← Risky Business
Loading summary
Transcript53 lines
- [00:04]
Patrick Gray
Hey everyone, and welcome to this bonus interview edition of the Risky Business podcast. My name's Patrick Gray. So what you're about to hear is an interview I recorded with Senator Mark Warner. He is the senator from Virginia in the United States and he is also the vice chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. He did serve as the chair until January this year, but obviously with the change of government he, his role has now shifted. Mark Warner is a well regarded American politician who is very outspoken on global affairs and intelligence. And yeah, we had an opportunity to interview him and we absolutely jumped at it. So before we get started, here are a few clips of Senator Mark Warner in full flight. Our country's top intelligence leaders were in the hot seat being grilled in the fallout from that explosive article by the Atlantic.
- [01:00]
Mark Warner
If this was a rank and file intelligence officer who did this kind of careless behavior, what would you do with them? In the unwillingness of the individuals on this panel who are on the chat to even apologize re acknowledging what a colossal screw up this is speaks volumes.
- [01:23]
Patrick Gray
President Trump just said he has confidence in Secretary Hegseth. You have opposed Hegseth. What do you think about these latest revelations?
- [01:34]
Mark Warner
I think it shows a guy that's way in over his head.
- [01:38]
Patrick Gray
Donald Trump's tariff war has blown up in Washington today with one Democrat senator demanding to know why Australia has been hit with a 10% tariff on exports.
- [01:48]
Mark Warner
We have a free trade agreement, why they are incredibly important national security partner. Why were they whacked with a tariff?
- [01:56]
Patrick Gray
The Washington Post is reporting that the CIA is set to cut 1,200 positions and thousands of more jobs will be eliminated across other intelligence agencies.
- [02:05]
Mark Warner
We're going to be paying the price for this first hundred days plus of rapid cuts, I think literally for years.
- [02:13]
Patrick Gray
In this conversation we're going to talk to Senator Warner about all sorts of things. We'll talk about the China threat, Salt typhoon, Vault Typhoon. We will definitely be talking about changes that are afoot in the intelligence community in the United States. Talk about the persecution of Chris Krebs, the Cyber Safety Review Board, all sorts of things. But I will drop you in here as I ask him about the latest developments in the so called Signalgate scandal. We know that TM Signal is the weapon of choice for senior Trump admin officials, which is a sort of weird fork of the Signal app. And yeah, the Senator will be sharing his thoughts on that. Here we go.
- [02:55]
Mark Warner
Well, let's start, Patrick, with the fact that Signal being encrypted is candidly better to use than straight telecom to telecom in America, as we'll probably talk about with Salt Typhoon later. But that being said, it is not a secure platform. So what Waltz and the Secretary of Defense Hegtheft, they already have not only the foul of using signal which should have been on a classified network, they now have the double foul of using this addendum to signal that as you indicated, has been hacked repeatedly to the point that there was at least a report this afternoon that that, you know, add on service may be being pulled from the market. So again, this starts with whether it's in Australia or in the States or wherever. Basic Cyber and Hygiene 101. Particularly if you're dealing with sensitive or classified information, don't put it on an unclassified network. Recognize if possible to make sure there are no ways to have penetrations. And in the case of this so called signal gate, this is only one of the reported 20 signal chats that Waltz took place when he was National Security Advisor. So we may still be just seeing the tip of what is even a bigger problem.
- [04:28]
Patrick Gray
I mean, I think one of the issues here though is even if they weren't discussing classified information that, you know, signal version or the modified version of signal that was being used there probably wouldn't even be suited for non classified communications. I mean, how much of a concern is that from your perspective?
- [04:47]
Mark Warner
That's a concern as well. Now there is again, I don't want to. The only thing I'd say about Waltz was he at least acknowledged a mistake, something again that other folks who were on that chat didn't even acknowledge. The irony here being that if he was trying to preserve records, but again, it shows kind of a failure to understand Cyber Hygiene 101. You know, this notion of this extra add on being as vulnerable as it is. And you know, to just to be clear, we don't even know if in the first episode that included all of these senior officials, whether anyone has gone and checked the actual devices to make sure that there's no malware that's been dropped onto them. I mean, this is like head exploding.
- [05:35]
Patrick Gray
I'd imagine that NSA doesn't have a remit there because a lot of them I believe were personal devices. So there would be no way really for the US government or its agencies to check them.
- [05:45]
Mark Warner
I'm 99% sure of this. The NSA head, General Tim Hawk, who subsequently got fired, who had 30 years of broad bipartisan cyber experience, was not even on this chat because I think if he'd been on the chat he would have said Here. Timeout, guys. We should not be having this kind of conversation on signal that this level of sensitive information and literally waltz, I think is going to have a brutal hearing. But Hegseth who should also be fired or should have the good conscience to resign, I have continued to invite him down to a part of my state, Norfolk, Virginia, where our naval base is, that the aircraft carrier the Truman is home ported. And to try to tell the friends and families of those sailors that their loved ones wouldn't have been put in harm's way if that information had gotten out and somehow fell into the hands of the hooties. Because this was literally about the bombing locations and timing and other materials that again, everyone in the defense community, everyone in the cyber community and the intelligence community knows if you had mishandled that information anywhere in the American government, the Australian government as well, you'd be fired with legitimate cause.
- [07:10]
Patrick Gray
So I want to ask just, you know, and this might seem an unusual question here that's not really being discussed by larger media when discussing this is I'm just curious about how something like this winds up in use because there are messaging platforms that support end to end encryption and record keeping. The one that I keep coming back to in my head is Wicca, which was acquired by Amazon. It is an Amazon product. It is, it has been used by the US government previously. I think it was ICE had a contract with Wickr at one point. You know, so, so how then do we wind up with a situation where senior government officials are using a product, you know, from a small company that is so shaky that it winds up being pulled from market when it gets a little bit of scrutiny. So I guess I'm just asking like, you know, is this just a case that the Republican Party bought licences for this or was this government money? Like, I'm just really curious, just from a nuts and bolts perspective how this happened.
- [08:07]
Mark Warner
This is sloppy, careless, arrogant and you know, while I'm a proud Democrat, I don't think you can blame it on all of the all Republicans. I mean, candidly, this kind of behavior in the first Trump administration I don't think would have been allowed because you had intelligence professionals and defense professionals doing these jobs. That is not the case as much now where you've got sycophants who it is more important to pledge loyalty to the great leader Mr. Trump than it is to do hygiene 101. And I think that is what has gotten so many members of the American military and intelligence community so pissed off because they realize if they had acted this sloppily, they would have been entirely fired.
- [08:57]
Patrick Gray
Yeah, entirely fired. That's very fired. All right, so look, let's move on to another topic now and talk about the China threat. And I guess two ways into that is to talk about a couple of different campaigns. There's a Vault Typhoon campaign targeting while doing some pre positioning work in critical US infrastructure and infrastructure in other places that is relied upon by your country. And then we've got Salt Typhoon which is the campaign targeting American telcos. Very deep penetrations that are, you know, frankly not in the style of five eyes operations that are targeting telecommunications. They tend to be much more precise, much more limited in scope. Salt Typhoon was a free for all some weeks ago. You made a comment to the effect that the United States, if China doesn't knock this off in the case of Salt Typhoon, the United States should consider doing the same thing to China. Now you know, our job is to analyze cyber policy and cybersecurity and we were left in a position where we had to sort of read the tea leaves a little bit by what you meant by America retaliating there. Now we have a White House which is, is openly saying they want to exercise state power in the cyber domain. And we've got those comments from you. So. So why don't you tell me what you actually meant by, by the United States sort of retaliating for this? Because we had to guess.
- [10:18]
Mark Warner
Okay, let me take a couple minutes because this is the kind of nerdy stuff I love. First of all, the American. And we'll talk about Volt Typhoon in a moment with the utilities and others. Let's start with Salt Typhoon. And I say this as a former telco guy. I was lucky enough to be in the beginning of the wireless industry. And as you and I know many of your subscribers realize the American telco networks came together in a much more haphazard way than what's happened in Australia and many European nations. We had this amalgamation of smaller telcos that all got bought and rolled together that turned into these two networks, three in a sense, but the two biggest, AT&T and Verizon. Many times these telco companies, in an effort to kind of speed up the ability to relay information, they focused on speed rather than any cybersecurity. And consequently you got this patchwork of networks that are really vulnerable to an unprecedented level. And the idea that China penetrated through Salt Typhoon and candidly Russia now has done the same, should not surprise anybody who follows American telecom on a close basis. Matter of fact, there are certain other networks that are newer, that have newer equipment, but the Verizon AT&T particularly because they've got this, all this old equipment cobbled together with very little cybersecurity. I don't think we will ever get China or Russia or for that matter other bad guys out of the American major telecom networks without requiring some level of minimum cybersecurity standards inside telecom, the telecom network, the voice and data networks in America. And that's going to be hard to do with the Trump administration don't want to add any additional regulations, but put that in one bucket. The second bucket affects not only salt typhoon and the question around Volt typhoon where you've mentioned that China may be pre positioning in some of our utilities, water, other systems. That was the genesis of my comments about retaliation that were more based on a broader premise that the United States and again, we don't have an offensive cyber doctrine that we've articulated. And this is not actually lots of bad things happened under Trump, you know, but this is not the fault of Trump, it's not the fault of Biden, it's not the fault of Obama or Trump won. It's just America has had no offensive articulated cyber doctrine literally since the 80s and 90s. In many ways this goes back and I will make this brief and not go on forever, it goes back into the late 90s when there was an effort to try to create the equivalent of a global Geneva Conventions around cybersecurity when at that point, frankly, and this I have to acknowledge, the Americans kind of messed it up because we thought we were so far ahead at that point, why would we adhere to any international standards? That window passed China and Russia and other adversaries moves further and further into cyber. And I believe, and rather than having Donald Trump do this as a one off, I believe the United States needs to set out a set of principles around offensive cyber that candidly says, for example, when a nation state penetrates our critical infrastructure like a water system, like a utility system, we might have, America might have a lower level of attribution requirements before we would punch back. I'm not saying we necessarily should penetrate all of the adversaries networks preemptively, but I think we ought to have at least a policy that makes clear to adversaries that we're not going to simply be in a defensive crouch, but we are going to be willing to use our offensive tools. We have those tools, but we are not using them on the broad based ways, frankly, because of a cyber kind of rules of conflict doctrine that goes back to the 70s, 80s and early 90s. That make any sense to you?
- [15:21]
Patrick Gray
It does. I mean, I guess one of the issues there is that striking back, as you'd say, doing something similar, especially when it involves civilian infrastructure, can be legally problematic. Right. Which is one of the reasons this doesn't happen. And further to that, when we reported your comments, I had a lot of email, right. And it was. And it was people working in critical infrastructure in the United States saying, we are not ready for an escalation here. If the United States were to turn this up and the other side decided to, you know, retaliate against the escalation, we'd be in all sorts of trouble. Or as we say in Australia, they'd be in more trouble than the early settlers. So I guess the question, the question is when you talk about punching back, you know, what can that look like? Because. And this is the part where we were having to guess, right? Because it's, it's fraught. And I'm guessing you've got some ideas there.
- [16:11]
Mark Warner
I've got some ideas there which I'm not prepared to share today. But here is the notion. I think the American public, and for that matter, maybe the Australian and British and others, America has certain of these capabilities, but because, as you know, we operate on a different standard of, in a sense, ethics of warfare than some of our adversaries. And our adversaries know that we are operating within those constraints means that they can continue to penetrate to whether it's collect and break into. Years ago, you may recall the OPM where they got, literally, China got all of the personal data on anybody that ever worked for the federal government. And because we don't have an offensive, articulated criteria that would put our adversaries on warning that at least if this happens, we're going to have lower attribution standards in terms of our ability to strike back. This gets into the kind of stuff that you and the experts. But we also have to have some policy area out there, because what you constantly hear from my colleagues doesn't matter, Democrats or Republicans, they constantly say, well, how come we keep getting punched? And we seem to have no counter methods? And some of this goes back, frankly, even to Obama's time as president, where he had to warn President Xi on some of these offensive cyber activities. This is something, again, I want to be careful where I go on this conversation. I've had conversation with my Australian colleagues, with our, with our British colleagues and others about how we put on notice, not saying we do anything but how we put on notice, our adversaries, that we're not going to allow them this free reign without any, without any consequences.
- [18:13]
Patrick Gray
Well, we've tried indictments. You know, we've tried name and shame. We've, you know, I just don't know. I think there is something to what you say which is punching back when.
- [18:25]
Mark Warner
You agree, though, Patrick, on name and shame and indictments. Our record kind of sucks.
- [18:29]
Patrick Gray
It does. That is absolutely, that is, that is absolutely true. Now, look, we. We can't have this conversation without talking. I mean, obviously we're already talking about China. And the big thing that's happening between the United States and China at the moment are these tariffs. Right. And I'm just wondering, you know, because it's a little bit difficult to know from all the way over here what your thinking is on how the tariffs are changing the dynamic between the United States and China when it comes to intelligence activity. Because I'd imagine there would have to be an effect because this does qualify as a deterioration in relations which were already not great. So what's your feeling for how this is playing out in this sort of intelligence side of things?
- [19:14]
Mark Warner
I will try to give you as short a version as I can. Let me also say that China is a great nation. I have huge respect for China. When I was governor of Virginia, I led trade missions to China. I encourage greater collaboration. I think your former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who I think is one of the smartest guys in the world on China, pointed out that President Xi Jinping in about 2013, 14, 2015, basically said primacy of the Communist Party of China was more important than even economic well being of the Chinese people. So Starting in about 2017, as I sat on the Intelligence committee, and there wasn't a week that went by where I didn't hear about further Chinese intellectual property, stealing, espionage, literally threatening great Chinese students who are studying in America that if you return home, you know, you better bring a thumb drive or your family could be in danger. So starting in about 2017, and as a former telecom guy, you know, Huawei kind of blew me away because, oh my God, China's got cutting edge and they're starting to set standards and protocols in telecom. I started an effort, bipartisan, where we would go to industry groups around America and say, let me warn you, buyer beware about how you do business with China. I led similar efforts and some of them were not greeted well with our European friends, with my friends in Australia, with a lot of friends in Asia, and saying, guys, China is a Great nation. But be careful how you be careful of intellectual property theft, be careful on the fact that they don't operate under a system of the same kind of laws. So literally 20 years of efforts ending up with the end of the Biden administration where people were, we finally convinced people to maybe move out of China, move some of this manufacturing to the Malaysias, the Vietnams, the Indias. And what you have now in 105 days or however it's long that Trump has been actually present, you've seen 20 years of that effort to try to woo countries away, or at least have them be very careful about how you do business with China. Now, as America comes up with this kind of convoluted, crazy tariff policy, I had a fairly good exchange with the US Trade representative where I said, and not to be kissing up to you, I said, like, why in the hell are we sticking Australia with a tariff when we have a free trade agreement with them, we have a trade surplus and we're building submarines together. Why are we whacking our friends by this crazy tariff policy? We have turned all of those nation states, or many of them, both publicly and privately, into suddenly thinking, you know what? America is so wacky at this point and so unpredictable, it may be better for us to do business with China than with the United States. And that is just confounding, baffling, makes my head explode that Trump has done that in 105 days and kind of burnt some of these relationships. And it's, you know, you combine that the tariff policy with some of the activities towards, you know, disrespect towards, towards Canada or disrespect towards Denmark and Greenland and this whole, in many ways unwinding 70 years of American soft power that we've used to foreign assistance, we suddenly made China look like a more dependable person, more dependable power through these policies, and again, with targeted tariffs against China. Sign me up. But we ought to be doing it with the Australians, with the Japanese, with the Koreans, with the Europeans. And all of that goodwill has kind of been in many ways burnt up very quickly by this, I think completely not thought through. Trump tariff policy.
- [23:18]
Patrick Gray
Okay, so I certainly see what you're saying there, which is the main impact here, is just like more a sort of global realignment that's happening as a result of this. I mean, I can say that what you described in terms of other countries realizing that, you know, perhaps China isn't such a bad partner after all, in the light of what's happening in the United States I could certainly say that that's not the case here in Australia, which is in a very odd situation where China is our number one trading partner. We are very economically dependent on China, but when it comes to intelligence and military, I mean, we are ride or die with the United States. And I think there has been a shift in thinking, which is that we, we certainly don't have the same ideological connection with the United States that we used to, but we certainly still have shared interests, which means things like Aukus, things like the Five Eyes alliance, these things are very safe. Now, that seems to be the prevailing wisdom here. But then we saw reports that Peter Navarro was advocating for the Canadians for their membership of Five Eyes to sort of be leveraged against them in trade negotiations. Now, that was killed, that was taken out to the lawn and shot pretty quickly, thankfully. But, you know, the assumption seems to be that Five Eyes is just sacred. And indeed, you know, Trump has, you know, smack talked, for want of a better, better phrase, pretty much every leader in the world. But when it comes to Australia, he's been very mute. You know, he has not been critical of Australia. He's been very mute, very sort of respectful. It seems like Australia and the United States certainly still have that, that connection, those shared interests. So I guess I was wondering, you know, do you think Five Eyes are in the Five Eyes alliance could be in for a shakeup? Do you think the Orcas deal could be at risk? Because it's my feeling from this end that probably not.
- [25:06]
Mark Warner
I would pray they're not. Five Eyes is as important a relationship as America have. I mean, I think again, from the intel side, I think American intelligence is best in the world. But if you aggregate all of our friends and allies, input combined, that makes us doubly more powerful. And the idea that you would kind of on an arbitrary basis, on a whim, threaten a country like Canada, and I'm a little biased. My mom's family's from Canada. It's like fricking crazy. And my fear is, and I'm. And I think your recent elections demonstrated that some of the anti Trump pushback. I don't want to weigh in on Australian politics, but I absolutely believe that Aukus Five Eyes are sacrosanct. But, you know, if you can predict what may come out of President Trump's mouth next or next week or next month, you're better than me. And then when you see, literally there was a 911 conspiracy theorist, this woman, Laura Loomer, who came in and gave a hit list against some of our top intelligence professionals, and for the most part, they were all fired. And that is just so far beyond belief. And it's one of the things that says, I know my Republican Senate friends, a lot of them care just as much as I do about our national security, care just as much about Five Eyes or Aukus, but they gotta find their damn voice. They can't continue to say privately, oh, my gosh, and not raise their voice. And that's one of the things that's playing out real time right now in American politics.
- [26:55]
Patrick Gray
Well, you actually just perfectly segued into the next topic I wanted to discuss, which is, you know, changes at nsa. So we have seen Tim Hawk and Wendy Noble fired from nsa, reportedly after Laura Loomer urged Trump to do this, because they weren't, you know, MAGA people. That's the reporting. Anyway. We also now have Tulsi Gabbard launching some sort of doge for the intelligence community type project to apparently try to depoliticise these agencies, which, I mean, I don't know where this idea that they're politicized has come from. Perhaps you could tell me.
- [27:38]
Mark Warner
Well, first of all, this is so dramatically different than even the first time Trump was president. The irony is that President Trump, at least around our intelligence community and the professionals he had, did a pretty good job his first term. Biden continued, these were areas that were sacrosanct. I mean, rule number one in the intelligence community is speak truth to power, and rule number two is never be political. And that is the case of our workforce. And now you've got Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, almost on a daily and definitely on a weekly basis, going out on some right wing crazy podcast or broadcasting network and basically underlying are undermining her faith and trust in the whole intelligence community. And think about this in America, to train a new CIA officer cost about $330,000. We've got way too complicated a security clearance process. You then have to go through this whole training. But for her and others to start randomly firing young people, not only are you not saving money, Doge like you are wasting money, but you're also scaring away the next generation from people joining it. As you know, Patrick, you can make a heck of a lot more money in cryptology if you want to go work, you know, for on Quantum Project, for example, in the Valley, then working at NSA or working inside the intel community. So we have people who do this for mission. They're not going to do this for mission. If you've got People that are disrespecting them the whole time. And there's not a day or at least a couple days that go by that I don't hear from both the intel community and the defense community, both uniformed services and civilians that are saying, holy heck, we've never seen this incompetent of leadership at the agency letter level. Hegseth ons ascents Defense and Gabbard at Intel.
- [29:56]
Patrick Gray
I mean, I hear from former intelligence leaders and government officials, people like Rob Joyce, people like Chris Krebs, all of them. Every time you talk to them, their main concern seems to be around staffing. I spoke to a former rank and filer who says when they talk to their friends who are working at Fort Meade, everybody's trying to get their resumes approved so that they're ready to go. And there's even a backlog in, you know, resumes being approved, because I think some of the people who approve the resumes have been fired. And it's just, you know, everything's a bit of a mess. So there does seem to be this huge concern in government circles in the United States around staffing. But I wanted to ask too, you know, with Tim, one of the reasons we've always had a military type running NSA is because it's a dual hat role with Cyber Command, right? So it just necessitates a military leader. One thing that I think Project 2025 outlined is that, you know, Trump should split that role. And that's a. That's a whole holy war we don't even need to get into at the moment. But it would allow, if the role of NSA director and the head of Cyber Command were split, that would allow Trump to appoint civilian leadership at nsa. So I guess, you know, once we move beyond the staffing concerns, what other concerns could we be looking at when it comes to an NSA with a civilian head Gabbard running around with a razor in there? NSA is a huge organization with a lot of oversight, but are there concerns or do you have concerns on your side that bad things could start happening at NSA given enough time?
- [31:35]
Mark Warner
That's in America would be called the layup question. If I can't hit that out of the park. Of course, I am a firm advocate, and I was mixed on this for a long time. But you gotta keep NSA head and Cyber Command together because we're the line between defense and offense, as we talked about earlier, that is 10x more important. Now, if you were to suddenly give Donald Trump or a Laura Loomer type to pick some civilian that was loyal to Trump more than about keeping America's privacy or all the tools that NSA has from getting into the wrong hands. It would be an unmitigated disaster. And back again, just briefly on the staffing stuff as I can talk about this on a non classified line, but you've already got entities in the UK and in Germany, at least their friends, both who are trying to hire away some of our top technical people at the, at NSA and Cyber Command, particularly nsa, because they know, oh my gosh, if it's going to be complete chaos there, we can probably get these folks on the cheap. Well, that's, I hope, you know, nobody goes and does that, but at least it's going to, you know, NATO partners or five Eye partners. What about the more subtle Chinese efforts to try to get disgruntled people who've been laid off for no reason to knowingly or unknowingly help an adversary? This, it's just, it is, it's, it's mind boggling.
- [33:18]
Patrick Gray
I mean, I feel like it would probably take a while though, right, for, for NSA to wind up in a bad place simply just because of the weight of the agency. It's gigantic. So, I mean, I guess that's why I'm trying to get a sense of like where this sits in your list of concerns of which I'm sure you have many. I'm sure it's a long list, but yeah, I guess I'm just curious about that. I mean, is this something that's an immediate concern or something that's sort of more long term?
- [33:45]
Mark Warner
We've got no replacement named. I gotta believe, I gotta hope that the men and women particularly that I've worked with so closely on the Intelligence Committee, my Republican friends, that they would draw a red line. And again, I don't need to change the minds of, you know, 50 people. I got to get four or five Republicans who believe strongly in national security to say this is a red line. You can't politicize nsa. This is a red line. We're no longer going to keep trashing our intelligence workforce. This is a red line. We're not going to willy nilly fire CIA agents and waste taxpayer money. To be honest though, that's still a fricking work in progress because I've got a lot of private conversations, but people have got to go on shows like yours to let their voices be heard in a public way.
- [34:41]
Patrick Gray
Now look, I suppose one reason people are quite concerned about changes at agencies like NSA is things that were previously, previously unthinkable are now very much thinkable. And one, I mean, obviously you've got, you know, the deportation of, you know, American citizens, children with their families. You've got this stuff with Venezuelans being sent to El Salvador and stuff. And this is soaking up most of the media oxygen. But you do have other things as well, like these orders that Trump signed targeting Miles Taylor and Chris Krebs for federal investigation. Indeed, Chris has even been kicked out of, what is it, the Global Entry Program or whatever. And the White House officials have gone on record with the press saying that this happened because Chris is now the subject of a federal law enforcement investigation. I mean, what do you think about that whole thing? I mean, I've certainly seen that people on your side of politics in the United States have made comments that it's outrageous, and I'm sure you share those beliefs. But I guess my question is less what you think about it, because we know, but more what can you do about it as the opposition party in the United States? What is it that you can do to try to do something about this?
- [35:53]
Mark Warner
I know Chris. I've met Miles. I don't really know him. I know I've known Chris well. And the thing that Chris is guilty of is he did a damn good job in 2020 in making the election safe. And then he, by doing a good job at CISA and then acknowledging that the election was safe, he got fired. And the fact that he now has to spend dollars trying to protect himself. And yet, one of the things, Patrick, that you mentioned, it's virtually never sometimes frustrating, to the point where law enforcement agencies don't even acknowledge whether they're investigating someone in America. So the idea that they've got law enforcement agencies leaning in, which puts a chill around, you know, Chris's ability to get additional work. The idea that, you know, as petty as taking away your Global Entry card, you know, I think Chris will have law firms that will be able. That will come to his assistance. You know, I stay in, and Chris is a friend of mine. I will do everything I can. So we've got, you know, in the minority party here, we got three ways to fight back. And whether the situation is Chris Krebs or an ass, we can litigate. And thank God. So far, most of the court decisions have been against the authoritarian tendencies that we've seen from Trump. We can protest, which more and more Americans are doing on a daily basis. And we can do for people like me, whatever I can do to convince my Republican friends. And remember, Chris Krebs is a lifelong Republican. He's not some crazy eyed Democrat that they ought to stand by what they say they believe in, and particularly in terms of national security and the willingness to be able to say truth, speak truth to power. But what's happening to Chris Krebs and his family is morally wrong. It is a financial burden, and it's frankly an embarrassment to me. And it's an embarrassment that more members of Congress than on the Republican side haven't spoken up on his behalf.
- [38:10]
Patrick Gray
But I mean, speaking up is one thing, but I mean, are there even any concrete steps that the Democratic Party could take to try to resolve this situation? You know, I'm just wondering if there is a plan of action and, you know, full disclosure, I know Chris as well. You know, is there, is there a plan of action to help him?
- [38:28]
Mark Warner
And again, this gets into the kind of the nerdy stuff people say, hold up, hold up a nomination, the ability to put a hold on a nomination. Now because we changed the rules about a decade ago and we moved the margin on most of these folks from 60 to 50 means you can hold up somebody for two hours. So it's not the kind of old threat of a hold that used to be the case. So there are some folks who are holding up, folks within the Justice Department. End of the day, it doesn't really, it doesn't move the needle that much because the holds, because of the expedited process. What we really got to do is, you know, if we could get a couple folks on the Judiciary Committee to say this kind of outrageous, what appears to be completely politically motivated investigation of someone whose only problem has been he did a good job as CISA director in the 2020 elections and they were safe. You could then hold a hearing on that. You could then drag some of these people from the Justice Department in front of Congress for a hearing. But you can't do that on a minority party basis unless you get the, you know, the chairman of the committee to go along. You can hold a shadow hearing, but with this Justice Department that barely even acknowledges Congress in any way, it's just not gonna be that effective.
- [39:55]
Patrick Gray
So until the Democrats are to hold congressional power, there's just, what you're saying is you've got, there's real limits to what you can do there.
- [40:04]
Mark Warner
There are real limits. We can, again, we can litigate. And the courts overwhelmingly, I think it's 160 law suits and, you know, 75% of them have all been decided in more what I call the traditional way you can protest and there's protests happening all the time across the country. And I'll take a little rural part of my state. I had 150 people on a Tuesday morning. People are pissed off, rightfully. And we can do what I also think I've got unique responsibility to do. As somebody who's had a history of being bipartisan, I can try to argue, convince, cajole my Republican Senate friends to say, come on, guys, stand up for Chris, or think about. I completely disagreed with Mike Pompeo when he was Secretary of State on a whole host of items. But the fact that he had his security detail pulled from him because he was, you know, secretary during the Soleimani strike and you were suddenly leaving him and his family potentially open for Iranian activity is crazy and embarrassing. And I know some of my Republican friends have made private calls to the White House to say, hey, this stinks. But until we can show committees on a majority basis standing up against some of these authoritarian moves. I'm fairly familiar with the system in Australia. You guys could call a snap election or show a vote of no confidence and move. We don't have those same tools available in the United States.
- [41:54]
Patrick Gray
Yeah, yeah. Now look, we're on the home stretch now. One thing that I did want to ask you about is the Cyber Safety Review Board was disbanded. We saw some recent comments from the White House Cyber Coordinator saying that, oh, it was rife with conflicts and whatnot. I mean, I'm not particularly sympathetic to that argument myself, given that most board members immediately recuse themselves when an investigation touched on their company or a competing company. But I just wondered if you had any strong feelings about the csrb.
- [42:28]
Mark Warner
Yeah, no. Most of these, you know, the vast majority of these commissions people take as an honor, if there is conflicts, they. They recuse themselves. They're almost all bipartisan. So is there. Was that forcing to work together? And again, there's nothing makes a bipartisan committee better, intellectually better. It does mean that when one side or the other screws up, both sides have to be involved in the, in the solution set. But it is, you know, yes, yes, yes. Am I, am I concerned? Because what it does is not only does it undermine these existing committees and commissions, but it also says who in their right mind is going to want to go forward if at some point some quasi authoritarian leader might put your family in legal way, legal jeopardy, or somehow bleed you dry with persecutions or prosecutions that may have no validity?
- [43:24]
Patrick Gray
I've often said that they'll reconstitute the board and then have it investigate the hacking of the 2020 election. And I'm only half joking when I say that. Now we've just got two more things and then we're going to wrap it up. You've been very vocal on the whole TikTok ban situation. It's really hard to keep track of everybody's positions on this because they have changed somewhat over time. I mean, we're currently in this weird limbo, aren't we, where Trump has extended the deadline. You know, there's been legislation passed that would force a sale. Deadlines keep getting extended. I mean, what's the latest with that? What do you feel is going to happen and what do you feel should happen?
- [44:04]
Mark Warner
Well, what should happen is the law should be followed. You know, I point out, it's not just America who's got a challenge. Australia's got a prohibition of TikTok on government devices.
- [44:17]
Patrick Gray
Sure. But not. I mean, I can still use TikTok, you know.
- [44:20]
Mark Warner
No, I know, but the idea, though, Patrick, that if there's not some concern, why would the Australian government put a prohibition on government phones? I mean, my concern on TikTok is, yes, the ability to garner that information, but let's face it, a lot of the American platform companies gather information as well. I'm mostly concerned because of the ability for TikTok to be the world's most powerful propaganda machine with an algorithm driven by Beijing. And I think that scares the dickens out of me. And the amazing thing is two poll one, Donald Trump was the first guy to point out the problem with this back in 2019, and his folks convinced me, and that was his position until a bunch of billionaires started to decide that they would support his campaign. And he flipped on TikTok. And 2, 80% of Congress passed this prohibition. And I don't want TikTok to go away. Lots of creativity. I just think it ought to be owned by an entity that was not controlled by Beijing. So if you and a group of Australians want to buy ownership of TikTok, have at it.
- [45:28]
Patrick Gray
Yeah, I mean, it's a, it's a, it's a foreign ownership, foreign media ownership proposition, isn't it? And that's the lens through which we should view this. Now, look, my colleague Catalyn Kimpanu, who is based in Romania, you know, Russia, breathing down all of their necks over there, he had a question, he had a bunch of questions that he suggested I ask you. And I thought one of them was particularly interesting, which is we are seeing Russia recruiting teenagers and various people in various locations and paying them to commit acts of sabotage via the Internet. This is something we've seen in a number of locations. We've seen the Iranians do this as well, where there's been a bit of a nexus towards organised crime. I just wondered, as someone who's the vice chair of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, if this is an issue that has bubbled up to your attention and if there's anything that the United States government is doing about it or moving towards doing about has.
- [46:24]
Mark Warner
I am aware. And here's the irony of this. In the most recent, what we call National Intelligence Review report, where all of the heads of the intelligence community in a public setting come up and talk about threats, they still list Russia as a disinformation threat. They list it as a threat in terms of its spy agencies against, you know, democracies around the world. And at the very time, and I am again not going to comment on the specifics, but yes, I am very aware of potentially younger folks being used to try to create sabotage and other actions on the Internet. On the very time when the review says, the Trump team review says this is happening. You've got the Trump other parts of the administration literally dismantling anything that's about disinformation, misinformation, or about this kind of manipulation going on the Internet.
- [47:24]
Patrick Gray
I mean, we're talking, though, about specific efforts at recruiting individuals, more so than misinformation or disinformation.
- [47:32]
Mark Warner
But I'm aware of that. I'm aware of that.
- [47:35]
Patrick Gray
Yeah, I take your point there. And also just on Russia, we did see reports a couple of months ago that Cyber Command had been ordered to stand down from conducting operations against Russia. These reports were subsequently denied by the White House. I don't think we ever got clarification on what happened there. I'd understand if you couldn't discuss in great detail precisely what happened there, but is there any light you can shed on that whole situation for our listeners?
- [47:57]
Mark Warner
I'd like to say that I've got great clarity on that as well. I only have a little bit more than you and I am not satisfied with the answers I have.
- [48:09]
Patrick Gray
Okay, well, look, we're going to wrap it up here, but before you go, we have a fairly substantial audience in the intelligence community in the United States, also here in Australia and, you know, most of the English speaking nations. I just wondered if there was any message you would like to deliver to our intelligence community listeners, seeing as we've got you here.
- [48:30]
Mark Warner
What I would simply say is as long as I got this job, I'm going to have your back. I respect what you do. I know you're never going to get the recognition that you get that the traditional uniform services get. I know how much you keep our country safe and frankly our five eyes and allied nations around the world, I know we are made stronger by alliances around the world and I'd ask you to kind of hang in there if you think it's been surreal the last 105 days. I feel your pain. I do think the United States is a better country than what you're getting at this point. I think the American people are turning and realized they hired Trump to maybe bring down prices. That's not happening. They didn't hire him to kind of dismantle our alliances or for that matter undermine the men and women in our intelligence community.
- [49:28]
Patrick Gray
All right, Senator Mark Warner, thank you so much for your time. It's been a fascinating conversation. Thank you, Patrick.