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Well, it's great to be here.

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I haven't been back to the Voting Village since 2019, and nothing at all has happened since then.

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All right, so keynote panel today, timely as ever for Voting Village issues, but this one in particular, you know, right around the corner we have 2024, and it's kind of like the global year of federal or national elections.

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Yes, the U.S.

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has an election, but in addition to that, we have Mexico, Egypt, Taiwan, that might be interesting, India, Moldova, which has had a little bit of friction lately with Russia, and oh yeah, Russia has an election too.

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So what we're going to do today is with our panelists is we're going to cover a global perspective on elections, the various threats that we see, and then what are some of the solutions or things we need to keep an eye out for.

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So this is not just going to be a technical conversation, because as we've seen over the last several years, threats to election are not just technical in nature.

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We also have, of course, the continuing and growing problem of information disorder, information decay.

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And so we'll jump into that.

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All right, so we'll go on for 30-40 minutes here, and then we'll open up for some questions that I will hope are respectful.

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We'll see how that goes.

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You're always respectful here at Voting Village, so we'll be good.

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All right, Maja, let's start with you.

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You spend a lot of time in Europe lately, looking at the impact of disinformation on democracy and electoral processes.

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Understanding that the group here may be US-biased, but we obviously have various perspectives here.

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Can you give us your view on threats to elections in Europe?

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Sure, I think it's a pleasure being here.

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I have a question, like, who's from Europe in here?

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Raise your hand.

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There we go.

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Great.

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So we know that we share the same concerns, and indeed 2024 is a big one, and we also have the European elections.

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So it's going to be fun.

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And also Belarus is on the elections, and I'm coming from Poland, so we're actually starting earlier, and we have the parliamentary elections coming up just on the 15th of October.

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And I think, like, what is the difference that you need to understand in between European and the US elections is that we rather don't have e-voting, right?

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The only country in Europe that has it is Estonia.

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And there were a few trials and check-ups for other countries, but it's not happening.

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So, like, one of the concerns that you are having is not really our concern, but how I'm looking at this information, how I work with the Alliance for Europe, we're seeing this information being spread by the operational influence of Russia, but also internal actors to actually change the attitudes of peoples.

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And that's how the new technologies are being deployed as well.

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And what we're doing right now in Poland, for example, before the elections, we're setting up the ISAC, Information Sharing Analysis Center, to actually research that more and look at it more.

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Because also, you know, it's a huge crowd in here of cyber security experts.

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In the EU, in most of the countries, there's not that many experts on this matter.

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And I think there's a need for more awareness as well, because Poland is a bordering country with Ukraine.

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Last year, we got around 10% of our society fluing from Ukraine, right?

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Basically, we're a country of 40 million, 47, like more than 4 million Ukrainians are right now in Poland.

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And those are the narratives that are being deployed by the bad actors as well.

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And it's super easy in this information to use, for example, us versus them narrative.

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And just polarizing us, and I think that's a big issue in the US as well.

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And those are the biggest concerns of looking at the elections in the EU, and also of the governments.

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Because something that you have in the US, it's still trust in the democracy.

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In many countries in the EU, or a few countries in the EU, including mine, sometimes it's democracy or the rule of law as being targeted by also populistic governments.

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And that's a challenge.

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So your takeaway is that because technology is not as prevalent in European elections, save for Estonia, which sidebar here, President Ilves would give me grief every now and then when we were talking about some of the issues we had post-2016 here in the US,

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the Russians going after voter registration databases.

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And he was constantly saying, you just need to go to mobile voting.

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You just need to go to mobile voting.

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And I'm trying to see Matt in the back.

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There he is.

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Yeah.

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And then a year after that, he first really pushed me on that.

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With their national ID database and the compromise of that system.

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So I think it shows that even with those more advanced technologies that are in play in Estonia, they obviously have some challenges as well.

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Also want to highlight, though we're not talking about the EU anymore, the UK recently with their database breach, which I don't know if you want to comment on that at all, but I think we're still kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop there.

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Who that threat actor might be and really what was the risk?

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Yeah, if you look actually what was happening since 2015, because I would say not 2016 was a year, but in 2015, I was working for the previous president of Poland.

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And that was the first time when I kind of looked at disinformation, targeted the elections, because there was a year also of the big migration crisis.

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And those are the deploys and how Russia, especially in the EU, but also other countries are really getting into the system.

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And the election integrity right now is not only happening during the elections itself.

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Election days of voting is not only happening during the campaign, but it's actually happening during the whole electoral cycle.

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And that's a big threat.

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And that's also the terms of the UK, right?

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If you look at what happened with the UK, for example, with the Brexit, we're seeing very similar processes happening right now in Poland or even in Germany.

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There are different people coming over.

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And very, very often, the voting is being built on what you believe in, what you trust.

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And if you don't trust your state, your country, your government, or if you just don't trust other people that are out there, that's when the wrong thing is happening, right?

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And we are having a lot of darknet research that we're doing as well.

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There are narratives deployed, for example, in Poland, saying that Ukrainians will take over Poland.

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And that was pretty much happening in the UK as well, saying that the migrants from the other EU countries, including Poles, were taking over the UK.

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And there was no specific cyber security measures as well on it.

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So I want to come back to the threat actor piece in a minute.

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But what we've already talked a lot about today is Russia, Russia as the influence actor.

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I kind of see Russia as the Leroy Jenkins of election interference and election influence.

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They're very noisy, very, very corruptive.

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On the other hand, I think we're seeing an emergence of China in this space, particularly what happened last year, at least what was announced earlier this year and last year, with Chinese government officials bribing and paying off Canadian provincial officials.

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And I think we're going to see more of that.

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We see a good chunk of that here in the United States at the local level, not quite at the dog catcher races, but local commission.

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We are seeing influence there.

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And I am interested in having talked to some French officials, what that level of corruption and disinformation and influence the Chinese actors are copying.

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And I've heard some of the French intelligence officials call it the Russification of Chinese influence operations.

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We'll come back to that in just a minute.

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All right, Kendall, so you have spent some time working with the Germans and over there.

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And the Germans, I think this year, have what, four of the 16 federal states have their elections.

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So why don't you tell us a little bit about what you see in Germany, because whether they're the bellwether, I think France tends to be kind of the European bellwether for European influence, but we have seen activity in and around Germany.

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And so talk to us a little bit about what you're seeing there and how some of the social issues come to play, national identity and how that manifests in information influence operations.

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Yeah, thanks so much.

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I mean, we're seeing some of the same issues that I think we've been talking about here today.

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The biggest one being disinformation.

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One of the fascinating kind of discoveries that I, you know, in my discussions with them this year, kind of stumbled upon was, you know, electronic voting is largely unconstitutional there.

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And reason being, because they found that because you cannot, in their opinion, have meaningful discussions and meaningful public scrutiny on the validity of electronic voting, they've made it unconstitutional, right?

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So they really do rely on a paper-based system, which is great.

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We, you know, we love that.

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But it also changes how targeted the disinformation is, right?

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So here, what we're seeing in terms of threat, it's not so much on the voting machines, right?

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Because we don't really have them.

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It's more on the mechanisms used to make public political figures' viewpoints.

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So online campaigning, that type of thing.

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And those are really the kind of states, like the foundational systems that we're seeing, that are actually being targeted in terms of the threat.

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So doing things like infiltrating a campaign's website, changing the information that is there, flooding the actual discussion processes in terms of just overloading the system.

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We're seeing things like that.

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And when we start talking about what that does for national identity, one of the discussions that we spent a lot of time on was just sort of Germany's approach to having that national identity.

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And what does it mean to be patriotic and be German, right?

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Given Germany's past, a lot of individuals there really struggle with that.

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One of the questions we ask is whether or not they feel like they want to identify more as being German citizens versus identifying more as being members of the EU.

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And a lot of that fluctuates depending on what's going on in the time.

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But something that I believe that they're really working earnestly on is trying to strike that balance of how to develop that level of patriotism and pro-German viewpoint without really feeling like you still have to step on eggshells.

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I think that's very difficult for a nation.

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And I also think that it heavily impacts young people in the sense of how they decide to go about getting involved in the political process.

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If it's hard to be patriotic, if it's hard to really be pro-Germany, what do you tell your kids?

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How do you motivate the younger generation to really step up to the plate and fight for what they believe in?

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I think that's what we're going to see play out over the next couple of years, is how disinformation is being targeted towards not just younger people, but the individuals running for office and the issues that they really stand for.

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I'd like to see how that ends up playing out over the next couple of years.

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Again, when we talk about the technology used, one of the things we have to remember is Germany is very risk-averse.

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Compared to the United States, they are risk-first, innovation-second.

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Obviously, here in the States, it's very innovation-focused, risk-second.

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They struggle very much with striking that balance.

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One of the conversations we had when we were at the German Bundestag was, they still use fax machines.

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Phasing those types of systems out in a meaningful way that encourages those individuals to have discussions and still feel safe and build upon some of the values that they find important, I think is going to be a part of that ongoing national discussion.

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Under that, how do you situate yourself within that framework as members of the European Union?

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Can I just step in?

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Yeah , please.

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I encourage that, in fact.

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Thank you, perfect.

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On the patriotic side, I love actually how Kat came in here and said, you're here, you're patriots, and you're here to support your country, right?

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That's something that would never happen in Europe.

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And that's a challenge that we're having, and I guess it's quite a lot of things that happened in Europe already might happen in here as well.

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Because what happened with the patriotism is that the far right took this for themselves, right?

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And that's why the stratcom and the counter-narratives are super important as well.

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If we look at the information space, it's basically floated by this information.

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It's basically put with those narratives, and we are just counterfeiting it.

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We are just reacting to it.

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And we need to bring those narratives.

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And we are patriots.

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I'm Polish and I'm patriot, but I'm not the far right, you know?

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So I want to come back to some of those solutions in a minute, but let's pull it back here to the United States.

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Bryson, in addition to being a unicorn, you have also been advising CISA and other folks for several years on election security issues.

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So, you know, we obviously have a more complicated, technologically integrated system of elections here.

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We are not Estonia, but we do use machines for casting counting of votes.

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So can you talk to us a little bit about what you see on the edge of the 2024 election?

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What are those threats that you're seeing, you're worried about, and how do you think these things are going to play out?

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So it's Bryson and three lawyers.

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I think I represent the average voter.

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90% of what I would say, Matt much better phrased it up front as part of the introduction to the voting village.

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So I highly encourage you to continue to reference that, because I will do a poor imitation at best.

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One of the first things that when I was working with Chris back in 2020, was I saw the issue of there's two aspects here, right?

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There's attacking the tech, and then there's attacking the people.

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And the two go together.

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And one of the first things that I saw as a challenge for us is, we knew in 2020 paper ballots were going to be more of what was going to be a part of that process.

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And what we didn't know is how long that was going to take.

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You might be surprised, Americans do not have a long attention span.

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Therefore, we need results to come in quickly.

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And that's a system that is not going to guarantee quick results.

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So what, right?

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At the end of the day, we're more confident we're going to be secure.

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However, because of that attention span, that leaves an opportunity for a narrative to be constructed.

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That is a void that could be filled.

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And so my view is since 2016, the US government had been doing a lot of work on this.

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It's first thing worth noting, here in the United States, the federal government does not directly run elections.

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There are around 9,000 jurisdictions all at the community level, run by a 75-year-old grandmother named Eleanor.

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That's who runs your elections.

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Can I jump in?

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You absolutely can.

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All right, who do we have here that's a state or local election official?

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I know some of the Maricopa guys are here.

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All right, let's give them a round of applause.

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So the hell these folks have been through over the last several years is absolutely unpatriotic.

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And my concern, and I said this on a show the other day, is that this is effectively manifesting in voter suppression of another type.

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Because we have election officials that are getting drummed out of the workforce.

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We have historical levels of openings and open headcount, FTEs, in these roles.

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And so what does that mean when you have fewer people to man the polls, to work the polls?

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You're not going to have as many polls open.

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You're not going to have as many opportunities to participate in democracy.

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So I personally find one of the biggest threats right now is the constant harassment of election officials.

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There's kind of a knock-on effect here that we are seeing some folks that are filling these positions.

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Many of them are of the right inclination and motivation, incentives to take those jobs.

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Others are not.

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And we are now seeing, I think, a greater level of insider risk to elections from those that may be pursuing that role for ideological purposes.

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You know, I always felt that the technical issues around elections and election security, it was simply an engineering problem.

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You address the vulnerabilities.

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You upgrade systems.

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They're imminently fixable.

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But all these other human-driven issues are much, much harder and take a broader set of people.

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It's not about how much money the federal government can throw in grant dollars and how quickly you can put it on contract at the state or local level.

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We have a range of challenges here.

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I'll let Bryson finish before I interrupt him again.

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Again, I just want to say thank you to those state and local folks that are out there every day ensuring that our democracy, that we're able to vote.

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This thing, this project, this experiment keeps going forward.

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Back to you.

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To summarize, right?

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This ties to 2024.

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The threat is from within.

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The system is being attacked from within.

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And that sounds abstract, except it is people.

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And I'm pointing because you raised your hand, right?

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It is people.

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They are coming to their houses.

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They're hunting them down.

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It is personal.

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Can you imagine being in that situation?

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I mean, it's like out of a science fiction novel where it sounds, again, they're being drummed out like you lost a job.

200
00:19:21,690 --> 00:19:26,910
They're being harassed at a personal level and their family is being harassed at a personal level.

201
00:19:27,070 --> 00:19:28,190
And here's the thing.

202
00:19:29,690 --> 00:19:33,410
Dots are dots, but when there are a lot of them that draw a line, that's a pattern.

203
00:19:34,730 --> 00:19:38,110
The system is being attacked from within by a system.

204
00:19:38,810 --> 00:19:42,970
There is money being poured into organizing and attacking this.

205
00:19:42,970 --> 00:19:44,690
And I know you're seeing that in Europe too.

206
00:19:44,690 --> 00:19:47,010
This is part of what you and I were talking about beforehand.

207
00:19:47,010 --> 00:19:50,670
There is literally forces aligned that are coming after this.

208
00:19:50,670 --> 00:19:52,030
I made the joke to her before.

209
00:19:52,030 --> 00:19:55,210
I was like, do you remember when liberal democracy wasn't a question?

210
00:19:57,290 --> 00:20:00,030
That's no longer an assumption you can make.

211
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There are people that each of you know.

212
00:20:02,230 --> 00:20:03,490
I guarantee you that you know.

213
00:20:03,490 --> 00:20:05,610
You have your racist aunt on Facebook.

214
00:20:05,610 --> 00:20:07,330
That's why you don't go to Facebook anymore.

215
00:20:07,370 --> 00:20:10,070
They don't believe in the system anymore.

216
00:20:11,450 --> 00:20:14,530
One other thing, since we're also giving recognition and applause, right?

217
00:20:14,530 --> 00:20:16,630
I worked with Chris in 2020.

218
00:20:16,690 --> 00:20:18,190
And we tried really hard.

219
00:20:18,310 --> 00:20:20,990
I highly recommend pointing to the panel I pulled together.

220
00:20:20,990 --> 00:20:27,690
It was the first multiple federal agency panel that had ever come together and publicly talked about everything they've been doing since 2016.

221
00:20:27,790 --> 00:20:35,450
It was DEF CON Voting Village 2020, NSA, Cyber Command, State Department, Election Assistance Commission, CISA, and FBI.

222
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Check it out.

223
00:20:36,750 --> 00:20:43,810
But the thing I want to really go here is, it is easy to stand up on a stage and say what you would do.

224
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It is much harder when you're actually in that system.

225
00:20:48,810 --> 00:20:52,890
Chris was a political appointee in 2020 in the Trump administration.

226
00:20:53,250 --> 00:20:58,930
And he not only carried with integrity, he showed character and courage to call it out.

227
00:20:59,030 --> 00:21:01,150
And I think that also deserves a round of applause.

228
00:21:01,150 --> 00:21:03,010
You cannot be recognized enough for that.

229
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Thank you.

230
00:21:08,900 --> 00:21:12,300
No, and just on that too, because, I mean, you went through a lot.

231
00:21:12,300 --> 00:21:13,180
I mean, I was there.

232
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I lived right next to him.

233
00:21:14,560 --> 00:21:17,880
And I cannot tell you the personal cost there was at that time.

234
00:21:18,300 --> 00:21:19,260
That is courage.

235
00:21:19,260 --> 00:21:20,560
I'm an army officer, okay?

236
00:21:20,560 --> 00:21:21,400
I've been shot at.

237
00:21:21,400 --> 00:21:23,180
I have seen things around this world.

238
00:21:23,180 --> 00:21:28,020
That is easier than to stand up against the whole system like you did.

239
00:21:28,020 --> 00:21:30,600
Showing up with a bottle of Yellow Spot helped.

240
00:21:31,100 --> 00:21:33,280
That was much appreciated.

241
00:21:34,340 --> 00:21:42,860
So let me kind of, as a moderator, take a little bit of personal privilege here and give you a bit of my view of what we're looking at in 2024.

242
00:21:43,280 --> 00:21:44,860
I think you're absolutely right.

243
00:21:44,860 --> 00:21:53,280
I think there is a significant threat of the caller is inside the house issue.

244
00:21:53,280 --> 00:21:55,000
And I'll come back to that in just a second.

245
00:21:55,000 --> 00:22:00,800
But I continue to think that we have significant and grave threats from foreign actors.

246
00:22:01,060 --> 00:22:03,580
I look at motivations.

247
00:22:03,580 --> 00:22:07,920
And so this is where strategic intelligence and threat modeling comes in.

248
00:22:08,420 --> 00:22:11,880
We know that there are systems that have vulnerabilities out there.

249
00:22:11,880 --> 00:22:16,350
The existence of a vulnerability doesn't mean it's been exploited or someone has the capability, of course.

250
00:22:16,720 --> 00:22:24,700
But I look at what Putin is thinking right now about his continued war in Ukraine.

251
00:22:24,800 --> 00:22:38,140
And how one of the main things, in addition, beyond the Ukrainians' resilience and ability to defend themselves, is the West's continued support of Ukraine.

252
00:22:38,140 --> 00:22:45,980
And might, if there's a different someone in the White House, might they pull back that support and that aid?

253
00:22:45,980 --> 00:22:50,840
And how would that affect Russia's ability?

254
00:22:50,840 --> 00:22:52,500
So what does that mean?

255
00:22:52,500 --> 00:22:54,180
And how might they act on that?

256
00:22:54,180 --> 00:23:06,540
Might we see more of the continued drumbeat of disinformation that we've seen since the 2014 post-Maidan events in Ukraine?

257
00:23:06,540 --> 00:23:11,300
We also could see, I think, more of that technical mischief.

258
00:23:11,300 --> 00:23:15,460
And I'm not one of those that is...

259
00:23:16,640 --> 00:23:27,600
I still think that it is a significant red line to get into an actual process and affect the casting, counting, and certification of the votes.

260
00:23:27,600 --> 00:23:37,880
But getting in and mucking up election night reporting to cause panic and chaos so that conspiracy theories spin out of control about late night dumps or whatever they call it.

261
00:23:37,880 --> 00:23:40,300
Those are the things that I continue to worry about.

262
00:23:40,300 --> 00:23:41,500
Not just from the Russians.

263
00:23:41,500 --> 00:23:45,580
I think the Chinese similarly now have capabilities.

264
00:23:45,580 --> 00:23:46,600
They have motivations.

265
00:23:46,600 --> 00:23:55,620
I think with President Xi's continued eyes towards Taiwan and some of the saber rattling that we're hearing with friction with the West.

266
00:23:55,620 --> 00:24:10,720
And then if you look at the Volt typhoon reporting out of Microsoft about pre-positioning for conflict, I think the natural extension of that is that they may have the ability or desire to get into our democratic processes.

267
00:24:10,720 --> 00:24:11,680
All right, bringing it back home.

268
00:24:11,680 --> 00:24:13,460
And I'll just interject real quickly.

269
00:24:13,460 --> 00:24:18,580
You don't have to hack a system to undermine confidence in the system.

270
00:24:18,820 --> 00:24:22,400
You don't have to technically compromise something.

271
00:24:22,400 --> 00:24:26,280
All you have to do is get people to not believe what it is.

272
00:24:27,180 --> 00:24:29,580
That's the threat beyond the technical piece, right?

273
00:24:29,580 --> 00:24:31,000
We have vulnerabilities.

274
00:24:31,000 --> 00:24:38,680
I mean, it is amusing having worked with the voting bills for a long time where it was us constantly hammering the voting machine manufacturers.

275
00:24:38,940 --> 00:24:44,780
And now it's like we're kind of on their side, even though there's still problems, because there's this bigger risk we're all facing.

276
00:24:44,800 --> 00:24:45,660
Sorry, Kendall.

277
00:24:45,660 --> 00:24:46,380
Yeah, go ahead.

278
00:24:46,380 --> 00:24:52,340
So if you don't mind, I want to take a bit of a different approach and maybe ask a question.

279
00:24:52,400 --> 00:24:58,160
Bryson, when I hear you talk, when I hear Chris talk, when I hear you talk, like you hear so much passion, right?

280
00:24:58,160 --> 00:25:09,620
And I think when we start talking about democracy and how to protect it and how to examine the threats and how to promulgate solutions to it, a lot of it has to do with how do you get people to care?

281
00:25:09,800 --> 00:25:22,060
And I think one of the interesting questions that I ask when we're examining different cultures and different nations and how they go about their election process is, what are the tools used to sort of protect those systems?

282
00:25:22,120 --> 00:25:41,480
And how do you educate, again, the people, younger generations who are going to matriculate and become positive members of those societies to care and take democracy into their own hands and say, you know what, dammit, I'm going to work at the polls and this is my country too.

283
00:25:41,480 --> 00:25:43,440
And it is up to me to protect it.

284
00:25:43,680 --> 00:25:46,540
And just generationally, we see so much differences there.

285
00:25:46,540 --> 00:25:50,480
And I would just love to know a little bit more about what it is that kind of keeps you going.

286
00:25:50,480 --> 00:25:57,300
And if it was that civics class that so many of you guys had in a different lens than what I had.

287
00:26:01,140 --> 00:26:03,360
So... this is a complicated question.

288
00:26:03,360 --> 00:26:04,140
I've studied...

289
00:26:04,140 --> 00:26:04,880
Didn't mean to throw that.

290
00:26:04,880 --> 00:26:05,360
No, no, no.

291
00:26:05,360 --> 00:26:06,660
It's a good question.

292
00:26:07,840 --> 00:26:09,180
I've taken a look at this.

293
00:26:09,180 --> 00:26:13,140
And I don't think I'm going to meet your expectations for an answer here.

294
00:26:13,380 --> 00:26:18,480
But with the Aspen Institute and the Commission on Information Disorder, we looked in part at this.

295
00:26:18,480 --> 00:26:29,900
And I think one of the common observations is that civics education and opportunities to engage civically have eroded over the last couple decades.

296
00:26:29,900 --> 00:26:46,620
And so you may not have the social studies and civics education in K through 12 that give you the foundational understanding of how the United States came about and what it took to get to this current form of liberal democracy.

297
00:26:46,620 --> 00:26:55,980
And I think a reintroduction of that could certainly, I think, go some degree towards achieving that.

298
00:26:56,240 --> 00:26:57,200
Yeah.

299
00:26:57,480 --> 00:27:00,480
Happy to get to both of you, actually.

300
00:27:00,480 --> 00:27:02,760
Because I'm super passionate about it.

301
00:27:02,760 --> 00:27:05,220
And indeed, it's very important to me.

302
00:27:05,220 --> 00:27:05,820
And why?

303
00:27:05,820 --> 00:27:07,060
Because I feel it here.

304
00:27:07,480 --> 00:27:15,980
And if we think about new technology, if we think about this information, but mostly if we think about our future, it's coming to us here.

305
00:27:16,260 --> 00:27:26,400
And one of the strongest emotions that is being deployed by the bad actors, whether they are the foreign actors or the internal ones, is fear.

306
00:27:26,680 --> 00:27:30,020
We are in fear for the past few years.

307
00:27:30,020 --> 00:27:31,340
We had a pandemic.

308
00:27:31,500 --> 00:27:34,120
You know, in Europe, we have a war in Ukraine.

309
00:27:34,340 --> 00:27:40,380
We have right now AI as one of another emerging fears, which I believe that's actually taken for good, right?

310
00:27:40,380 --> 00:27:40,980
Yep.

311
00:27:40,980 --> 00:27:44,220
And I want other emotions to see there.

312
00:27:44,220 --> 00:27:55,340
Like, I want those young kids not to be afraid, but rather want to be passionate about their future, about the EU, about the US, about our world.

313
00:27:55,460 --> 00:28:00,400
And when we think about it, and if I may just go back on the China issue, right?

314
00:28:00,400 --> 00:28:08,180
We're talking about EU and US and kind of like this dimension, there's Russia, but like that's not the world we live anymore in.

315
00:28:08,180 --> 00:28:14,140
And I think that we also need to realize that the global situation in the world is changing.

316
00:28:14,140 --> 00:28:16,320
The global South is there.

317
00:28:16,320 --> 00:28:22,320
It's emerging and it's heavily deployed by China and by Russia.

318
00:28:22,440 --> 00:28:28,440
Africa right now, it's one of the biggest, you know, regions being deployed with this information.

319
00:28:28,440 --> 00:28:33,920
I've been in Kenya talking with the activists in there and the governments because they just had elections last year.

320
00:28:33,920 --> 00:28:35,760
And did you hear about the Tim Horta?

321
00:28:37,080 --> 00:28:46,360
The Tim Horta, it's one of the biggest investigations that were made by the more than 30 different media outlets.

322
00:28:46,360 --> 00:28:59,860
And it's a company, Israeli company, that was offering the services for 1 million euros to change the elections, then investigated more than 30 presidential elections all over the world.

323
00:28:59,860 --> 00:29:07,380
They said there also was happening in Europe, but they didn't have enough of the details to tell which countries.

324
00:29:07,500 --> 00:29:09,900
But that happened, right?

325
00:29:09,900 --> 00:29:16,260
The guy like Jorge, that's how they named it, he's already in the first pages of Der Spiegel and others.

326
00:29:16,260 --> 00:29:25,620
But I mean, you know better than I do that it's super easy to just set up the bunch of votes, accounts that are looking illegitimate.

327
00:29:25,620 --> 00:29:27,360
And that's what the bad actors are doing.

328
00:29:27,360 --> 00:29:29,500
And they're just giving the hashtags.

329
00:29:29,500 --> 00:29:30,960
They're just giving those emotions.

330
00:29:30,960 --> 00:29:32,520
They're giving the fears on us.

331
00:29:32,520 --> 00:29:34,840
We're going into the Internet and we are afraid.

332
00:29:35,000 --> 00:29:39,160
And that's why I'm here and why I'm doing all of that.

333
00:29:39,660 --> 00:29:41,380
Bryson, do you want to chime in?

334
00:29:42,220 --> 00:29:45,520
This country has a lot of issues, right?

335
00:29:45,820 --> 00:29:47,500
You pick your axis.

336
00:29:48,280 --> 00:29:49,820
I've been all over the world.

337
00:29:49,820 --> 00:29:53,420
The quality of life here is still some of the best you will find anywhere.

338
00:29:53,700 --> 00:29:58,880
Two and a half billion people on this planet don't have access to clean water even, right?

339
00:29:58,880 --> 00:30:01,460
You want to talk about Maslow's hierarchy or worrying about things?

340
00:30:01,620 --> 00:30:08,600
You, we as Americans, I say you because I actually did grow up here, don't worry about those kinds of things.

341
00:30:08,600 --> 00:30:10,420
The rest of the world does.

342
00:30:10,620 --> 00:30:14,900
And so I'll say I actually, the opposite of the civics lesson, I saw the dark side.

343
00:30:14,960 --> 00:30:17,120
I grew up in East Germany, the civic union.

344
00:30:17,940 --> 00:30:24,180
You might remember them from your classes as not the beacons of freedom and personal individualism.

345
00:30:24,580 --> 00:30:28,680
And so I saw what humanity could be and what could do.

346
00:30:29,180 --> 00:30:34,660
And that compelled me to join the army here in the United States because I wanted to be a patriot.

347
00:30:34,660 --> 00:30:36,840
I wanted to believe in a higher purpose.

348
00:30:36,840 --> 00:30:39,400
Of course, the military has its own faults too, right?

349
00:30:39,400 --> 00:30:44,260
But I'm just saying, I think we take it for granted what we have and what we're fighting for.

350
00:30:44,440 --> 00:30:53,080
And so that's my passion is my whole career has been a sense of service because I lived and grew up where there was nothing.

351
00:30:56,010 --> 00:30:57,390
Just dawn on me.

352
00:30:57,390 --> 00:31:01,990
You are what the show The Americans was based on.

353
00:31:01,990 --> 00:31:03,090
You're a sleep radio.

354
00:31:04,070 --> 00:31:05,390
I've known you all this time.

355
00:31:05,390 --> 00:31:06,290
You've been hiding it.

356
00:31:06,290 --> 00:31:09,750
You can test me by pushing a cup of coffee off and I catch it immediately.

357
00:31:10,190 --> 00:31:14,650
So let me kind of close out the current threat to release to 2024.

358
00:31:14,650 --> 00:31:16,470
And like I said, bring it back home.

359
00:31:16,470 --> 00:31:29,950
One of the things that I'm worried about is that there were lessons learned from 2020 efforts, observing foreign actors doing things, as well as information that's come across and publicly available over the last couple of years.

360
00:31:29,950 --> 00:31:49,530
I don't know if Alex is here, Halderman, but I think we may see some ideological lone wolf type actor, hacktivist type person, look at something like Alex's report or other systems and just cause a wobble in the machine.

361
00:31:49,730 --> 00:31:56,230
Not actually try to change the outcome of an election or overturn anything, but just say, see, look, I told you.

362
00:31:56,230 --> 00:31:57,510
See, we told you.

363
00:31:57,510 --> 00:32:04,770
Therefore, the entire system is not valid.

364
00:32:04,770 --> 00:32:05,730
Invalid.

365
00:32:05,750 --> 00:32:13,890
And those are the sorts of things I think are going to manifest into a thousand different conspiracy theories that are going to spin out of control.

366
00:32:13,890 --> 00:32:38,670
I will say, though, that there is one aspect of social media chaos that might actually damp down or dampen some of these viral disinformation and conspiracy theories, because they've seemingly kind of sorted out into very narrow ideological spectrums.

367
00:32:38,670 --> 00:32:44,550
And you go to one platform because there are people there that share your beliefs.

368
00:32:44,550 --> 00:32:52,070
And that's, I think, one of the biggest shame of what's happened, in my view, with Twitter is how it is not that global public square anymore.

369
00:32:52,730 --> 00:33:06,070
Now, what that means to me is that we may see conspiracy theories pop up that burn really fast and really hot, but they don't have staying power because they just burn through the population kind of like Ebola would.

370
00:33:06,470 --> 00:33:17,870
And on the other hand, I am worried about TikTok as a very broad platform that can be manipulated, not necessarily just intentionally by the Chinese, but by other actors that can get on there.

371
00:33:17,870 --> 00:33:28,570
That's where you could see a COVID-like disinformation or conspiracy theory, I think, burn very broad and slowly and deeply and corruptively.

372
00:33:28,610 --> 00:33:30,350
So those are the sorts of things that I'm worried about.

373
00:33:30,350 --> 00:33:30,810
All right.

374
00:33:30,810 --> 00:33:34,170
So now we're going to take a little bit of a leap forward.

375
00:33:34,170 --> 00:33:43,490
And since, Maya, you broke the seal and talked about generative AI, in DC, at least, these are a lot of the questions I'm getting from policymakers.

376
00:33:44,150 --> 00:33:50,590
What, how should we think about the threat of generative AI in disinformation and other means for the 2024 election?

377
00:33:50,590 --> 00:33:53,290
So, Kendall, we'll start with you, and then we'll work our way down.

378
00:33:54,590 --> 00:33:57,690
So trying to take the lawyer hat off, right?

379
00:33:57,690 --> 00:34:02,850
Because one of the things I also do, I'm a cybersecurity and data privacy attorney at a firm in Boston.

380
00:34:03,830 --> 00:34:11,790
So part of where I see the issue is it eroding people's motivation to sort of question what they're looking at.

381
00:34:11,790 --> 00:34:19,130
We talked earlier about kind of getting people to care, getting people to understand the institutions that they use to actually carry out the democracy.

382
00:34:20,050 --> 00:34:39,710
And just my generation, personally, that relies heavily on chat GPT and that type of thing, people are using it as a means to take certain shortcuts, which I think down the line, the impact that it's going to have on critical thinking and actually kind of working through some of these tougher issues.

383
00:34:39,710 --> 00:34:43,110
I think we're going to see some problems in that space.

384
00:34:43,250 --> 00:34:56,710
I think on the legal front, kind of putting the lawyer hat back on, you know, we saw a big issue, I want to say a couple months ago, where you had an attorney that had an entire brief written by chat GPT and did not look at the cases.

385
00:34:56,710 --> 00:34:58,290
They were completely fictitious.

386
00:34:58,330 --> 00:34:59,890
That was crazy.

387
00:35:00,510 --> 00:35:08,210
And so sort of where I see the issues are just people kind of, again, getting information just kind of handed to them without questioning it.

388
00:35:08,210 --> 00:35:13,850
And sort of the second tier of analysis of here's what I'm getting.

389
00:35:13,850 --> 00:35:15,690
Does it make sense?

390
00:35:15,770 --> 00:35:17,730
And what is this based off of?

391
00:35:17,730 --> 00:35:20,230
That's where I see the biggest issue, in my opinion.

392
00:35:20,230 --> 00:35:38,290
I think when we get back to sort of talking about education a bit, you know, being trained to think logically and question things is not something that comes as a foundational part of today's education, unless you go and pursue engineering or a STEM field,

393
00:35:38,290 --> 00:35:40,110
or you end up going to law school.

394
00:35:40,110 --> 00:35:44,170
And I'm sure there's, you know, philosophy and some other disciplines will also have that.

395
00:35:44,170 --> 00:35:48,530
And I think that causes a very big problem because it makes it easier to divide people.

396
00:35:48,530 --> 00:35:54,870
It makes it easier to convince you that what you're seeing is real and true and God's honest truth.

397
00:35:55,010 --> 00:36:01,690
And so those are those are some of the areas that I that I see problematic, you know, that I see to be kind of problematic down the line.

398
00:36:01,690 --> 00:36:04,830
I'm sure there's a host of others, but just that's that's right.

399
00:36:04,830 --> 00:36:09,590
I would say my unique view would sort of kind of center on.

400
00:36:09,630 --> 00:36:11,090
All right, Maya.

401
00:36:11,290 --> 00:36:15,110
Yeah, I find, like, first of all, I'm a fan of AI.

402
00:36:15,110 --> 00:36:18,890
I think that it really can do a lot of good things.

403
00:36:19,230 --> 00:36:20,790
And that's the thing.

404
00:36:20,790 --> 00:36:33,490
We need to start to make it good things and put a lot of money into actually deploying AI to the level of the good tech instead of the bad tech, right?

405
00:36:33,490 --> 00:36:35,990
Because that's the approach.

406
00:36:35,990 --> 00:36:38,210
Which values are we putting it in?

407
00:36:38,490 --> 00:36:43,470
If, as a lot of people are saying, right, AI right now, it's like our babies.

408
00:36:43,750 --> 00:36:49,050
So if we're talking about education, that's how we need to educate it as well.

409
00:36:49,270 --> 00:36:54,970
If we're programming and making an AI, we need to teach it our values.

410
00:36:54,970 --> 00:37:00,830
So if we are a society with fear, we're going to build the AI with fear as well.

411
00:37:00,890 --> 00:37:02,710
And that's not something we want to.

412
00:37:03,530 --> 00:37:04,650
So that's one.

413
00:37:04,650 --> 00:37:08,890
And the other one is the legislation and basically how we're looking at the future.

414
00:37:09,170 --> 00:37:16,190
Like, I believe that one of the biggest challenges we face, also on the political level, is that we are all the time reactive.

415
00:37:16,190 --> 00:37:18,550
We are not thinking about the future, what can happen.

416
00:37:18,550 --> 00:37:20,190
We are not building scenarios.

417
00:37:20,350 --> 00:37:21,890
AI is nothing new.

418
00:37:21,890 --> 00:37:24,650
We knew it's going to emerge and it's going to emerge farther.

419
00:37:24,650 --> 00:37:31,750
But only how we are working on it is like looking at how it looks like right now.

420
00:37:31,750 --> 00:37:47,850
I would like to have a group of experts, basically, sitting together and thinking of what we can do in the future, how we can better, how we can make AI better, how we can pour better money into it instead of giving it to the bad actors, because bad actors are also employing it,

421
00:37:47,850 --> 00:37:48,470
right?

422
00:37:48,470 --> 00:37:50,550
Got it.

423
00:37:50,550 --> 00:37:51,260
Bryson.

424
00:37:51,850 --> 00:37:52,520
Iran.

425
00:37:53,090 --> 00:37:54,790
We haven't talked about Iran.

426
00:37:54,910 --> 00:38:01,690
First, I would say Iran is the same as Russia in a regional power that's primary strategy is chaos.

427
00:38:01,910 --> 00:38:08,960
The reason I'm using Iran as an example tied to artificial intelligence is I remember when Iran first started to try to do disinformation campaigns.

428
00:38:09,590 --> 00:38:10,990
They were bad.

429
00:38:10,990 --> 00:38:12,050
They were horrible.

430
00:38:12,050 --> 00:38:17,490
They were the Nigerian scam email to send 10 million dollars to a prince.

431
00:38:18,050 --> 00:38:23,630
Because they didn't have the language capabilities built up and the intelligence services to be able to effectively do them.

432
00:38:23,650 --> 00:38:25,770
Artificial intelligence removes that.

433
00:38:26,330 --> 00:38:31,130
I type in my language, native English spits out on the backside.

434
00:38:31,530 --> 00:38:32,950
The second part of this.

435
00:38:33,630 --> 00:38:49,910
Disinformation and those kinds of campaigns are effectively marketing, which means from a system perspective, the better, the more statistical data-driven insights I can have, the quicker I can recognize what messages go viral to what populations and I can have a technographic profile that I can exploit.

436
00:38:50,090 --> 00:38:57,710
Well, that can be a machine feeding a machine with looking at that data and doing that because there's no consequence to getting caught.

437
00:38:58,250 --> 00:38:59,670
There's no consequence.

438
00:39:00,190 --> 00:39:05,110
We can try to shut things down, but as we've noted, Twitter isn't exactly helping with that.

439
00:39:05,110 --> 00:39:07,030
Sorry , X, are we really even calling it that?

440
00:39:07,030 --> 00:39:08,290
What the fuck is that?

441
00:39:09,130 --> 00:39:13,270
Tying it back into attacks though, so I can now do this at scale.

442
00:39:13,270 --> 00:39:16,470
Well, what's the most common initial access vector to hack somebody?

443
00:39:17,050 --> 00:39:17,770
Email.

444
00:39:18,570 --> 00:39:22,930
Well, email requires a human to look at things, read a language, and decide to do something.

445
00:39:23,390 --> 00:39:24,790
We've just solved that problem.

446
00:39:24,790 --> 00:39:26,930
That's what AI is doing from a threat perspective.

447
00:39:29,130 --> 00:39:31,510
All right, let's open it up for a couple questions.

448
00:39:31,510 --> 00:39:33,570
I saw a hand go up there.

449
00:39:38,460 --> 00:39:39,640
Oh, louder.

450
00:39:39,640 --> 00:39:40,840
It is loud in here.

451
00:39:41,420 --> 00:39:43,040
All right, let's go here.

452
00:39:43,920 --> 00:39:45,060
All right, thank you.

453
00:39:45,060 --> 00:39:53,560
So I really share your concern about poll workers and trust in the process, because if we don't trust the outcome, it doesn't matter if it's right at the end of the day.

454
00:39:53,760 --> 00:40:02,140
And in Vegas, I'm thinking there's processes here where I don't distrust my dealer or the pit boss or the machine, the slot machine, right?

455
00:40:02,140 --> 00:40:04,480
Somehow I just figure that's worked out, there's a process.

456
00:40:05,040 --> 00:40:16,060
Can we do the same thing for our processes for voting, where the people is like, we have people who are human who may have their own motivations, but we don't care, because it's a secure process with insecure people running it.

457
00:40:16,060 --> 00:40:25,940
Can we get to the point where I feel comfortable volunteering to be a poll worker, because I know there's enough checks and balances and people understand the process is that I don't have to trust you because I know the system works.

458
00:40:26,140 --> 00:40:27,780
Is that an approach?

459
00:40:27,780 --> 00:40:28,780
And maybe I'm just ignorant.

460
00:40:28,780 --> 00:40:30,180
We already have these things, and I know that.

461
00:40:30,180 --> 00:40:34,780
But we've had these video cameras where people are like, look, they're taking boxes under the table or whatever.

462
00:40:34,840 --> 00:40:37,500
Can we fix that part so people can trust that?

463
00:40:38,600 --> 00:40:47,340
I think, so I'll give you my view of this first, and then let the panel chime in.

464
00:40:47,920 --> 00:40:51,680
We can do a lot, technically.

465
00:40:52,300 --> 00:40:55,340
We can do a lot to shore up vulnerabilities in the system.

466
00:40:55,340 --> 00:41:07,480
In fact, as Bryson was talking about earlier, the good work state and local election officials did to roll out more voter verifiable paper audit trails for the 2020 election.

467
00:41:07,480 --> 00:41:17,660
According to the Center for Election Innovation and Research, the 2016 election, it was fewer than 80% of votes cast had a paper ballot associated with it.

468
00:41:17,660 --> 00:41:31,000
By the time we hit 2020, due in part to rolling out or getting rid of some of these DRE systems without the sidecar paper due to the increase in mail-in balloting, it was around 95%.

469
00:41:31,580 --> 00:41:44,180
And I think one thing we can do, again, if we are purely approaching this from a technical perspective, is continue to get as close to 100% as we can, understanding that due to accessibility reasons, we'll always have DREs throughout the ecosystem.

470
00:41:44,880 --> 00:41:56,680
All that said, there are threat actors on the other side that have incentive structures of power, greed, or power, influence, and money that will continue to introduce doubt, despite all available evidence.

471
00:41:56,680 --> 00:41:59,020
And again, this is what we're talking about happening in 2020.

472
00:41:59,160 --> 00:42:21,340
So, yes, we can cram down as much as possible on some of the trust issues associated with elections, but there are always going to be bad actors out there that, for one reason or another, are going to take any little, again, wobble in the system and turn that into some fanciful tale that will continue forever.

473
00:42:21,700 --> 00:42:22,580
Forever.

474
00:42:22,740 --> 00:42:29,880
There always will be, and it's on us, actually, to make sure that we are louder than them.

475
00:42:30,320 --> 00:42:32,980
And that's the main thing, because it's a great question.

476
00:42:32,980 --> 00:42:45,260
What is happening in Poland right now is that both opposition and the government, government that is responsible for the elections on the 15th of October, are saying there are threats for the integrity of the elections.

477
00:42:45,500 --> 00:42:46,500
I mean, come on, right?

478
00:42:46,500 --> 00:42:47,780
But why they are doing it?

479
00:42:47,780 --> 00:42:53,100
Because if they're going to lose, they may say like, you know, what happened in 2020 in the US?

480
00:42:53,100 --> 00:43:06,480
And what happened in 2020 in the US is that before that, as far as I'm concerned, you were rather having like one thing that no matter whether you are Republican or Democrat, you are trusting within the system.

481
00:43:06,480 --> 00:43:08,680
You trust that democracy is working.

482
00:43:09,480 --> 00:43:14,060
And even though those machines are working great, right?

483
00:43:14,060 --> 00:43:18,520
They were checked, they were hacked or tried to hack, and everything is perfect.

484
00:43:19,420 --> 00:43:23,260
The issue is that there is this disinformation threat.

485
00:43:23,260 --> 00:43:34,360
And there's not enough proper information to go to people and tell them it is safe, it's trusted.

486
00:43:34,420 --> 00:43:45,220
And it's not that something that we should just like, you know, do a big elaborate, but rather make a simple communication campaign on making sure and showing that it's trustful.

487
00:43:45,500 --> 00:43:54,900
Just to build on this real quick, one thing that I think we can do is, from your point of stratcom, strategic communications, increase transparency into the process.

488
00:43:54,900 --> 00:44:09,140
So some of the stuff that Stephen Richard's been doing in Maricopa County, and I know some of the guys here, of opening up the process to the outside, to come view it, to track it, to provide transparency on the process.

489
00:44:09,740 --> 00:44:12,600
Take away the opportunities for everyone else.

490
00:44:12,600 --> 00:44:14,240
Set the narrative and you go drive that.

491
00:44:14,580 --> 00:44:14,800
All right.

492
00:44:14,800 --> 00:44:18,160
Yeah, so I would, you know, it's a great point, a great question.

493
00:44:18,260 --> 00:44:19,400
Something to kind of keep in mind.

494
00:44:19,400 --> 00:44:20,780
You guys hear me in the back, by the way?

495
00:44:20,780 --> 00:44:22,440
I'm trying to speak a little louder without being...

496
00:44:23,680 --> 00:44:24,320
I know, right?

497
00:44:24,320 --> 00:44:25,220
Party on the left.

498
00:44:25,220 --> 00:44:25,740
Yeah.

499
00:44:26,540 --> 00:44:27,000
Okay.

500
00:44:27,000 --> 00:44:28,620
So I'm going to try to speak a little louder.

501
00:44:28,740 --> 00:44:39,300
One of the things that I try to remind people is that, you know, I can stick 10 of the most brilliant engineering technical minds in a room and say, how do we fix this problem?

502
00:44:39,300 --> 00:44:39,840
Right?

503
00:44:40,180 --> 00:44:41,580
We've got a lot of that here.

504
00:44:41,780 --> 00:44:43,000
Here's what happens.

505
00:44:43,100 --> 00:44:48,620
There's always some, pardon my French, there's always some asshole lawyer that says, illegal.

506
00:44:48,620 --> 00:44:49,440
Right?

507
00:44:49,440 --> 00:45:04,160
And so part of what we try to work on and try to find our way around is this sort of tethering of protection and freedom with, like, the legal foundry, you know, like, how do we navigate those type of boundaries?

508
00:45:04,160 --> 00:45:04,320
Right?

509
00:45:04,320 --> 00:45:11,120
We have this nasty patchwork privacy system at the state level that makes it really hard.

510
00:45:11,120 --> 00:45:11,700
Right?

511
00:45:11,800 --> 00:45:13,080
Incredibly difficult.

512
00:45:13,080 --> 00:45:23,900
And I think part of that is one of the ways that Germany has actually made it at least a little bit easier because they have taken such a, like, an extreme risk-based approach.

513
00:45:23,900 --> 00:45:34,340
But here in the States, it's really tough to protect some of these institutions and some of these processes because so many of the great things that we would want to do would be super illegal.

514
00:45:34,340 --> 00:45:34,800
Right?

515
00:45:34,800 --> 00:45:44,460
And so at the state level and into at the national level as well, trying to figure out, well, what's the best process we can implement to sort of make that smoother?

516
00:45:44,460 --> 00:45:49,420
And as we've seen, just trying to get federal privacy rights, it's a very long road ahead.

517
00:45:49,900 --> 00:45:50,180
All right.

518
00:45:50,180 --> 00:45:50,840
But it's cool.

519
00:45:50,840 --> 00:45:53,000
Bryson, you get to close this out here.

520
00:45:53,320 --> 00:45:54,440
Go be a poll worker.

521
00:45:54,720 --> 00:45:55,480
Volunteer.

522
00:45:55,480 --> 00:45:56,660
Be a part of the solution.

523
00:45:56,660 --> 00:45:57,680
Be there at the ground.

524
00:45:57,680 --> 00:45:57,900
Right?

525
00:45:57,900 --> 00:46:00,100
A lot of this is high-level stuff.

526
00:46:01,820 --> 00:46:04,580
Go get your hands in it.

527
00:46:04,880 --> 00:46:06,200
See it for yourself.

528
00:46:06,600 --> 00:46:12,700
Then tying that back to government is accountable to you and that's the transparency and the communication they need to be pushing.

529
00:46:12,700 --> 00:46:15,920
Now you're a part of that because you're seeing it at the bottom and you're seeing it at the top.

530
00:46:15,980 --> 00:46:21,760
In 2020, I think we had 93% coverage with the states from the federal level, which we had never had that before.

531
00:46:21,760 --> 00:46:24,880
And that was something nobody even knew we were doing that in that kind of collaboration.

532
00:46:25,140 --> 00:46:29,840
Then the final piece, which was in Matt's presentation, that's why risk-limited auditing is what it is.

533
00:46:29,840 --> 00:46:35,420
We have a data science approach to being able to statistically sample to then be able to show what we learned.

534
00:46:35,420 --> 00:46:41,720
And if there is the potential of fraud or abuse, we can prove it and we can understand the extent of it.

535
00:46:41,720 --> 00:46:46,520
Because just because something is slightly broken doesn't mean the whole system is.

536
00:46:47,200 --> 00:46:48,160
All right, folks.

537
00:46:48,260 --> 00:46:49,440
I think that's it.

538
00:46:49,440 --> 00:46:52,580
I apologize that we don't have more time for questions.

539
00:46:52,580 --> 00:46:56,140
Please send your complaints to whoever decided to name this place Caesars Forum.

540
00:46:57,360 --> 00:46:58,360
Thank you.