotiated within the existing NAFTA framework. And he expects push back from Congress on both sides of the aisle.

From the panel discussion, here are a couple of highlights:

Jeffrey Goldberg (The Atlantic) on what people on Capitol Hill are thinking about the investigation: ...this week I was asking a number of Democrats how aggressive they think (the Russia investigations are) going to get. They think it's going to get extraordinarily aggressive and we're going to be entering a whole new phase where the subpoenas are going to be coming, flying fast and furious, and the fights between the White House and Congress over who can - who will be able to testify are going to be ferocious.

David Nakamura  (WaPo) on agreement with China from the G20, which Trump called a 'major success': I think it's more a limited success. It did avert, you know.. the next level of this trade war with China because new tariffs could go or have gone into effect at the beginning of next year. But they seem to have averted that at least for 90 days. They basically said they're going to have a truce, sort of a temporary cease fire on these tariffs.. But I think more deeper analysis shows that these intrinsic problems between US and China on trade are not going away and to say it could happen within 90 days is somewhat unrealistic. 

I'll close with something from Schieffer from almost 40 years ago, a conversation with Bush 41 on toughness. Schieffer set it up by saying

He ran for president when Reagan left office but his campaign got off to a terrible start. George Bush was a nice man - modest, kind, a man who actually wrote thank-you notes. Trouble was, some mistook niceness for weakness. The question, "are you tough enough?" was asked of him repeatedly. 

Here's Bush answering that question on FTN in 1979:

I equate toughness with moral fiber, with character, with principle, with demonstrated leadership in tough jobs where you emerge not bully somebody, but with the respect of the people you led. That's toughness. That's fiber. That's character. I have got it. And if I happen to be decent in the process, that should not be a liability. 

Yes - that should not be a liability.

See you around campus.