Senator Mark Warner on the Threat of Russia

Summary

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The Political Scene | The New Yorker

Episode: Senator Mark Warner on the Threat of Russia
Date: May 14, 2018
Host: David Remnick
Guest: Senator Mark Warner (Vice Chairman, Senate Intelligence Committee)

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Episode Overview

In this episode, David Remnick interviews Senator Mark Warner, the Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, about the breadth and consequences of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the state of the ongoing Senate investigation, and broader issues around cybersecurity, disinformation, and the response of the U.S. government. Warner discusses the need for bipartisan cooperation, the vulnerabilities within American democracy, and the urgent necessity to update approaches to information warfare.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Scope and Nature of Russian Interference

• Senator Warner emphasizes the comprehensiveness of the Russian attack on U.S. democracy, noting the country’s unpreparedness across government, electoral systems, and social media.
  • "Maybe the most remarkable thing is how comprehensive the Russian effort was and how off guard in many ways. The American government, the American electoral system, our social media companies, we were just not prepared." – Warner (02:43)
• Three main aspects of interference:
  • Russians massively intervened to help Trump and harm Clinton.
  • They touched or breached 21 state electoral systems.
  • Used social media in unprecedented ways to manipulate public opinion (03:10).

2. Effectiveness and Cost of Russian Operations

• Warner notes the cost-effectiveness of Russia’s actions compared to traditional military spending:
  • "All the cost of the Russian expenditures...it's less than the cost of one new F35 airplane. So I feel like they're getting a pretty good bang for the buck or bang for the ruble." (03:45)

3. Degree of Collusion and Ongoing Investigation

• Discussion of two interpretations of the Trump campaign’s relationship with Russia: naivete versus intentional cooperation (04:12).
• Warner is cautious, neither exonerating nor condemning Trump or his associates until the investigation is complete:
  • "I'm reserving my final judgment until we've seen all the witnesses..." (04:56)
  • Highlights indictments and guilty pleas already obtained by Mueller's team as evidence of real material to review (05:38).
• New evidence continues to surface, particularly around the Trump transition and other campaign individuals (06:11).

4. Bipartisan Effort and Legislative Response

• Warner stresses the importance of a bipartisan approach to maintain credibility (13:41).
• Announces bipartisan legislation and allocation of $380 million to beef up election security, with periodic report release every 30-45 days (06:48).

5. Administration Response and Frustration

• Security officials acknowledge continuing Russian activities, yet Warner expresses frustration over the White House’s lack of action:
  • "All of Mr. Trump’s appointees acknowledge this yet, and this is their public testimony. They have said none of them have received directions from the White House to make this a priority going forward." (07:25)

6. Putin's Motives and Russian Strategy

• Warner discusses the idea that Russia, rather than supporting a party, seeks chaos in the West to strengthen Putin’s position at home.
  • "Chaos in the west is good for Putin...if their goal was to further splinter America, pretty good investment on the rubles." (09:08)
• Observes that Russian military doctrine predicts using cyber, misinformation, and disinformation as effective means to parity with the West (09:38).

7. America's Military Priorities vs. Cyber Threats

• Warner questions whether America invests too heavily in traditional military assets at the expense of cyber defense (10:41).
  • "I am saying maybe too much 20th century military. When our systems are terribly vulnerable to cyber..." (10:46)
• Points to the risk of new technology—deepfakes, misinformation—and America’s unpreparedness.

8. Cyber Hygiene and Congressional Awareness

• Warner admits improvement is needed among lawmakers regarding cybersecurity and understanding social media.
  • "Frankly I think I should probably improve my cyber hygiene...a lot of my colleagues showed how little they understood social media when they interviewed Mr. Zuckerberg." (12:30)

9. Public Trust in the Investigation's Outcome

• Warner expresses concern about public polarization, recognizing that many may reject any findings as partisan.
  • "You're darn right. I am very worried about that, which is why I got to try to go the extra mile to keep this bipartisan." (13:41)
• Illustrates Russian manipulation of information online, noting Russian news sources dominated search results on relevant issues even on election day (14:03).

10. Respect for the Rule of Law

• Warner deplores attacks on the FBI and Justice Department, warning about the dangers of undermining core institutions (14:55).
  • "Attacking the integrity of the whole FBI, attacking the integrity of the whole Justice Department...that gets America into uncharted territory around respect for rule of law." (15:40)
• On whether President Trump cares about rule of law:
  • "I hope that is not the case." (15:54)
  • Warns that firing Mueller would "cross a red line" (16:02).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the effectiveness of Russia’s cyber operations:
  “If you add up all the cost of the Russian expenditures...it’s less than the cost of one new F35 airplane. So I feel like they’re getting a pretty good bang for the buck or bang for the ruble on this kind of active measures.” – Warner (03:45)

• On waiting for all the facts:
  “I’m reserving my final judgment until we’ve seen all the witnesses we need to see and that we’ve gotten all the facts.” – Warner (04:56)

• On bipartisan integrity:
  “I gotta try to go the extra mile to keep this bipartisan. I gotta believe there’s enough Americans who...if you’ve got joint agreement from both parties, people will start to accept it.” – Warner (13:41)

• On deepfakes and future technological threats:
  “What happens when we move to 2018 technology, where we put David Remnick’s face on Mike Allen, another journalist’s body, and you’ve got a suddenly live video stream of what appears to be David Remnick saying things that is not him at all.” – Warner (11:00)

• On erosion of respect for institutions:
  “Attacking the integrity of the whole FBI, attacking the integrity of the whole Justice Department...that gets America into uncharted territory around respect for rule of law.” – Warner (15:40)

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Important Timestamps

• 02:43 – Warner on the comprehensive nature of Russian interference
• 03:45 – Cost-effectiveness of Russian information warfare
• 04:56 – Warner reserves judgment on collusion
• 06:48 – Timeline and status of Senate investigation and legislation
• 07:25 – Frustration with the White House’s lack of prioritization
• 09:08 – Chaos as a Russian strategic goal
• 10:46 – Military spending vs. cyber defense
• 13:41 – Necessity of bipartisanship to maintain credibility
• 14:03 – Russian sources dominating Google election searches
• 15:40 – Fear of undermining rule of law

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Tone and Language

Warner speaks with caution and gravitas, often emphasizing the need for bipartisanship and careful investigation. Remnick and Wickenden maintain a tone of seriousness and urgency while probing for clarity and challenging generalities, especially regarding respect for the rule of law and the administration’s stance. The conversation is direct but diplomatic throughout.

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Conclusion

Senator Warner’s interview highlights the ongoing vulnerability of American democracy to foreign interference, the incomplete and evolving nature of the Senate’s investigation, and the need for both bipartisan cooperation and a recalibration of U.S. defensive priorities. The episode serves as a sobering reminder of the scale and sophistication of new threats facing Western democracies—and the high stakes involved in their response.

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Transcript

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[Dorothy Wickenden]

I'm Dorothy Wickenden. On today's Politics and More podcast, David.

[David Remnick]

Remnick talks to Senator Mark Warner.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Warner is the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is carrying out.

[David Remnick]

An investigation on Russian interference in the election.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Now, the threat of Russia is one thing, but here in the United States, we don't even understand the damage Russia has already done to our democratic processes. And even to ask about Russian meddling, unfortunately is seen as a partisan move. The President denounces the Mueller investigation as if it were some sort of devious cover up for Hillary Clinton's email troubles. And the House Intelligence Committee just concluded its investigation with bitter disputes between the Republicans and the Democratic minority. But in the Senate on the Intelligence Committee, members are working very hard to maintain at least a functioning bipartisan investigation. The committee's vice chairman is Mark Warner, Democratic senator from Virginia. Few people in Washington are more up to speed than Warner on Russian exploitation of social media and the possibility, at least of of collusion by the Trump campaign. I reached Warner last week at the Capitol. What's been the most eye opening Part of the investigation so far, you've said that this is the most important thing possibly that you'll ever do in your public life. You still feel that way?

[David Remnick]

I do, David. I feel like maybe the most remarkable thing is how comprehensive the Russian effort was and how off guard in many ways. The American government, the American electoral system, our social media companies, we were just not prepared. And a year and a half after the election, I worry that we're still not fully prepared in terms of election security. We still haven't sorted out a new set of rules, regulations, or, frankly, frame around social media. And the vulnerabilities we have in cybersecurity are still enormous. The thing we have determined, the three things that there is broad bipartisan agreement on, at least in the Senate, is, you know, Russians massively intervened in our elections. They did it to try to help Trump and hurt Clinton. They end up then touching, at least, if not breaking into 21 of our state's electoral systems. And they also use social media in ways that were unprecedented to try to build active groups of followers to stir dissension and dissent. And in all three of these areas, they've not stopped. As a matter of fact, if you look at what they've been doing, not only in America, but France, the UK Elsewhere, and you add up all the cost of the Russian expenditures in the French elections, our elections, and the Brexit vote, it's less than the cost of one new F35 airplane. So I feel like they're getting a pretty good bang for the buck or bang for the ruble on this kind of active measures.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Now, there are a couple of ways to look at the collusion question. One of them is just to think in terms of people on the Trump side being schnooks, being inexperienced and too eager to hear bad things about Hillary Clinton. That's one very highly sympathetic way to do it. The other one suggests something so colossally awful that it beggars the imagination, or it goes far beyond any spy novel we've read, which is the idea that the Trump campaign knowingly. Knowingly and with some intelligence and foresight cooperating with the Russian government. Do you still think that latter is possible, David?

[David Remnick]

I'm reserving my final judgment until we've seen all the witnesses we need to see and that we've gotten all the facts. So I'm gonna hold off. I've been under enormous pressure for the last year. For some folks who say, hey, shut it down, there's no there, Mr. Trump. There's others who want to try to say, oh, Trump is guilty from day one. I'm not going to weigh in until we've seen everyone. One of the things that has surprised me though is that here we are, spring of 2018, and in many ways we have at least more lines of inquiry in terms of outreach from Russians or folks that have mysterious background to individuals in the Trump orbit than we did say a year ago. Now, again, this may all be simply a set of coincidences or it may be, as you said, there was not the sophistication to realize what was happening. But the fact is Mueller has gotten, what is it, two or three guilty pleas already and 20 plus indictments, counting a number of Russians in that category who have been using tools like the social media and others to intervene in our elections. So there's a lot of material there that our legal justice system has to weigh through.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

And are you still getting new documents and evidence?

[David Remnick]

We are still receiving additional information. We still have got ongoing challenges, for example, with the Trump transition where they claim a so called executive privilege that we can't find any reputable lawyer that thinks they've got any validity. But we are still getting some documents there. We're still getting some documents connected with certain individuals who've popped up during the course of the campaign. So, yes, I mean, I'm anxious for this to come to a conclusion, but we owe the American public the full truth.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Can you put a timeline on your work?

[David Remnick]

I'm not going to put a timeline, but I am hopeful that every 30 to 45 days we'll be able to put out additional sections of the report. As I said, we've got the first section, the election security, where we've come out with bipartisan legislation, where we got $380 million to beef up election security. In this past budget, this was a normal admin, have a White House task force on election security. So instead we've been trying to push it bipartisan from the Hill. We'll have that first product out in the next week or so. I'm not going to.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Can you get no interest or cooperation from the White House on at least protecting future elections?

[David Remnick]

Well, there is, David, where it's, that's where we get so darn frustrated. You know, Department of Homeland Security acknowledges that the Russians will be back. Dan Coats, our former colleague, Director of National Intelligence, has acknowledged publicly that the Russians will be back and are still back in terms of using social media right now on a host of issues. We had the head of the NSA, all of Mr. Trump's appointees acknowledge this yet, and this is their public testimony. They have said none of them have received directions from the White House to make this a priority going forward.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Now, the standard analysis of Putin's motivation is that he really couldn't stand Hillary Clinton. He saw Bill Clinton as the man who helped expand NATO, and he saw Hillary Clinton as the Secretary of state encouraging anti Putin, anti regime protests and so on. But what could possibly be the motivation to want to have Donald Trump president, the master of chaos? Russians are anti chaos. That's certainly characteristic of Putin. Anti chaos, anti revolutionary. Why want Donald Trump as president of the United States?

[David Remnick]

Well, I think there are some people that have made guesses in that area, and I'm not going to get into questions around finances or others, as certain people have asserted. But I would argue you're suggesting that.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

He might be beholden to Russia.

[David Remnick]

Listen, there have been, I'm again, there are press stories on those accounts, but again, I'm not validating or invalidating anything until we're finished with the investigation. But there's obviously been press speculation. But the thing I might disagree with you on your premise is I don't think the Russians were necessarily pro one party or another by any means, but they see that chaos in the west is good for Putin, both in terms of reasserting Russia's ascension and also pointing out to his own people, look, see how these democracies, they're not really functioning that well. And if you want America's democracy not function that well to bring in somebody with Mr. Trump's unusual style. And if you see the kind of chaos and dysfunction that's happened since that time, I would argue if their goal was to further splinter America, pretty good investment on the rubles. You could almost have predicted some of this with General Guramazov, I think back in 2011, wrote the Russian military doctrine. He was their head of their Joint Chiefs of Staff, where he basically said Russia couldn't compete with the west in terms of tanks and guns and ships and planes. But in the realm of cyber and misinformation and disinformation, he used the terms that spread like radiation. Russia could be the West's peer or even greater. And if you think about it from a holistic standpoint, we just passed a budget, $700 billion defense budget. Russia's defense budget's about 68 billion. I worry at times we're buying the world's best 20th century military, when in many ways, conflict in the 21st century may be in the realm of cyber and misinformation. And in those two areas, Russia is our peer.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

In other words, you're saying too many aircraft carriers, not enough cyber intelligence expertise.

[David Remnick]

As a Virginia guy, I'd never say too many aircraft carriers, but I am saying maybe too much 20th century military. When our systems are terribly vulnerable to cyber, when we've got this whole new realm of social media and misinformation and we're still grappling with fake accounts, what happens when we move to 2018 technology, where we put David Remnick's face on Mike Allen, another journalist's body, and you've got a suddenly live video stream of what appears to be David Remnick saying things that is not him at all. Think about that in the political realm, or think about that. If it was a Federal Reserve chairman or a CEO, we're still catching technology, and I don't think we're fully prepared. And if you take the cyber domain for the last. And this is not just a problem of Trump, this goes Trump, Obama, Bush. We've been afraid of cyber escalation for a decade plus, because if we escalate in the realm of cyber, we're more technologically dependent and if our systems shut down, much more, much more damage done than, say, if Moscow goes dark for 24 hours. So we've been reluctant to use a lot of those tools, and instead we've seen we use them fine against Iran, North Korea, isis, small states. But near peer adversaries like Russia and China, we've been reluctant to engage. And they have. From theft of our intellectual property to now intervening in our most core democratic process, our elections, they've not been as unwilling to use those tools.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

I've read that you communicate over signal, which is an encrypted app, rather than just regular email or regular texting. Are you an outlier among your colleagues? Do other members of Congress also communicate on signal?

[David Remnick]

Well, I don't always communicate on signal. I go back and forth. But I frankly think I should probably improve my cyber hygiene. I do have dual authentication. I do try to make sure that I'm careful because we're in an area in a realm where whether it's having your information broken into or whether it's having the data you give up willingly on, social media can be used and abused in ways that I don't think most folks would have predicted. And clearly, and I say this with some trepidation, you know, a lot of my colleagues showed how little they understood social media when they interviewed Mr. Zuckerberg.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

I think it was that point when Orrin Hatch wondered how Facebook made money that we kind of lost hope not going there. Now, Senator, you've got and we all have a problem of not partisanship, but just something much more extreme than that. If you were to type the words Russia investigation say into Twitter, you're confronted with two entirely alternate universes and reactions. Don't you worry that no matter what you find in your probe, a sizable portion of the country, maybe even approaching half, just won't believe it?

[David Remnick]

You're darn right. I am very worried about that, which is why I got to try to go the extra mile to keep this bipartisan. I got to believe there's enough Americans who, at the end of the day, if you've got joint agreement from both parties, people will start to accept it. And to your point about if you would have typed in Russian intervention on Google on election day in 2016, four out of the first five stories were not Fox News or CBS. They were of Russian origin. It was Sputnik, it was RT News, and it was a series of other Russian fronts that even on Google's algorithms popped up at the top.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

It's really interesting.

[David Remnick]

That's a pretty scary notion.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

It's incredible. And a related piece of business. It was just reported in our pages that aides of President Trump possibly might have been aides, but we don't know who that was. Someone hired an Israeli intelligence firm called Black Cube to investigate former Obama administration officials in the hopes of turning up something which would discredit the agreement. Is that kind of tactic consistent with anything you've learned in your Russia investigation, these kind of dirty tricks?

[David Remnick]

Well, again, we're not aware whether that is true or not. I've seen those same press reports, but it goes back in my mind to respect for rule of law. I think one of the most damaging outcomes of this whole episode is you got a whole lot of folks who are out basically attacking the integrity of the whole FBI, attacking the integrity of the whole Justice Department. When you've got political figures threatening to fire an investigator like Mueller or Rosenstein, who are career officials, and in those two cases, both lifelong Republicans, that gets America into uncharted territory around respect for rule of law.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Forgive me, Senator, you're being polite in a sense. You're seeing a whole lot of folks. You're seeing various people. What you mean is President Trump. Do you think President Trump doesn't care a damn for rule of law?

[David Remnick]

I hope that is not the case.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

But you think what?

[David Remnick]

I'm going to leave it. I've made my statements repeatedly that if, you know, it would cross a red line if he gets rid of the Mueller investigation or indirectly gets rid of it by getting rid of Rosenstein. I hope and pray that doesn't come to pass. I think it would be a disaster for our country. But I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna give my colleagues a chance if, God forbid, that happens for them, then to make their decisions about how history's gonna judge them.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Senator Warner, thank you so much.

[David Remnick]

David, thank you.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

That was Senator Mark Warner talking to David Remnick. Right now, we are living through some of the most tumultuous political times our country has ever known. I'm David Remnick, and each week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, I'll try to make sense of what's happening alongside politicians and thinkers like Cory Booker, Nancy Pelosi, Liz Cheney, Tim Waltz, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Newt Gingrich, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Charlemagne, the God, and so many more. That's all in the New Yorker Radio Hour. Wherever you listen to podcasts from prx.