00:11:21.780But in the military, we as individuals are not irrelevant, but we only really become significant when we become part of a larger formation.
00:11:30.660And that requires a whole different mindset.
00:11:55.220And we have a leadership that has become, I think, arrogant insofar as its ability to dominate weak opponents without armies, without air forces, without air defenses.
00:12:06.920And they've forgotten that real war consists of serious professional combat soldiers.
00:12:14.640So, you know, at least in that sense, perhaps we're getting a wake-up call.
00:12:19.380But we ought to also ask where all the trillions of dollars that we've been spending on defense have been going.
00:12:25.120Because we're clearly in no position right now to take on a force like the Russian army.
00:12:29.060It's, to me, it's just staggering when I hear Vladimir Putin threaten us with hypersonic missiles.
00:12:39.160When we had hypersonic missiles, we were with, along with, by the way, the Russians, and I think you know this, the developers, the inventors of hypersonic missiles.
00:12:50.060Going back into the late 80s and 90s, we had them, DARPA had them on the grid ready to go.
00:12:57.640Ready to go in the sense of move them to manufacture and to ultimately deployment.
00:14:29.840Certainly, our positions, when Reagan and Gorbachev were alive in the 1980s, were infinitely further apart than they are today with this Russia.
00:14:40.700And that's the biggest problem I think we've got with it.
00:14:42.960We don't understand that this Russia has far more in common with czarist Russia, which was religious, orthodox Christian, and culturally sensitive to its Russian national identity.
00:14:59.160There's so many similarities between, frankly, Putin's behavior and the behavior of several czars.
00:15:30.400If I tried to use a nuclear weapon in this area, whatever happened to Riga, to Latvia, to Lithuania, Estonia, would happen to the people on the other side of the border in Russia.
00:15:40.740In other words, when you start using nuclear weapons, there's nothing clean or precise about them.
00:15:46.220By the way, the prevailing winds blow west to east.
00:15:49.720So the fallout goes in the direction of Russia.
00:15:53.120Bottom line is we're not going to nuke each other.
00:16:27.220Who was the chief subversive in that group, would you say?
00:16:31.160Oh, I think Pompeo, along with the series of Bolton and his predecessor McMaster.
00:16:37.480All of these people were incurably hostile to the notion that we could have any relationship with Russia other than a hostile relationship.
00:16:46.380And I know that the president's view was, look, we may never be friends, but there's no reason for us to be enemies.
00:16:51.440We share a number of interests, and that's where we need to begin to work.
00:16:56.900And to pretend that Russia, that there is some great divide between Russia and Europe, I think, is a mistake as well.
00:17:06.240Because culturally, there is greater similarity than, well, there's enough of a bridge there that we should have chosen it.
00:17:14.800And I was among those who were selected by members of the first Bush administration to go into Moscow and to, as the Treasury Secretary and others were going through Goss Bank to look at what is happening as the Soviet Union was collapsing.
00:17:35.600And the great promise was that we would have trade with Russia, that we would, I'm talking about the younger generation of Russians.
00:17:45.920You know, they had great hopes for bringing, coming closer to the United States.
00:17:53.280And administration after administration stepped away from that trade and that investment in Russia and bringing the two countries closer.
00:18:02.560And instead moved toward Beijing, for crying out loud, with some sort of silly idea that we could convert them to market capitalism and democracy.
00:18:17.120The madness of it all in policy terms is overwhelming over the course of 30 years.
00:18:28.360I know when I was still on active duty and at the Supreme Headquarters of Light Powers Europe working for West Clark, that at that point, we were trying very hard to work with the Russians.
00:18:39.520And it wasn't easy for them, frankly, because we were meddling in the Balkans.
00:18:44.220And that part of the world was very important to them.
00:18:46.780They liberated the Bulgarians, Romanians, and others from the Turks.
00:18:50.040So they had a permanent interest in the populations there.
00:18:54.280They were Orthodox Christians, Serbs, Bolivars, and so forth.
00:20:24.800What, Colonel, do you see as a result?
00:20:28.000I know we're in early days, or in point of fact, early day of this invasion and all that is to follow.
00:20:35.700But what do you see as the likely plan of Putin, the likely response of the West, and particularly the United States and President Biden?
00:20:45.140Well, I think we know Putin's plan, which is first and foremost seize eastern Ukraine and the southern region that reaches out to Odessa and incorporate that as Russia, which makes sense historically.
00:21:01.760And he's argued that before, as his predecessors did.
00:21:29.900The place is an agricultural powerhouse, has some of the richest soil in the world, and left to its own devices could be extraordinarily productive.
00:21:40.220But on the Western side, I think you're going to watch this thing called the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and ultimately the EU all fall apart.
00:21:48.920What I find entertaining is the notion that somehow or another this is forcing cohesion on NATO.
00:21:55.200The Germans have made it very clear they will not support excluding Russia from the SWIFT system.
00:22:00.680They're not going to throw the Russians out of the international financial system.
00:22:04.260They want to do business with the Russians.
00:22:25.820But the Hungarians, the Czechs, the Dutch, Belgians, and others who are not in NATO, like the Austrians, they all will purchase that gas from Russia.
00:22:38.220And they do not feel threatened by the Russians.
00:22:40.480They don't feel that there's an imminent invasion.
00:23:11.260I think we're going to wake up, and it's going to be gone.
00:23:14.720Well, this idea that Ukraine would be partitioned, that it would be divided West and East, I don't think that there would be, obviously, a great excitement about that on the part of the Ukrainian government.
00:23:31.000But, as you say, I think that that would be, possibly, for Europe, a reasonable outcome, because they're really going to have to contend with some issues that has nothing to do with the United States, when we're honest, I think, and straightforward about it.
00:23:53.280But it has to be resolved in such a way that everyone can acknowledge they did their best, did the right thing with human life and dignity at the forefront.
00:24:08.160And our real role in all of this from day one should have been as an honest broker between the two, not as a sponsor of hostility and hatred towards Russia.
00:24:17.220And that's been a terrible mistake on our part.
00:24:20.640And I'm afraid the Ukrainians are paying the price for it.
00:25:20.820But, you know, that that is also the view of, as you know, the global globalist elites.
00:25:25.800They want a different future for the world than the world wants for itself.
00:25:30.580You know, he's he is now playing their tune, which is no borders, no rule of law, no restrictions, nothing, which threatens our society and threatens Western Europe.
00:25:42.400And, of course, remember, that's a particular tune that Putin has been absolutely unwilling to play.
00:25:50.260He's not going to throw open his borders and allow billions of people from the Middle East and Africa and South Asia or anywhere else march into his country.
00:25:59.180And the people in Eastern Europe don't want it.
00:26:01.500But in Western Europe, they've already done it.
00:26:03.420They're paying a heavy price for it in terms of criminality and costs associated with welfare funding.
00:26:09.280So, you know, I just don't expect anything to happen with Biden other than he'll stand up there and repeat these rather insane views about what the United States should be and what the rest of the world is supposed to be.
00:26:22.940And if you don't agree with him, well, then you're a racist, a bigot, you know, whatever.
00:26:31.680The contest for the United States culturally and societally is to either become the world or let the world try to become us as we move forward as the greatest constitutional republic in history, the greatest capitalist economy.
00:26:52.440Meanwhile, our greatest enemy is stage left, and that is China.
00:26:58.660The PLA has to be amused as we are trying to contend with this.
00:27:05.900The CCP is laughing all the while and meanwhile going through and taking inventory of everything they've stolen from us for years and the money that we have thrown at them to allow us to be indolent, to lose our spirit of ingenuity and industry.
00:27:23.880Well, Lou, as you know, Lou, we didn't make it hard for them.
00:27:31.580I watched you for so many years talk about the elites in this country, sell us out, you know, export our manufacturing base overseas and so forth.
00:27:42.460The Chinese, the greatest weapon the Chinese have at their disposal is money.
00:27:46.020And the thing that drives far too much in Washington and too much of our society is greed.
00:28:55.060We have reports that Ukraine's President Zelensky has been moved to the safety of a bunker, perhaps in Kiev, but his location is not known.
00:29:04.800President Zelensky late yesterday said that Ukraine had suffered 137 military and civilian casualties.
00:29:12.740Russian spokesmen say their military achieved all their goals on day one, including the capture of the Chernobyl nuclear plant site.
00:29:21.980And now we turn to a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Congressman Greg Stubbe.
00:29:27.540He is also a member of the Judiciary Committee, an Army veteran who served as an airborne infantry and judge advocate general division officer.
00:29:37.100Congressman Stubbe is critical of the conduct and the judgment of the Biden White House in dealing with Russia and Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
00:29:50.180To begin, your reaction to the Russian invasion.
00:29:54.600Well, we all knew, especially in Congress, those of us that were paying attention to what was going on, that this was inevitably going to happen because of the weakness that we currently have in the White House.
00:30:03.340Putin had been telegraphing his positions.
00:30:05.780Troops were slowly, you know, coming across and gathering at the border.
00:30:10.680So we all knew at some point the actual invasion would occur.
00:30:13.780And you have to go back in time to reason why he's doing what he's doing, and that's Putin.
00:30:22.860When you see the leader of the free world basically give up to the Taliban, leave $80 billion worth of military equipment, as you and I are still talking, there are still Americans that are left in Afghanistan.
00:30:33.840And this government, our government, the White House is not doing anything to get them out.
00:30:38.320So the pretext is they now know how this White House, this Department of Defense and our leadership is going to react to foreign aggression, going to react to things across the world.
00:30:50.180And then Biden decides to repeal Trump-era sanctions on the Nord Stream 2, which opened up billions of dollars straight to the Kremlin for Moscow to be able to fund a lot of the things that he wanted to do.
00:31:03.900So they knew that there was weakness in the White House.
00:31:06.880When Trump was president, we had strength and power in our stances, and you would never see anything happen like this if Trump was still the president.
00:31:16.000But because of the things that have happened and the decisions that this White House has made, of course, they know that Russia knows that they're going to be able to get away with what they're doing.
00:31:25.520And it's a very sad day for the citizens of Ukraine who are sitting by and helplessly watching the Russians invade while all of the NATO, all of the allies, all of Europe, all of the United States that can actually do something about it aren't doing anything to help them.
00:31:42.020And even the rhetoric emanating from all of those sources you just mentioned is not particularly clever, crafted, or in any way sincere, do you think?
00:31:54.920Well, and listen carefully to what Biden said today.
00:31:58.900We will do everything within the power of the United States to protect our NATO allies.
00:32:03.360Well, Ukraine is not in NATO, which is one of the big things that Russia wanted to prevent from happening.
00:32:09.940So, of course, we'll stand with our NATO allies, which is completely not doing anything to help the Ukrainians.
00:32:16.580And now we're going to put in sanctions that the Biden administration repealed a year ago.
00:32:23.220When Biden first got elected, he repealed the Trump-era sanctions on Nord Stream 2.
00:32:27.060And now you're putting them in place again?
00:32:29.340As soon as Putin started putting troops on the border of Ukraine, if you wanted to send a message to him, that's when the time was to put economic sanctions on the Russian regime.
00:32:41.080And he didn't. And he's waiting for them to react. And at this point, Putin has already made deals with the Chinese.
00:32:47.640You know that any economic sanctions that are coming from the United States or other European allies, he's going to be buffered economically from the Chinese Communist Party.
00:32:57.000And he knows that. And he knows that the White House isn't going to do anything to stop him militarily.
00:33:01.540So why wouldn't he invade an area that they believe is part of Russia?
00:33:05.720You're exactly right. And these sanctions that the president is applying with stern face and stern rhetoric,
00:33:16.720the effect of which will be to enrich Russia, which has approximately half of its exports, as much as 60 percent now with the United States importing their oil.
00:33:33.080We're talking about 60 percent of their exports of crude oil.
00:33:36.260And therefore, he's going to be a beneficiary of the very markets that have just surged as a result of his invasion of Ukraine.
00:33:44.640This is mindlessness on the part of the administration.
00:33:48.640And the cable news networks, I think, are awakening to this, but not yet to the point that they can actually say that out loud.
00:33:57.540But it's true. Of course, of course, of course, they won't do that.
00:34:01.940And of course, mainstream media won't talk about the failures that this administration is doing.
00:34:07.060And all in order to buffer this, what you're seeing in, say, oil prices, all that Biden would have to do is reinstitute our own domestic production of oil that he shut down on day one, all of which he could do today.
00:34:22.220But he's not going to do that, which would buffer what's happening in Russia.
00:34:26.120And you would actually see prices decrease in the United States.
00:34:29.240But they don't have any intention on doing that.
00:34:31.120I thought something that was interesting was something that John Kerry said was, well, I hope that Putin still plans to abide by his, you know, his climate goals.
00:34:39.780So this administration and the people in it are more concerned about their climate agenda than the lives of the Ukrainian people.
00:34:47.560A lot of people are very nervous about having troops being moved around by this particular commander in chief, who is not he's not demonstrated any talent for leadership.
00:34:59.780And certainly his military leadership would be highly questionable.
00:35:08.740And the powers of Congress, as it's related to the military over the years, has been drastically eroded over.
00:35:16.560And it's been Republican and Democrat that have eroded the power of Congress to declare war, to control the purse strings as to where our military service members go.
00:35:24.620And there's been a group of members that have told the White House that they need to come to Congress to get a vote to support deployment of troops to Europe.
00:35:54.940And if we don't want troops to be in Poland, Congress should be making that determination and not allow any funding whatsoever to come from Congress that would allow for the troops to be deployed in Poland.
00:36:06.040Yeah, for the life of me, Congressman, I do not understand why this president keeps trying to get in front of Europe and NATO on the issue of the invasion.
00:36:19.380He has no basic concept or understanding, it appears, of the motivations of Vladimir Putin and the historical imperative that drives their interest, the Russians' interest, in Ukraine and surrounding Eastern European countries.
00:36:36.360Yeah, and all that world leaders have to look to is the way that they handled Afghanistan.
00:36:44.320And if that is how this administration and this Department of Defense, who, quite frankly, is more concerned about transgender rights in the military, vaccine mandates and wokeism and all of these things, equality in our military, instead of the safety and the security of the American people, which should be the focus of our military, instead of those things, all our other world leaders have to do is look at how Afghanistan was handled and know that Biden is not going to do anything as it relates to Russia.
00:37:13.080And our Chinese adversaries, the Chinese Communist Party is watching this, and I'm sure that they're eyeing up Taiwan as all of this is going on, the Iranians are watching all of this as all of this is going on, and making their own decisions for the betterment of the decisions that they want to make, knowing that we have a White House that is weak, that's not going to make strong decisions, and not going to take military action when necessary.
00:37:39.920And it's no accident that Xi Jinping today sent eight fighter jets and a reconnaissance aircraft into the air defense zone of Taiwan.
00:37:52.880He was sending a message loud and clear, and these messages are being sent to a president who, to this point, seems absolutely tone deaf on what are both lines of demarcation on the part of the two most powerful despots in the world, and a serious warning to the United States.
00:38:14.260Yeah, and that's going to increase, and this hasn't been widely reported, but there's been over 180 military sorties of Chinese aircraft into Taiwanian airspace.
00:38:25.040And what they're doing is they're probing and prodding to see what the Americans are going to do.
00:38:30.740And as you have seen, the Biden administration isn't going to do anything, and we have agreements to support Taiwan as it relates to any incursion of the Chinese Communist Party.
00:38:41.100And I think you're going to see Japan and Australia and some of these other countries realize that America and this White House and this Department of Defense aren't going to hold up to the agreements that they've had with some of these other countries.
00:38:52.580They're going to look at things like that happened in Ukraine, that happened in Afghanistan, and know that if Chinese Communist Party invades Taiwan, there's nothing that this White House is going to do to stop them.
00:39:02.840And the Budapest memorandum in 1994 is a clear obligation on the part of the United States that was given in exchange for Ukrainian nuclear weapons that requires us to provide for their security.
00:39:21.020And we've ignored it as well as dishonored it.
00:39:27.400Well, that's an excellent point to make that I think a lot of people today don't realize that that agreement was in place.
00:39:34.900And if the Ukrainian government wouldn't have entered into that agreement with the United States, they right now would have nuclear power to be able to defend themselves.
00:39:42.680And Putin never would have stepped on the ground knowing that he would have gotten into a nuclear war with a neighboring country.
00:39:48.580And the fact that he, his troops have now taken possession of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and environmental disaster that it is, that is a very stark warning to all of the Western countries, including the United States.
00:40:08.080It's not an accident that he is now in charge of that.
00:40:12.520That is a looming threat should anyone decide to take on Russia.
00:40:21.840And all of Europe is going to stand by and watch Putin do this.
00:40:27.140And Ukraine is only going to be the beginning of all of the area that once he takes Ukraine, he's going to move on to the next area, like Belarus or some of these other areas,
00:40:35.200where he feels like he can, he can take over and watch NATO and the UN and all these other European countries, just stand back and let them do it.
00:40:43.140As we're wrapping up here, Congressman, your thoughts on what the future holds, what is the, what are the, the next developments?
00:40:53.140Well, unfortunately we, we have to pray for the American or the Ukrainian people and hope that there are, there are Americans there.
00:40:59.860Hopefully our government won't leave the Americans that we had in Afghanistan behind and we'll go in and get the, the American citizens that we have in Ukraine out while all of this is going on.
00:41:10.680But given what this administration has done in Afghanistan, I don't have a lot of hope and comfort that that's going to happen.
00:41:15.920I saw an article just before this, that there's, there's not for profits and, and other organizations trying to go in and do missions to get our citizens out.
00:41:24.340So I think that's what you're going to see start to unfold because this administration is unwilling to do the things to protect American citizens caught in, in foreign lands that are in the middle of, of wartime.
00:41:34.960And I don't think this is the end we're going to see from Putin.
00:41:37.160And it's just the beginning of what now the Chinese Communist Party is going to do and what the Iranians are likely going to do.
00:42:45.060There's no – they can't communicate with us.
00:42:46.920So that's part of a – while that's not as technical as some of the other stuff, it is very much part of a psychological operations to start instilling fear in the public, to creating panic.
00:42:57.800And then what they do is they're follow-on attacks, just like you have follow-on attacks with terrorists and other stuff.
00:43:02.440You've got the follow-on cyber attacks, which now the reporting is coming out.
00:43:06.320We've got now new sophisticated malware that is wiping the hard drives of devices.
00:43:17.500This is the unseen war that's going on right now.
00:43:19.820The DDoS attacks, the denial of service are the visible part.
00:43:23.000It's now the invisible part that's really going to wreak havoc on the ability to do command, control, and communicate for Ukraine right now.
00:43:29.380And nothing is more important right now to the survival of the Zelensky government, that is Ukraine itself, than his ability, I would think, to communicate with whatever forces form the insurgency, the counter to Russian troops as they penetrate deeper into Ukraine and into the hearts of many of these cities.
00:43:56.160That's why in command and control, the first thing you go after is their ability to communicate and operate.
00:44:01.400If you can't do that, you can't affect, like you say, how can you get the message out?
00:44:15.180So this is very much, I mean, they're applying the same doctrine of warfare, which is take out command and control, the physical sites, but also take out the virtual sites, the ability to put things up on a web page.
00:44:25.620And by the way, the other thing, Lou, I'd be very, very careful of, they did this in 2008 when they bombed Georgia.
00:44:30.820They rerouted internet traffic out of Georgia to fake web pages.
00:44:35.580That's where some of the original fake news really came from, was from the Russian operation in Georgia.
00:44:40.560And now, so you have to be very careful.
00:44:42.340Even if the pages come back up, we know that they've been building these cloned web pages of government sites that they're loading up with malware.
00:44:49.600So if you go to them, you know, this is all part of the next phase of this, which is you think it's a legitimate site.
00:44:55.440You're so craving information, you're willing to click on links, and these links are loaded with malware.
00:44:59.900So people even have to be very careful about the links they're clicking on and what pages are up there.
00:45:05.080And are these the real legitimate pages of the Ukrainian government?
00:45:08.080And that should be a clear clarion warning to everyone listening to us that do not fall into that trap and pursue into the dark on the web information.
00:45:41.480But I'll take any differentiating characteristic I can between Putin and myself.
00:45:49.820Can you judge at this point how effective the Russians have been in what you're referring to as the silent war,
00:45:57.480or the—and, of course, the visible war that is meant to intimidate and to terrorize and cut communications?
00:46:07.440I think they've been fairly effective.
00:46:09.840You know, I don't think they're being as effective as what Putin had hoped they would be.
00:46:13.620And there's one reason for it, or a couple reasons, I think.
00:46:16.360But one of them is, while Ukraine was not allowed to join NATO, they were also not allowed to join the NATO, basically, Cybersecurity Center of Excellence, the Defense Center,
00:46:28.160which is actually headquartered in Estonia, which Russia attacked a few years back, took the entire country offline, and they responded.
00:46:34.880They say, we're going to get good at this.
00:46:36.140So I think they're getting some tactics and some tools, you know, and technology from this Cyber Defense Center over in Estonia, the NATO Cyber Defense Center, which is helping them respond to this.
00:46:47.900So I don't think Vlad is going to have the cakewalk he thought he was going to have, whether it's militarily or virtually, you know, digitally right now.
00:46:56.480But make no mistake, they're good at what they do.
00:47:00.200In fact, some of the stuff we're seeing out there, where they're using domains of these companies to register these digital certificates, so you think it's the real stuff, you think it's the real software.
00:47:10.200Some of these things were registered months ago, which tells you about the foresight on the planning, how long back some of this planning to invade was going on, because they led with cyber warfare.
00:47:19.800So to do that, they had to get their cyber tools in place, and to do that, they had to start registering these domains several months ago.
00:47:26.600So, and correct me if I'm wrong, but Estonia, a part of Eastern Europe, obviously, and northernmost in that part of Europe, the Baltics, it is very sophisticated and very advanced in its technology, its infrastructure, its connectivity in all respects.
00:47:51.980They wanted, they got religion, Lou, after this attack by Russia, they got religion, and they became, I would say, they are punching way above their weight for a country their size.
00:48:02.060And that's one reason, I mean, the proof's in the pudding.
00:48:04.700That's one reason why NATO located that center there, is because Estonia gets it, and they are, they, you know, it's kind of like never again, not on our watch.
00:48:12.820They're not going to let that happen again.
00:48:14.020And that's why I think there's a lot of good stuff coming out of Estonia, simply because they were getting picked on by Russia, and they decided, you know what, we're going to fight back in the way that we can, and they've done it digitally.
00:48:24.580Yeah, and Estonia has a population, I think, of less than a few million people.
00:48:29.340I mean, it's not exactly a populous urban center.
00:48:38.560If I had known you were going to bring it up, I would have.
00:48:42.280The fact of the matter is, that's encouraging, because all of Eastern Europe is now threatened by the presence of Russian troops who've invaded Ukraine.
00:48:57.460I cannot, for the life of me, understand, at this juncture, why NATO, why the European Union has been so muted in its response.
00:49:10.440And I do, like everyone else now, have great concerns for their ability to defend themselves and to understand Putin's ultimate goals,
00:49:21.880which look to me to have, if I may put it this way, no borders in front of them.
00:49:28.580I think he yearns for the days of the Soviet Union and all their satellite states where they had, they were, they were between us and them, we were the only world powers, global superpowers.
00:49:38.960So, but, you know, but they have, it takes time to do that, right?
00:49:42.440So a lot of the territory they lost, they have to go back after it.
00:49:45.500And one of the ways they do that is with these new tools that have been developed, you know, over the last 20 years, you know, 30 years in cyberspace.
00:49:53.300And that's why, Lou, cyberspace now is the fifth domain of warfare.
00:49:56.300You've got sea, air, land, space, and cyberspace.
00:57:29.420You did have a certain peaceful time when Trump was the president because the number of rockets coming out of North Korea.
00:57:38.380There were no military movements by Putin.
00:57:41.780But again, it goes back to we have to look at it through his eyes.
00:57:45.800Why was he not doing anything based on the way Vladimir looks through it?
00:57:50.300And I think part of it was, too, was the intangible that they thought about, you know, Al Qaeda and some of the other people and thought about George Bush is that he was a wild card like Ronald Reagan.
00:58:00.240You know, I think Trump was a wild card.
00:58:01.880They couldn't figure him out like Patton in World War Two.
00:58:04.260That's what made him so dangerous is that there was no pattern.
00:58:06.980But we have to look at it through the way our adversaries see the problem.
00:58:10.680And I think that will serve us better than this.
00:58:13.620Well, I'm worried about what Xi Jinping, you know, I'm worried about what we say, like, well, it's a special military operation.
00:58:37.840When you blow up capitals, when you blow up radar stations, when you shoot and kill people and their military people and your tanks and equipment and people have crossed the border.
00:58:47.560I don't think it was called a special military operation when Hitler crossed the border into Poland and started World War Two.
00:58:56.840And this is called an invasion on the Great America Show without reservation and hesitation.
00:59:06.200But I am, as I say, I'm very concerned when I hear networks suddenly adjust their language.
00:59:11.800And I am concerned when I see a president who is is obviously physically weakened and perhaps mentally as well and not surrounded by the most experienced national security people
00:59:25.560that have ever inhabited that role in the White House.
00:59:31.160Now, and that brings up the next real issue here.
00:59:35.640How concerned should Americans be about our own networks, our own systems, our own servers, our own cyber universe?
00:59:47.960You should operate under the assumption that you are going to be attacked and you're going to be attacked by Russia and they're going to use all of their tradecraft and tools and malware in order to do this.
01:00:00.100So, but we should have been operating like that.
01:00:03.260There's not, you know, I get these requests, Lou, a lot, especially with this going on.
01:00:06.820And they're saying, well, what should businesses do?
01:00:08.760I said, it's not what you, it's whatever you should be doing is what you should have already done six months ago.
01:00:13.680You shouldn't be waiting for a threat and decide, ah, you know, I'm going to put, well, I mean, I'm going to wait till my neighborhood's on fire before I decide to put sprinklers, you know, in my house.
01:00:22.980No, you know, before I put a smoke alarm in.
01:00:25.540You cannot build a commercial building without having the fire suppression system already built in because they're not going to wait for the problem and then react to it.
01:00:32.880So I just, you know, these folks, it's one of those things is that you should always assume you're going to be attacked.
01:00:39.480Because you don't have to be in the country to do it.
01:00:41.160Putin does not have to airdrop a platoon of Spetsnaz special forces into the middle of Times Square for us to think, hey, we're under attack.
01:00:49.520He's doing it from the safety and security of Russia and doing it in ways that is like low intensity conflict.
01:00:56.380You know, it's enough below the radar to where we don't trigger a massive response.
01:01:00.340But make no mistake, this, this, people should be, you shouldn't go out and panic in the street and don't run around.
01:01:07.820Look, folks, we're not storming the beaches at Normandy here.
01:01:10.020You know, everybody can take a breath.
01:01:39.260Refresh that in people's mind, but to go out and say, well, let's buy a whole new set of software and install this because we really need to be prepared for an attack.
01:01:56.320I do want to go back to one thing you said.
01:01:58.840I do think it matters greatly who we have in the White House, and I do believe there is a huge difference in the perceptions and the response of Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin.
01:02:11.020I cannot imagine either of them doing as they have done.
01:02:15.120First of all, Donald Trump would not have driven them together to create a strategic security alliance as they did at the beginning of this month.
01:02:24.760He also would have made very sure that there was going to be a response, whether the military liked it or not.
01:02:32.060He would have demanded a response in this.
01:02:35.380I don't know what that response would be.
01:02:39.000But we do know that I really believe this, and I want to get your comment and then we'll drop this, but I really do think that that's a really critical issue is who we have as our commander in chief, who we have as our president.
01:04:09.080And that's kind of to our detriment, but that's why when you have a president like Trump who is to them as a wild card, they adjust their actions accordingly.
01:04:18.500When you have somebody like Biden, then they adjust their actions accordingly to that.
01:04:22.680I mean, they care, but they don't care.
01:04:24.620But to your point, as an American, I care who's in the White House.
01:04:33.040I care what happens to the safety and security of the United States.
01:04:36.340So to me, it matters to them not so much because they will just do, A, if it's a Republican, and B, if it's a Democrat.
01:04:43.000But at the end of the day, make no mistake, the end game, the ultimate goal is the same.
01:04:47.540How they get there will differ based upon who's in the White House.
01:04:50.300And if we can get the type of leadership that sets out clear markers that prevents them from obtaining these technologies or getting this revenue or things like that, you can now have a long-term effect on their plans to where it interferes with what they thought they were going to do.
01:05:06.600Because they hope that we do something every two years or four years, depending on who controls Congress, depends on what kind of laws get passed, depends on how the military is funded, depends on what kind of things we look into.
01:05:36.400It's going to be interesting to see how patient Europe, NATO, and the United States are.
01:05:43.800Because now it's clear, just as today, in the midst of all of this, President Xi sent aircraft, eight fighters into, eight or nine fighters into Taiwanese airspace.
01:06:03.220And I want to get your sense about which of these is the more accomplished in cyber warfare, either China or Russia, and how powerful are they in combination?
01:06:19.020And does sheer mass matter in cyber warfare?
01:06:22.020And when I talk about mass, I'm talking about what is a strategic combination of China and Russia.
01:06:29.740Yeah, you know, China has the numbers, but they don't have the techniques and the tactics that Russia does.
01:06:35.960Russia has been a long-term strategic player in this space.
01:06:39.820And while China, I mean, don't get me wrong, they're both our tier one adversaries.
01:06:46.600They both are the top of the food chain.
01:06:48.220But Russia, there's all sorts of research out there, and it shows Russian tactics versus Chinese tactics.
01:06:54.620When Russia gets into a network, in less than 10 minutes, they're able to take the next step and the next move inside that network.
01:07:00.300It might take China two hours to three hours to do that.
01:07:02.900So just from a tactic standpoint and a tradecraft standpoint and a skill standpoint, Russia is still, I think, head and shoulders above China.
01:07:11.020But China has the ability to control the supply chain, to put 25,000 people onto something where we don't – we couldn't put 25,000 people onto cyber warfare.
01:08:08.020And another example of it, a positive one, is Estonia, how capable they are, correct?
01:08:14.520And that's why NATO located that cyber center of defense – center of excellence there for cyber defense in Estonia because Estonia, like I said earlier, punches well above their weight.
01:08:28.080They are very good at what they do, and they've learned their lessons.
01:08:54.300And you know that once this conflict moves to urban warfare, the Ukrainians should at least be able to be significantly more successful in opposing the superior Russian forces.
01:09:15.160Do they have the capacity to both defend themselves and attack Russia, or would that be unthinkable?
01:09:21.560I don't think they're going to attack Russia, and I think they – if it were just in and of themselves, no, they don't have the capacity because they haven't really geared up for that.
01:09:33.060But the fortunate thing is they have become our proxy.
01:09:38.280This is, in a sense, Afghanistan all over again.
01:09:41.000I hate to think of it that way, the Mujahideen, and they were a useful tool for them to be a proxy against Russia.
01:09:47.980But Ukraine is, in a sense, a proxy to Russia.
01:09:50.500We can give them stuff that they otherwise would not have and inflict the types of damage onto Russia that if we had did it directly, they would – Putin would probably consider it an act of war, a very hostile action.
01:10:02.740So I think he's trying to walk the line between invoking Article 5, especially in cyberspace.
01:10:08.680But he's walking a very fine line because he's saying that if you deploy these sanctions, I will visit stuff on you you have never thought about before.
01:10:20.180He's saying, I am responsible for this.
01:10:22.060Well, if that happens to a NATO country, does that invoke Article 5 of the NATO doctrine, and will they respond militarily in some fashion?
01:10:31.380I don't think it would be kinetic, but I think they would amp up what they're doing from a cyber standpoint, and you would get the 30-member NATO countries.
01:10:40.740Maybe you'd get all of this other capacity.
01:10:42.860I think he's got to be careful of the fights he picks right now, especially in cyberspace, because we can poke a hole in this myth of invulnerability.
01:11:08.300There's a difference in the freedom of the press, right?
01:11:10.320So there is a huge difference in what gets reported in Russia, but make no mistake, if we want to take down their grid, everybody's concerned about them taking down ours.
01:11:25.520There has to be a penalty, and it has to be – it just can't be proportionate.
01:11:29.760It has to be use of force, which means I go one level above what you did, and I make you hurt because I want to extract the price out of you that says if you do it again,
01:11:38.040we will then visit something even worse upon you than what you did to us.
01:11:41.560They need to understand at some point when you swing your fist, or like I think Tom Clancy said, if you kick a tiger in the ass, you better have a plan for its claws.
01:11:53.420And Putin has kicked NATO and Europe in the butt, and it's to be seen what other butts may be in the line of his foot.
01:12:09.340I'm very worried about his ultimate goals here, and I think all of Europe should be.
01:12:14.480But it's very difficult to discern exactly the next steps, and we'll be, like everyone else in the world, watching it carefully.
01:12:23.360Let me ask you as we conclude here, what do you see next in this – do we have the capacity to actually witness this war up close through the Internet,
01:12:35.620through the web, through the devices in Ukraine?
01:12:40.420Yeah, I think that there are a lot of things being reported out where they're looking at, are networks up, are they down?
01:12:50.120You've got computers that are detecting malware that are sending it back to be analyzed,
01:12:55.400and that's how we're finding out a lot of the stuff that's going on, some of these tools that are being used.
01:12:59.780So I think we're getting kind of a peripheral look at what's going on, what's really going on underneath.
01:13:07.840I don't know that we'll see that for a while.
01:13:10.000It's kind of like when the Stuxnet hit the Iran centrifuges and flame virus.
01:13:16.000It took a lot of time before Operation Olympic Games became known.
01:13:20.220I mean, it will still take months and years to fully understand what they were doing.
01:13:24.140But I think we'll get it – because there's more connectivity and more openness and because people want to know,
01:13:29.720I think as we start to see things happen, I think hopefully the Biden administration,
01:13:35.200the way they declassified some of this intelligence on the false flag and the invasion stuff,
01:13:39.260we should declassify and let people know so that they understand that Russia is paying a price.
01:13:44.200Because if I don't see anything happening to Russia, especially in the cyber realm,
01:13:48.460then my assumption is we're doing nothing.
01:13:51.300And you're going, well, we can't tell you we're doing stuff.
01:13:53.420I think in this case we have to tell them something.
01:13:55.760We've got to tell people something is that here's what we did.