Russia's hackers disrupt us election democracy itself is an infrastructure what we saw was an attack on our country and America plans on striking back when it comes to interfering in our election we better be ready to throw rocks a new conflict emerges they need each other as enemies more than they need each other as friends unfortunately has the battle now moved Beyond cyberspace [Music] [Music] I'm on my way to a small town in Lithuania where the rising tensions between Russia and the West are playing out on the ground this was once part of the Soviet
Union but today it's a NATO country and the Western military Alliance is flexing its muscles German troops and tanks are rolling through the country for the first time since World War II it's a seene heavy with symbolism so as you can see behind me these are German tanks being deployed into Lithuania which is part of a larger NATO plan to offset Russian aggression in Eastern Europe and that aggression includes targeted cyber warfare the Baltic states Estonia Lithuania and lvia are three former Soviet republics that became full members of NATO they joined other East block Nations
that aligned themselves with the West after the Cold War ended today many of these countries find themselves in the crosshairs of Russian cyber attacks but the biggest job that Putin's hackers ever pulled off was during the 2016 US election were they so doubt in the entire Democratic process [Music] to intelligence officials the hacks and leaks were classic Russian tradecraft but to the powers on Capitol Hill it was a serious wakeup call Amy kashar is on the US Senate committee that oversees Federal elections she was also part of a bipartisan Senate delegation that visited the baltics
after the November vote when did you go to Eastern Europe well we left the day after Christmas and based on the trip that I just took this is nothing new uh those Baltic states have heard this record before um you think about uh Estonia Russia got mad they cyber hacked them and shut down their internet service uh Lithuania invited members of the Ukrainian Parliament from the Crimean area that's the area that Russia has annexed what happens to Lithuania many many attempts to hack into their accounts and to go after them this is not just one
incident and one political presidential cand candidate in one political party or even one country this is a modus operand that they have used across the world the hacking is particularly aggressive in countries that were traditionally inside Russia's sphere of influence and now NATO is trying to find ways to combat it so this is the NATO strategic communications center in Ria ltia where they're studying Russian information Warfare one of the missions of this Center is to help NATO countries resist Russian propaganda social media and disinformation campaign jannis sarts is a former laian state Secretary of Defense
and was responsible for the country's cyber security policies so this is the Russian information Warfare Doctrine the actual document yes it is and it was written by General gasimov valer gasimov is a powerful and influential General and The Man Behind the so-called gasimov Doctrine it Reveals His view of the future of war from their perspective there's a stand information confrontation information Warfare ongoing the doctrine basically outlines the methods and strategies Russia should use to achieve its geopolitical goals interestingly 3/4s of those strategies are non-military things like imposing economic sanctions or organizing political opposition information Warfare
weakening AAL through hacking propaganda and disinformation is the only strategy straddling the line between military and non-military and it's the only constant in times of of both War and Peace So for Russia we're in a constant state a permanent state of information War yes well that's not me here General Gass now would you say this this came from the Soviet era was is this an old Cold War Playbook so to speak it's an uh old KGB uh technique that has been developed in ' 70s and ' 80s the difference is now the internet social media
platforms allow much easier use and much bigger application so it's actually a multiplier more or less but the tool in itself is a old-fashioned one now is this a case of Russia being and Russians being particularly good at this kind of warfare or is this a case of the West being weak and there's something being exploited well that's what they want to say that W West is weak I I wouldn't agree with that we've not been paying attention that is true we've thought that this is behind us that is true and they've been sort of
picking it up and I would argue they probably think that's one of their most effective tools at their disposal currently because in all other areas either economy infrastructure uh military capability they're far behind probably the the the notion of trying to Target election process with these techniques is something different hoping to make a much more profound effect a game changer and in the eyes of politicians and pundits in the US Russia's interference in the 2016 election did change the game but what I need to understand is how does this all help Vladimir Putin once us
officials concluded Russia interfered in the presidential election you can be sure they started plotting their response but I'd like to know how far an escalating cyber war between these two former Cold War Rivals could go I'm in Moscow trying to get some official answers but so far I've been shut out so instead of waiting around for a formal sitdown I just showed up at Russia's lower house of parliament the state Duma to Corner an official so we're crashing a party in the Russian State Duma right now see if anybody will talk to this about DNC
inside the chamber the scene is pretty formal politicians and military men waxing poetic rule one of an effective disinformation campaign is never talk about your disinformation campaign meet General Vladimir shimanov he's the chairman of the powerful State Duma defense [Applause] committee shimanov was once commander-in-chief of all of Russia's airborne troops but he might be better known for human rights abuses that happened under his command in Cheta I was hoping he could talk to me about the next moves and the conflict between the US and Russia he agreed to talk but first this awkward elevator ride
with a man human rights groups one investigated for alleged war crimes so how should the Russian government respond to the American government's accusation that the Russian government's meddled with its election its presidential election now you say there's no proof but the International Community American intelligence and just about anybody else who knows anything about cyber security knows Russia did it why is the Russian government and Vladimir Putin so hesitant to say that they were in fact the ones that were influencing the election now do you think that there's any chance that relations will improve under Trump
with Russia while shimanov denies any Russian interference in the US election he did admit the country is actively expanding its cyber warfare capabilities in fact days earlier Russian defense minister Sergey shyu revealed that Russia has trained and activated highly effective information troops and it's pretty safe to assume that they're targeting NATO and that's something that puts a lot of Western democracies on edge but covert war on NATO is music to the ears of Alexander Dugan a political philosopher with close ties to the Russian Elite who's been dubbed Putin's Rasputin he's one of Russia's leading voices
against globalization the economic political and cultural integration of the world that's driven by international trade some Russians see that system as a threat and it could be one of the reasons why Vladimir Putin wanted to help Donald Trump get elected why are you happy with this this man being the president of the US because I think that the world is approaching the catastrophe of globalization because it based on the presumption that everybody in the world as individual are completely equal and the humanity should be treated as a consumer's body President Obama and all previous uh
presidents completely engaged in globalization process that is the reason why uh Putin is so demonized in the west because his agenda to reaffirm Russia as Regional power uh went exactly against this uh this process of globalization so Trump is alternative to all that Trump is the last chance of conservative part of humanity to to change this direction Dugan's idea that a trump Victory would mean a your hand for Russia didn't come out of nowhere and the incoming president confirmed as much promising a drastic change in American foreign policy we will seek friendship and Good Will
with the nations of the world but we do so with the understanding that it is the right of all Nations to put their own interests first we do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone this slug uh let make America great again everybody in the world outside is invited to make Russia Great again to make Europe great again to make Israel great again everybody is free to repeat the example for Donald Trump if we for example could expand our uh influence uh outside of Russia we will be free to do so meanwhile
Dugan believes that both NATO and the European Union are doomed to fail and though he hopes Trump will usher in this new world order he denies that Russia's hacking helped put him in office we did nothing except we prayed for Trump we dreamed of trump we uh wished uh the victory of trump they they maybe some of our hackers not only prayed and dreamed but as well intervened but I I think it's what on the so scale Maybe they could affect three or four Waters but for Russia specifically is you know the rise of trump
the dissolution of NATO the dissolution of the EU is this all a good thing uh yes I think that is a kind of event that is strictly linked to the victory of Donald Trump thank you Donald Trump Alexander Dugan believes that Trump presidency is good for Russia but there may be another reason Putin got involved in a US election payback there are plenty of reasons why the Russian government would launch a hacking campaign to support Donald Trump over his rival Hillary Clinton but for ordinary Russians there was more to it than that Matt taii is
a journalist who covered the Trump campaign for Rolling Stone and he lived and worked in Russia for more than a decade in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War so has the US ever meddled in a Russian election before of course they have I was I was there when they did it they yeah I lived in Russia in 1996 we more or less openly meddled in Boris yon's reelection campaign in 1996 we bragged about it in the cover of Time Magazine if you go back and look uh in July of 1996 there's a big picture
of Boris yelson and the headline is Yanks to the rescue it was an extraordinarily sophisticated operation that they pull off yelson was going to lose that election you know if you if you looked at it a year out the Communist genady ziganov was way up in the polls he was going to win and yelson had this tremendous unpopularity problem and that's when there's this series EV of events and America was in the middle of all of them they gathered together all the future oligarchs they it's it's clearly a deal where they're going to be the
recipients of this massive privatization program it's a quit proquo we're going to we're going to give you these oil companies you in turn are going to give Boris yelson campaign contributions he's going to flood the air worth commercials he's going to win the election and then he's going to turn over political power to you right and we're going to bring over Americans to help organize the campaign for Russians when I bring this stuff up they they laugh at me like yeah don't you remember what you guys did in '96 and you know you expect us
to feel guilty about this stuff I mean come on Russians might think interfering in the 2016 US election was an acceptable move in an established game but for many Americans it was breaking the rules and in political circles the extent of Russia's interference was a call to action we can have all the technology all the tanks all the people but if we're not fighting the next War we're in trouble and cyber is the next War Angus King is an independent senator from Maine and a member of the Senate intelligence committee he was also co-sponsor of
the Cyber active War Act of 2016 how do you define a Cyber attack and how do you define a cyber Act of war and and the answer is we have to do it we haven't yet and how do you re respond to meddling in the nation's most important leadership decision I would argue that democracy itself is an infrastructure and that what we saw was an attack on our country uh just as if they had dropped power Troopers into Washington and took out the computers under their arms and went down the pomac river in a submarine
and I'm not prepared here today to say what the strategy should be but I am prepared to say we sure as hell need one and it needs to be clear and it needs to be understood by our adversaries so that it is a deterrent for them acting and and deterrence by the way only works if the other guys know it you've got to tell them this is what we consider an act of war or you have to saber rattle or or yeah but you you it has to be real it they have to understand that
there going to be consequences and so far it's you know will respond at a time and place of our choosing one of the principles of cyber deterrence it seems to me is that it has to happen fast it has to be not automatic but within hours of the attack not within days the longer you wait the the less uh effect that it has I met last fall with representatives of lvia Lithuania and Estonia and they were describing that what we had seen here was absolutely routine to them and it's multifaceted it's not only hacking but
it's disinformation fake news all of that kind of thing planning salacious stories about moscow's opponents whatever this is their whole strategy Putin has found a brilliant way to undermine the West on the cheap he doesn't have to send in tanks and troops and bombers but he's wrecking havoc in Western democracies for the price of one F-35 airplane the Russians can hire 5,000 hackers Senator King is looking for a cyber strategy to deter Russian online aggression but some in the intelligence Community think they already have the answer Russia's cyber attacks during the 2016 election might have
been a turning point in US Russia relations or maybe it was more like a returning Point Michael Hayden is a cold war veteran who's the former head of both the CIA and the NSA he's got some pretty specific ideas about what the Russians did and what the us could do next what point is something like that hack which influenced I mean for all for all intents and purposes potentially got a president elected that an unknowable fact an unknowable an unknowable fact but it seems as though that's that's the case that could potentially bring ruin to
the United States of America is that not an AC of war in of itself act AC of war is a big word here all right we need to be careful all right you have this zone of Peace you have this zone of war and then you've got this competitive environment in between the two now let's talk about retaliation because response response let me uh let me talk a little bit about response the first thing Ben to keep in mind is this is not a cyber problem this is a Russia problem and once you've done that
Ben your response then has a much wider range of possibilities that you could use to push back against the Russians to actually point out to them you know this is kind of unacceptable frankly something I would really support is I would sell or give a whole range of defensive arms to the ukrainians something that we've refused to do that gets their attention if you want to if you want to do something in the in the Cyber domain uh the Russians just use a cyber Espionage event to weaken American democracy or try to weaken American democracy
all right game on we're going to use the Cyber domain to weaken Russian autocracy what do I mean I mean pushing anonymizing tools as aggressively as possible into the Russian cyber space to make it harder for the Russian Security Services to do their primary function which is to watch other Russians but as the Americans weigh their options some worry that an aggressive us response will lead in Only One Direction escalation [Music] Matt taibi sees the dangers judging from your experiences living in Russia for so long and also seeing what's gone on in the last few
years between Putin and Obama how do you see that Russian American relationship going forward now that we know that they did indeed intervene in a presidential election one of the things we were always cognizant of is that the uh military industrial complexes of both countries missed each other after the Cold War uh because they had been enormously useful to each other financially the idea of one being a threat to the other that the expansion of NATO necessitated this enormous investment by the Russians and likewise on the other side and I think I think that's what
we're going to see play playing out now that Russia and America are going to ReDiscover each other as enemies and they're going to ReDiscover the utility of each other as enemies there's no way Trump and Putin are going to stay friends forever I don't think so I I just think that there's too much momentum in the direction of this sort of new Cold War for that to really last obviously America and Russia do have common interests they always have uh had common interests and especially with global terrorism Isis there are issues where it's actually beneficial
for us to work together but they need each other as enemies more than they need each other as friends unfortunately um and and they're going to I I would imagine begin to divide up uh spheres of influence again the same way they did before and we're going to see a massive uh rearming campaign and there's going to be a lot of money thrown at that at Espionage and and and weapons and that's where I see it [Music] going as I witnessed in Lithuania that rearming has already begun and since the election more and more cash
has flowed into the military both in Russia and the us but it's hard to know where all this ends up and exactly how or if an information War launched in cyberspace will eventually play out on the ground [Music]
