Broad Perspectives with Ellen Nakashima and Dmitri Alperovitch

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Frank Cilluffo: Welcome to Cyber Focus from the McCrary Institute, where we explore the people and ideas
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Frank Cilluffo: that shape and protect our digital world. I'm your host, Frank Cilluffo. Welcome to today's
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Frank Cilluffo: episode. Thrilled to include two luminaries in the cyber field. We're changing the format a
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Frank Cilluffo: little bit here. Firstly welcoming Ellen Nakashima, who I can tell you when she calls,
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Frank Cilluffo: people hold their breath and for good reason because she's broken so many stories and,
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Frank Cilluffo: and has also covered so many stories that are instrumental to our national security field.
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Frank Cilluffo: Ellen is at the Washington Post and has been writing on cyber and much more
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Frank Cilluffo: for a number of years. And then Dmitri Alperovitch, who everyone knows in the cyber
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Frank Cilluffo: field, he is the founder of CrowdStrike. I think you IPO'd what, four or five
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Frank Cilluffo: years ago and has been a prominent voice on cyber issues and I think a
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Frank Cilluffo: very important and sobering voice. Really thrilled to have you both here. This is a
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Frank Cilluffo: little bit of a different format than we've had in the past, but you both
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Frank Cilluffo: cut your teeth in the cyber field, but you both also expanded your horizons quite
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Frank Cilluffo: dramatically and I think have a healthy dose of skepticism around some of the assumptions,
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Frank Cilluffo: assumptions that the cyber field more or less has. And I'd like to start with
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Frank Cilluffo: that and sort of get your initial thoughts. So. Dimitri Allen. Well, Frank, thanks for
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Ellen Nakashima: having us on here. And you're right, it's a pleasure to be on with Dimitri,
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Ellen Nakashima: with whom I feel I came up in the field, although those many years ago,
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Ellen Nakashima: we're not. That old, five years. But I think when you say skepticism, yes, it's
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Ellen Nakashima: also just a sense of wanting to put things into perspective. I think when I
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Ellen Nakashima: first started, for instance, there was a sense amongst the practitioners that there wasn't enough
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Ellen Nakashima: awareness in the general public, much less in the government and the general public about
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Ellen Nakashima: the threats and the potential harm that could come from not paying enough attention to
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Ellen Nakashima: cyber defense, cybersecurity. And so there was this sense that we need to get more
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Ellen Nakashima: people aware, make the C suite, the executives in companies more aware to the threats
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Ellen Nakashima: in their systems because after all so much of the critical systems attack surface are
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Ellen Nakashima: in the private sector. And then maybe over time there was a little bit of
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Ellen Nakashima: an overcorrection to getting people aware. So there was somewhat of sometimes a tendency, I
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Ellen Nakashima: think among some in the policy world, the government in the effort to try to
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Ellen Nakashima: get people to pay attention. They might hyped the language they used a little bit.
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Ellen Nakashima: And so I remember my mother in law would always, when I had A story
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Ellen Nakashima: about cyber incident or a cyber threat. She would say, oh, Ellen, do I have
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Ellen Nakashima: to worry? And I would say, calm down, Mom. But it's not to say that
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Ellen Nakashima: this isn't a serious and sobering threat and something we all need to take because
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Ellen Nakashima: you can't afford to pull up on and relax, rest on your laurels and think,
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Ellen Nakashima: oh, everyone's got things under control. It's the constantly evolving threat system, attack surface. And
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Ellen Nakashima: just as the attackers are evolving, so are the defenders. We've heard this before, cat
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Ellen Nakashima: and mouse game. We are making progress through resilience. But that's. That's the part that
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Ellen Nakashima: isn't sexy. Okay? And so from a journalist's perspective, the sexy part, as editors know,
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Ellen Nakashima: is, is the attack something that either takes something down or threatens to take something
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Ellen Nakashima: down? And hence, over the years, those are the stories that have tended to get
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Ellen Nakashima: more prominent. We can go into that, but I'll stop there to let Dimitri weigh
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Ellen Nakashima: in. You know, I think, Alan, you're being a little too generous to some of
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Dmitri Alperovitch: these folks, to be honest with you, because I feel like some of this hype
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Dmitri Alperovitch: has started with Y2K. We all remember that transition year 2000, the world is going
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Dmitri Alperovitch: to end, right, because we only allocated two digits for the year instead of four,
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Dmitri Alperovitch: and the clock turned over and nothing happened now. And part of it was a
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Dmitri Alperovitch: preparation that took place and a lot of upgrades, but there were some failures and
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Dmitri Alperovitch: things didn't end and we were able to fix it. But I felt like we
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Dmitri Alperovitch: went from Y2K straight into the Cyber911s and Cyber Pearl harbor analogies, and that this
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Dmitri Alperovitch: digital ecosystem that we're rapidly adopting was making us all so much more vulnerable and
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Dmitri Alperovitch: is going to be the devastation of our society. And there are real threats, no
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Dmitri Alperovitch: question about it. I think most of them are in the espionage realm. I really
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Dmitri Alperovitch: agree with Michael Hayden, the former director of NSA and CIA, who said that we
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Dmitri Alperovitch: live in the golden age of signals intelligence largely because of cyber. And the absolute
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Dmitri Alperovitch: revolution that is had an impact on, in terms of collection, both in the national
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Dmitri Alperovitch: security, space, and economic espionage. And really the economic warfare that China has been engaged
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Dmitri Alperovitch: in against us for over two decades is real. The attack stuff is happening, but
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Dmitri Alperovitch: it's having much less effect. Right. And I feel like it got a second wave
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Dmitri Alperovitch: during Stuxnet. And I remember participating in some of the debates right after Stuxnet was
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Dmitri Alperovitch: analyzed and understood, where people were saying that this was the blueprint that everyone's going
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Dmitri Alperovitch: to adopt, that you're Going to have factories and industrial control systems everywhere just getting
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Dmitri Alperovitch: shut down left and right. And of course, none of that happened because the reality
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Dmitri Alperovitch: is that this is much, much harder to do than most people understand. And the
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Dmitri Alperovitch: impact is much more limited and much more fleeting. Right. We now understand in retrospect
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Dmitri Alperovitch: that even Stuxnet, as sophisticated as it was, and probably cost enormous amounts of money
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Dmitri Alperovitch: and effort to build over the course of years, probably had maybe months long impact
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Dmitri Alperovitch: in terms of delaying the Iranian nuclear program. I mean, today they have more enriched
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Dmitri Alperovitch: uranium, more centrifuges than they ever had. Right. So meaning the effect was not permanent.
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Dmitri Alperovitch: Correct. Well, that's one of the points I've also tried to make. And when I
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Ellen Nakashima: speak, and I did a Cyber Command Cybercom conference last year where I said part
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Ellen Nakashima: of it, I think what I want to do or have media do is also
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Ellen Nakashima: demystify some of this mythology around cyber. And for instance, Cyber Command, people think, oh,
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Ellen Nakashima: cyber Command takes something out, you know, disrupts a Russian network, for instance. It takes
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Ellen Nakashima: them. No, it's, it's. And they don't pretend it's permanent. Right. It's temporary. These effects
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Ellen Nakashima: are temporary. The adversary can and will rebuild their network, but it's. They feel, still
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Ellen Nakashima: feel it's, it's worth doing because it sort of throws some sand in the gears.
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Ellen Nakashima: They call it persistent engagement, defend forward. Persistent engagement, all of that. Right, right, right.
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Ellen Nakashima: But again, it's to, I think, just keep things in perspective, to level set or
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Ellen Nakashima: scope the threat properly, whether it's in cyber offense and attack or cyber defense, or
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Ellen Nakashima: what a foreign adversary can do in influence operations, for instance, which was a whole
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Ellen Nakashima: nother cottage industry that we sort of engaged in after 2016. But in general, there's
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Ellen Nakashima: a need to really, I think, take, when we're writing stories that involve cyber, think
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Ellen Nakashima: about what the end goal or mission of the action is and how intuitive that
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Ellen Nakashima: they actually achieve it and how permanent is it. That's the issue. And the integration
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Dmitri Alperovitch: is really key because if you're going to take something down for a very short
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Dmitri Alperovitch: period of time, maybe hours, maybe even less, then you have to think about what
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Dmitri Alperovitch: is the value of that. And there is value in terms of traditional kinetic campaigns.
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Dmitri Alperovitch: So, you know, probably the most successful thing that the Russians had done in the
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Dmitri Alperovitch: Ukraine war in cyberspace was the Viasat attack. Now, it didn't have permanent effect. It
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Dmitri Alperovitch: had an effect of maybe days before the Ukrainians were able to bring in other
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Dmitri Alperovitch: satellite communication systems like Starlink and others to compensate. And it didn't even have complete
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Dmitri Alperovitch: effect because they still had landlines, they could still send people to communicate. Satellite in
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Dmitri Alperovitch: many units was a backup, but it had some effect in impeding Ukrainian communications. Now,
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Dmitri Alperovitch: the problem that the Russians had is that they achieved that effect, which is, you
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Dmitri Alperovitch: know, a significant tactical victory, but then they couldn't take advantage of that in the
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Dmitri Alperovitch: military campaign to actually achieve strategic effects. And that is actually really, really hard to
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Dmitri Alperovitch: pull off. Right. That integration of kinetic cyber, in some cases even w very difficult
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Dmitri Alperovitch: for most militaries. But that's where you really get the benefits of cyber. And cyber,
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Dmitri Alperovitch: in many ways is just like ew, right? When you're jamming a particular signal, you're
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Dmitri Alperovitch: not just doing it for the heck of it. You're doing it so that a
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Dmitri Alperovitch: jet can enter an airspace and neutralize an air defense battery or achieve some other
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Dmitri Alperovitch: sort of effect. That combined nature is where you get the most benefit. I want
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Frank Cilluffo: to pull the thread on a handful of issues here because really good, good stuff.
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Frank Cilluffo: I mean, firstly, EW is nothing new. Prime Minister Churchill referred to it as the
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Frank Cilluffo: Battle of the Beams back in World War II. But it did play a significant
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Frank Cilluffo: role in the outcomes of very significant battles to Europe. And so, whereas EW is
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Frank Cilluffo: not new, our dependency upon technology has grown exponentially since World War II. But I
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Frank Cilluffo: want to question verbiage matters. Our words matter here. I don't think either of you
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Frank Cilluffo: would disagree with the fact that computer network exploit or the ability to collect information
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Frank Cilluffo: has grown and will continue to grow. Am I right with that assumption? Absolutely. And
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Dmitri Alperovitch: actually, the most impactful things that the Russians have done in this war in Ukraine
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Dmitri Alperovitch: has not been attack. In fact, most of the attacks have been counterproductive in my
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Dmitri Alperovitch: view. But the collection that they've been able to gain across Ukrainian military networks and
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Dmitri Alperovitch: then use that rapidly for tactical advantage on the battlefield that has literally caused loss
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Dmitri Alperovitch: of life across Ukrainian military units. That absolutely is a game changer and something that
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Dmitri Alperovitch: is underappreciated. I think when the coverage of the Ukrainian conflict is done in the
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Dmitri Alperovitch: media or even broader analysis of cyber effects. And we do want to. I do
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Frank Cilluffo: want to pull the thread on Ukraine because I think there was a lot of
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Frank Cilluffo: of hype and maybe some overestimating. And quite honestly, I was one of those. I
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Frank Cilluffo: did not think the Ukrainians would have been able to punch back as well as
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Frank Cilluffo: they did, but that came with a lot of blood, sweat and tears, both literally,
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Frank Cilluffo: and years of preparation. But I do want to push back on one point. If
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Frank Cilluffo: you can exploit if your intent is there, granted it may not have a debilitating
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Frank Cilluffo: effect, but you can also attack. No. Well, absolutely you can. The question is for
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Dmitri Alperovitch: what purpose? For what purpose? And again, like taking down networks, taking down infrastructure is
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Dmitri Alperovitch: not unhelpful if you're doing in conjunction with something else to achieve some sort of
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Dmitri Alperovitch: strategic effect. Right. There's plenty of like tactical takedowns you can do. So for example,
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Dmitri Alperovitch: if you have a covert action against a particular facility, taking down the cameras, for
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Dmitri Alperovitch: example, for a few minutes while someone jumps the fence is really important, but it's
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Dmitri Alperovitch: important to coordinate that with someone jumping the fence or doing something else. And too
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Dmitri Alperovitch: often we've seen these cyber attacks that are done in isolation and the victim rebuilds
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Dmitri Alperovitch: and moves on and you haven't achieved anything. For instance, the most interesting effect of
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Ellen Nakashima: the Stuxnet disruption attack was to I think cause confusion and self doubt amongst the
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Ellen Nakashima: engineers. And isn't that a potential end state is to erode trust and undermine confidence.
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Ellen Nakashima: As to Demetrius Dietri's point. Right. It in the end delays their, the development of
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Ellen Nakashima: their program by six months. Maybe not, it doesn't stop it, but it slows it
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Ellen Nakashima: down. What it also did though, once the word got out, was it prompted a
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Ellen Nakashima: race to develop, you know, for cyber Cyber command. So many countries around the world
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Ellen Nakashima: then stood up their own military cyber commands. Well, it also encouraged the Iranians to
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Dmitri Alperovitch: invest in their own cyber offense capabilities. Absolutely. Which non existent. And now they're among
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Ellen Nakashima: the top four. Right. Russia, Iran, North Korea and China. That probably would have happened
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Dmitri Alperovitch: anyway, anyway. But it's probably sped it up a little. All excellent points and I
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Frank Cilluffo: do want to pull to Ukraine a little bit and unfortunately it's still a hot
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Frank Cilluffo: war and lives are still at risk. But what did we get wrong on that?
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Frank Cilluffo: And I know it's a little early to suggest as much, but I'd be curious
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Frank Cilluffo: because I do know a lot of US companies. So the, the cat and mouse
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Frank Cilluffo: game is not in a static environment. They base their actions in part on our
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Frank Cilluffo: actions. And I think it's fair to say the U.S. u.S. Companies, Ukrainians particularly themselves,
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Frank Cilluffo: did a whole lot to get ready for some of this activity. But I'd be
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Frank Cilluffo: curious what both of you think on that. As you know, Frank, I spent a
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Dmitri Alperovitch: lot of time on this issue of been to Ukraine and I've been focusing on
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Dmitri Alperovitch: the holistic nature of the conflict. Most of it has not even been on cyber,
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Dmitri Alperovitch: but on the kinetic part of the conflict. And I think a lot of times
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Dmitri Alperovitch: in cyber, people don't appreciate resiliency of society. Right. These concerns around the grid going
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Dmitri Alperovitch: down, on the water facility going down, et cetera, they. They tend to think that,
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Dmitri Alperovitch: well, if that happens, sort of catastrophe, right? Yeah, yeah. And Ukraine teaches us, and
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Dmitri Alperovitch: frankly, natural disasters that we see, you know, every year in this country, like Hawaii
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Dmitri Alperovitch: on Maui and hurricanes and the like, is that the world doesn't end and that
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Dmitri Alperovitch: societies are much more resilient. And watching the Ukrainians over the last year or so
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Dmitri Alperovitch: withstand an incredible campaign, kinetic campaign, missiles, drones hitting their energy infrastructure, destroying transformers, substations,
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Dmitri Alperovitch: and yet the grid is still on. And yes, there are outages, but the Ukrainians,
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Dmitri Alperovitch: even in the midst of a really cold winter, are surviving, not giving up. Right.
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Dmitri Alperovitch: Should be an instructive lesson for everyone in cyber to appreciate that societies are a
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Dmitri Alperovitch: lot more resilient than you think. And if your phone goes out or even your
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Dmitri Alperovitch: water utility can still manage, right. There's bottled water. There's other things you can do,
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Dmitri Alperovitch: as we do every single year in this country, when a natural disaster hits and
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Dmitri Alperovitch: people may not have communications because cell towers are down, they may not have, you
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Dmitri Alperovitch: know, access to electricity and the like, we manage their generators. There's other ways to
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Dmitri Alperovitch: do this sort of thing. And too often we don't appreciate the fact that we
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Dmitri Alperovitch: have backups. Right. That we're not solely reliant on these. Digital systems if we invest
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Frank Cilluffo: and think about it. But please. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just want to make a
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Ellen Nakashima: point that the Ukrainians themselves will make and have made and like to stress that
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Ellen Nakashima: two things. One, they didn't just come into this on, you know, in February of
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Ellen Nakashima: 2022. They had had almost 10 years to prepare, going back at least 2014. Right.
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Ellen Nakashima: And to prepare with the help of others, they will say, we had help from
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Ellen Nakashima: partners from the us, from Europe, from NATO, from other countries who shared their expertise,
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Ellen Nakashima: helped train them, shared threat data that they were finding. Cyber Command helped hunt in
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Ellen Nakashima: their networks to look for threat data. And private companies came in and helped the
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Ellen Nakashima: Ukrainians in advance of the invasion with things like helping them move data to the
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Ellen Nakashima: cloud to back things up to the cloud, so that when their own government systems
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Ellen Nakashima: were disrupted, they actually. But I think it's important not to overestimate the impact of
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Dmitri Alperovitch: that because what we have seen, the goal. Yeah. What we have seen even in
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Dmitri Alperovitch: the last, you know, few, few months, is that when the Russians really want to
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Dmitri Alperovitch: take something down, they still can. Kinetic, right? And through kinetic, even through cyberspace, they
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Dmitri Alperovitch: took down the major telco provider Kiev Star, just in December. Right. And what I
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Dmitri Alperovitch: think we've underestimated significantly because Ukrainians obviously are hesitant to talk about it, is the
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Dmitri Alperovitch: impact of espionage. And the Russians have done a lot in the space. They've forward
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Dmitri Alperovitch: deployed their GRU units in occupied Ukrainian territories to better enable that integration of collection
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Dmitri Alperovitch: and military combat operations. And that is having real effects. And having spent time with
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Dmitri Alperovitch: Ukrainian military, Ukrainian intelligence services, I can tell you that they're very, very concerned about
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Dmitri Alperovitch: the impacts that they're experiencing every single day from that collection. And what they're telling
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Dmitri Alperovitch: me is that any network that the Russians can get in, including classified networks, by
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Dmitri Alperovitch: the way, they can, they rarely take them down because of the value of the
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Dmitri Alperovitch: collection. That's right, exactly. And that's such a key point. We went through sort of
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Frank Cilluffo: a watershed with the standup of U.S. cyber Command and all the subordinate commands to
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Frank Cilluffo: sort of sync up titles 10, which are military, and title 50, which are intelligence.
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Frank Cilluffo: Some called for title 60. I think I might have been one of those. But
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Frank Cilluffo: the reality is to try to get the cyber is an enabler, it's a means
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Frank Cilluffo: to an end. But at the end of the day, it's part of something else.
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Frank Cilluffo: Yes. Is that what I'm really hearing? Yeah, absolutely. It enhances mentality. It's a tool
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Dmitri Alperovitch: like every other tool on the battlefield, by the way, you know, watching this counteroffensive
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Dmitri Alperovitch: play out and really fail in Ukraine, it really underscores the importance of combined arms.
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Dmitri Alperovitch: Right. You can't just rely on any single thing and too much. In the debate
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Dmitri Alperovitch: around this conflict, there's been a focus on one miracle weapon, whether it's ATACMs, longer
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Dmitri Alperovitch: range missiles or F16s. Zero day this, zero day that. Exactly. And the reality is,
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Dmitri Alperovitch: which is valuable. For collection purposes for a while, but. Yes, but, but no system,
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Dmitri Alperovitch: whether it's a weapon system or cyber weapon are enough on their own. It's when
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Dmitri Alperovitch: you bring it all together. Your nuclear weapon. Yes, actually, yeah, that's NC. And I
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Ellen Nakashima: still remember Jim Lewis saying more than 10, 15 years ago, I didn't know he.
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Ellen Nakashima: Cyber is not an existential weapon. Okay. It's not the one strategic weapon on its
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Ellen Nakashima: own that can. Hey, I've said that too. Okay. But in combination. Right. An enabler
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Dmitri Alperovitch: to other things, it can be effective. And one thing I would say that is
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Dmitri Alperovitch: true is that the Russia, Ukraine conflict is not necessarily a blueprint for other conflicts.
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Frank Cilluffo: And I want to pull that thread. China, US conflict would look very, very different
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Dmitri Alperovitch: in Part because both militaries are using network weapon systems that are more vulnerable to
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Dmitri Alperovitch: disruption through cyber. All right, you just illuminated the next question. So what I asked,
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Frank Cilluffo: what we got wrong and maybe what we could have thought through a little differently.
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Frank Cilluffo: What is President Xi thinking right now in terms of what he sees playing out
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Frank Cilluffo: in Ukraine? If anything, what lessons could he potentially pull and how would we differentiate?
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Frank Cilluffo: And I know it's different on so many levels, but how would we sort of
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Frank Cilluffo: put in context Taiwan and the implications for the Taiwanese in terms of what President
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Frank Cilluffo: Xi is playing out. Right. Seeing play out right now? Yeah. I'm not sure that
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Dmitri Alperovitch: the Chinese are actually learning a lot from this conflict because it is a very
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Dmitri Alperovitch: fundamentally different conflict. The Chinese always had a very negative view of the Russians capabilities.
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Dmitri Alperovitch: So just because the Russians are screwing up in Ukraine does not necessarily mean that
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Dmitri Alperovitch: they think that they're going to screw up in Taiwan. The Ukrainians have had a
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Dmitri Alperovitch: lot of experience with combat since 2014. The Taiwanese have not had any conflicts since
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Dmitri Alperovitch: the 1950s. Right. So they're looking at all of that and appreciating that what they're
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Dmitri Alperovitch: going to do, which is going to be extremely difficult. Probably the most complex military
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Dmitri Alperovitch: operation in history to torque straight invasion of Taiwan just was recently in Taiwan, where
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Dmitri Alperovitch: not only did I meet with all the leadership of the country and the military
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Dmitri Alperovitch: leadership, but actually walk the terrain. And I highly encourage anyone that's pontificating on this
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Dmitri Alperovitch: topic to go and do that. Because the view that some have the simplistic view
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Dmitri Alperovitch: that this is sort of Norman D.2.0, they're going to cross the strait and invade
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Dmitri Alperovitch: the beaches. That is not reality. Those beaches are not invadable because the terrain is
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Dmitri Alperovitch: just absolutely hellish. You get to the beaches and you're up against the mountain. There's
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Dmitri Alperovitch: nowhere to go. There's rivers, there's tunnels. This is a natural fortress of an island
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Dmitri Alperovitch: that is very, very difficult to pull off an invasion. You have to do things
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Dmitri Alperovitch: differently. I talk in the book about one way that this invasion can succeed. In
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Dmitri Alperovitch: my book, World on the Brink. It'S coming out soon. We'll have you back again
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Frank Cilluffo: on that part. Yes, but when you think about the China US conflict, assuming that
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Dmitri Alperovitch: the US intervenes in that war, we do have fundamental vulnerabilities. And some folks like
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Frank Cilluffo: conus, not just extended. Right. Well, conus, yes. Although I'm concerned about conus, you know,
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Dmitri Alperovitch: if power goes out in New York City for a few hours, that's not gonna
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Dmitri Alperovitch: impact what we do in the Indo Pacific. Tell my kids that. Yeah, I mean,
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Dmitri Alperovitch: we've had blackouts. People have more babies. Right. It's not the end of the world.
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Dmitri Alperovitch: But ability to impact the system called Alice, that is a logistical system for the
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Dmitri Alperovitch: F35 that can potentially delay the takeoff of these jets from Okinawa or Guam or
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Dmitri Alperovitch: from aircraft carriers by hours. It's not, it's not going to stop it. And we're
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Dmitri Alperovitch: going to figure it out. But ours can matter. Ours can matter. But I do
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Ellen Nakashima: think that she has taken some lessons away. One is that what Putin flubbed in
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Ellen Nakashima: this invasion of Ukraine was there was no element of strategic surprise. He was telegraphing
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Ellen Nakashima: this thing for months. I mean, in fact, you used to predict back in what,
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Ellen Nakashima: October, November 21, that this was coming. I mean, he was building, massing troops on
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Ellen Nakashima: the border. We were providing warning. We were literally providing warning. And so she knows.
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Ellen Nakashima: And in the case of Taiwan, he can't do that, right? Well, he has, there's
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Dmitri Alperovitch: no way. He has to do. He has to move fast, he has to move
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Ellen Nakashima: faster and he has to move hard. The other thing, there will be months long
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Dmitri Alperovitch: buildup. There's no way to do that. But it's, it's, there are going to be.
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Ellen Nakashima: Wait, they're going to try. They mask it in part through their civilian, they have
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Ellen Nakashima: civil military fusion so that they can use civilian assets for actual military purposes, like
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Ellen Nakashima: fairies, for one. But the other thing is he's watching. I think one thing that
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Ellen Nakashima: gave him great pause is the degree to which the US and the west joined
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Ellen Nakashima: together and came down hard with sanctions initially, though the sanctions have had now seen
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Ellen Nakashima: limited impact. And he's looking very warily at the steps the US Is taking with
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Ellen Nakashima: allies and partners now in the region, whether they're Japan, the Philippines, Australia through Aukus,
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Ellen Nakashima: even India and the Quad, Vietnam and Thailand. And those are the sorts of things
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Ellen Nakashima: that he's having to build into his calculus about whether he can get his military
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Ellen Nakashima: ready and do so before the US really gets everyone on board and. That it's
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Frank Cilluffo: not an empty victory. I mean, because the economic sets of questions really do differentiate
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Frank Cilluffo: Taiwan from Ukraine. Oh, my God. The economic impact in so many levels. That's also,
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Ellen Nakashima: I think, something that would give him pause and he knows that any invasion of
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Ellen Nakashima: Taiwan would have consequences. But, and I want to pull that, but I just want
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Frank Cilluffo: to pull one thread because I think this is such an important discussion and I'm
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Frank Cilluffo: glad you guys don't see a hundred percent eye to eye on this. That's healthy.
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Frank Cilluffo: What would Be some indicators we can expect in that. Days, months, whatever it is
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Frank Cilluffo: run up. This is not going to come out of the blue. I'm 100% convinced
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Dmitri Alperovitch: of that. This is literally the most complex military operation ever to be put together
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Dmitri Alperovitch: in history. You're going to need to amass hundreds of thousands of troops, load them
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Dmitri Alperovitch: up on those ferries and other military equipment. You're going to need to load armored
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Dmitri Alperovitch: vehicles, blood supplies, ammunition. All of that cannot be done in hiding, you know, covertly.
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Dmitri Alperovitch: You're gonna see lots and lots of indications of that coming for months. You're gonna
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Dmitri Alperovitch: need to build field camps around the port, facilities to house all of these hundreds
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Dmitri Alperovitch: of thousands of people that you're gonna put together. So we're gonna see those indications
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Dmitri Alperovitch: now. We may not know the exact. Are you already doing some of that? Provide
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Frank Cilluffo: some masking? Not at this scale. And things like blood supplies. Right. Was one of
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Dmitri Alperovitch: the indications that Russia was going. Because that's not what you do for exercises. Right.
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Dmitri Alperovitch: And medical equipment and everything else that you were stockpiling. So the difference between an
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Dmitri Alperovitch: exercise and real invasion is not hard to tell. I think what concerns the military
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Ellen Nakashima: is that to Frank's point, there is some masking going on. So that if you
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Ellen Nakashima: see this constant sort of buildup and nothing happens, after a while you don't know,
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Ellen Nakashima: gosh, when are they really. Which one's legit? Yeah. And that actually is a World
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Frank Cilluffo: War II analogy with EW. So the Brits were able to jam German communications to
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Frank Cilluffo: the point that they thought the systems were just not working, like often is the
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Frank Cilluffo: case. This is where exploit spying, sigint, good intel from the US side comes in
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Ellen Nakashima: handy. And I think that's what's going to really make a difference. Right. Is the
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Ellen Nakashima: intel agencies getting information in advance that can Q tip the the Allies. The US
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Ellen Nakashima: and Allies. This is a great set of discussions. And obviously none of us are
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Frank Cilluffo: clairvoyance and we don't know who, what, where, when. But I think 2028, the drumbeat
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Frank Cilluffo: is. It pulled the thread on that, Dimitri? Well, no, I was saying this in
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Dmitri Alperovitch: Jess, in my book, the scenario set in late 2028, I do think the window
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Dmitri Alperovitch: for him to invade opens up. Then he's not ready today. But the decision whether
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Dmitri Alperovitch: he goes or not, this is really important to understand, depends on really one main
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Dmitri Alperovitch: factor, which is his appreciation for whether US defends Taiwan or not. Because if he
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Dmitri Alperovitch: gets confidence or if he's able to deter us from intervening, then this becomes much,
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Dmitri Alperovitch: much easier. The Taiwanese cannot hold on they've just not done enough to invest in
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Dmitri Alperovitch: their own defenses, even though this is a natural fortress of a terrain to do
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Dmitri Alperovitch: this. So it all hinges on what is America going to do. A lot of
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Dmitri Alperovitch: that depends on politics. A lot of it depends on his economic leverage over us.
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Dmitri Alperovitch: And that's why it's not just military to military sort of comparison. But the more
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Dmitri Alperovitch: that he believes he has leverage over us to destroy our economy, to impact the
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Dmitri Alperovitch: war of life, and to make us think that Taiwan is just not worth it,
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Dmitri Alperovitch: the easier it is for him to go. And is that maybe a lesson he's
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Frank Cilluffo: gleaned out of Ukraine? Yes. Wait two years. You know, I had a conversation with
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Dmitri Alperovitch: a senior official in the Pentagon when I asked him that very question. What do
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Dmitri Alperovitch: you think is the main lesson that China has drawn from Ukraine? And his answer
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Dmitri Alperovitch: was that we do not fight nuclear powers, that America does not fight nuclear powers.
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Dmitri Alperovitch: Now, who knows? No one is in his head. It could be lessons. He could
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Dmitri Alperovitch: be ignoring all of those lessons. He does not strike me as a person that
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Dmitri Alperovitch: learns a lot from history or is a great. Has great insights of how to
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Dmitri Alperovitch: manage geopolitical problems, given all the missteps that he has made over the course of
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Dmitri Alperovitch: his rule. But it is important to appreciate that we're not fighting Ukraine, of course.
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Dmitri Alperovitch: And you know, in this political environment, we are not even passing aid to Ukraine
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Dmitri Alperovitch: at the moment. So that probably is making the Chinese think that we will not
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Dmitri Alperovitch: seriously. And aid to Taiwan is in that package as well, by the way. That's
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Dmitri Alperovitch: right. I did not know that it's actually tied up in that package. It's Taiwan,
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Dmitri Alperovitch: Ukraine and Israel. And Israel. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And bringing up, since you brought up
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Frank Cilluffo: Israel and the horrific attacks by Hamas on Israel, what should we expect? What pitter
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Frank Cilluffo: patter should we expect? We talked about Iran in the past, and I'd be curious
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Frank Cilluffo: what your thoughts are there. I think that cyber in particular, as much as we
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Dmitri Alperovitch: can. I mean, it's highly likely that there'll be a war with Hezbollah later this
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Dmitri Alperovitch: year, which will be unlike any war that Israel has fought in a very long
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Dmitri Alperovitch: time because Hezbollah has over 150,000 rockets that can touch every part of Israel. And
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Frank Cilluffo: Lebanese has Hezbollah. We're talking here. Yeah, Lebanese Hezbollah. The Israelis feel like they have
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Dmitri Alperovitch: to do this because they evacuated almost 100,000 people from the north, which in a
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Dmitri Alperovitch: country of 10 million people is a lot. Right. And these people are living in
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Dmitri Alperovitch: hotels right now. They're being subsidized by the government. And they feel like that is
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Dmitri Alperovitch: not sustainable and they don't see a path to them being able to return safely
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Dmitri Alperovitch: and not have a repeat of October 7 happening on the northern border. And Hezbollah
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Dmitri Alperovitch: is even more capable than Hamas in attempting to orchestrate those types of attacks. So
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Dmitri Alperovitch: they're signaling, increasing to the US that if you do not get Hezbollah to pull
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Dmitri Alperovitch: back to the, to the river, Litany river in the north, that they will go
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Dmitri Alperovitch: in. The Biden administration obviously wants to avoid that at all costs because that will
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Dmitri Alperovitch: significantly enlarge this conflict and make it much more dangerous. But in cyber in particular,
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Dmitri Alperovitch: is it. Inevitable that it escalates? I don't think anything is inevitable and you could
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Dmitri Alperovitch: still get some deal done. But Amos Hochstein, who I know has been traveling to
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Dmitri Alperovitch: the region almost weekly trying to get something done for a couple of months now
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Dmitri Alperovitch: and he hasn't succeeded. So it remains to be seen whether they can actually get
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Dmitri Alperovitch: Hezbollah to withdraw as was authorized by UN resolution. But the cyber element, I think
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Dmitri Alperovitch: is important here. Again, from an espionage perspective, when you look at what Hamas was
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Dmitri Alperovitch: able to do and the exquisite intelligence they had on Israeli command and control, on
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Dmitri Alperovitch: the surveillance network that they had around the border fence, Right, and knowing how to
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Dmitri Alperovitch: target that, the critical nodes, you know, they went into some of these bases and
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Dmitri Alperovitch: knew exactly the server rooms to go into to take out the cameras and other,
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Dmitri Alperovitch: you know, machine guns that are operated remotely around the border fence to disable those
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Dmitri Alperovitch: effects. Some of that was probably humans and. There'S human enabled cyber. Yeah, yeah, well,
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Dmitri Alperovitch: humans in terms of workers from Gaza coming over and so forth. But a lot
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Dmitri Alperovitch: of it was probably cyber as well. Probably some with the help of Iran to
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Dmitri Alperovitch: collect that intelligence. And the amount of hikvision cameras inside Israel back to
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Dmitri Alperovitch: China, Chinese cameras, is astounding. Yeah, Alan, I just feel like the intelligence failure
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Ellen Nakashima: and security failure in Israel on October 7th was astounding. Shocking. Shocking to people in,
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Ellen Nakashima: in Israel, to the intelligence and military, you know, establishment here. We assumed, you know,
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Ellen Nakashima: all thought Israel was impregnable, had this down. They had the highest tech sort of
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Ellen Nakashima: surveillance and, and no, this, this happened. I guess it was just incredibly shocking to
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Ellen Nakashima: hear. And part of it was, you know, they had already, they moved a number
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Ellen Nakashima: of, of security personnel from the Gaza border to the west bank, anticipating more violence
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Ellen Nakashima: there and leaving those place border. Areas bases undefended and becoming too dependent on technology.
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Frank Cilluffo: That's the interesting. And if you go back to even some of the early revolutions
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Frank Cilluffo: in Iran, the target wasn't external. It was their internal audience in terms of IRGC
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Frank Cilluffo: and some of the other activities you saw in Tehran. And by the way, I
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Dmitri Alperovitch: want to make one more point, more comment. Having spent a lot of time on
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Dmitri Alperovitch: the Ukraine conflict and looking at the battlefield since day one, the biggest impact on
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Dmitri Alperovitch: the entire war was 155 millimeter artillery shells and 152 millimeter on the, on the
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Dmitri Alperovitch: Russian side. It has not been drones, it has not been cyber, it has not
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Dmitri Alperovitch: been, you know, a lot of these things that people have overhyped. It has been
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Dmitri Alperovitch: artillery and infantry. The things that have been true since, you know, World War I
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Dmitri Alperovitch: and earlier and even now with the FPVs that are becoming FPV drones, first person
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Dmitri Alperovitch: view drones that are becoming so prevalent on the battlefield, their impact is also quite
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Dmitri Alperovitch: overhyped because talking to folks on the front lines on an almost daily basis, as
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Dmitri Alperovitch: I do, the videos that you see of the conflict of an FPV flying into
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Dmitri Alperovitch: a tank and destroying it is so cherry picked because 9 out of 10 times
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Dmitri Alperovitch: it fails and oftentimes it takes numerous drones to get that tank. And where you
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Dmitri Alperovitch: see that video of the tank being destroyed, it's almost always because it already hit
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Dmitri Alperovitch: a minefield, was hit by artillery, and was already disabled. And the FPV drone is
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Dmitri Alperovitch: sort of helping to finish it off. And the number of people that are involved
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Dmitri Alperovitch: in running these drone operations, it's not sort of one person just running it. There's
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Dmitri Alperovitch: a whole team around it. And the limitations you have on being able to deploy
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Dmitri Alperovitch: a lot of these drones because of radio interference issues, this is so complex. And
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Dmitri Alperovitch: the limited payload that you have on these drones compared to artillery, well. They just
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Ellen Nakashima: use one to launch missile and kill one of the leaders of Katab Hezbollah. Right.
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Dmitri Alperovitch: Well, those are different type of drones. I'm talking about the small ones, not sort
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Dmitri Alperovitch: of the Hellfire missile equipped ones that we've been using, of course, for 20 years.
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Dmitri Alperovitch: But we get so enamored with new technology and the revolutionary nature of it. And
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Dmitri Alperovitch: the reality is that war changes very little. You know, I want to pull, I
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Frank Cilluffo: do want to pull that thread now and I'll let you jump. Please go first.
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Ellen Nakashima: Well, I just want to say. But just pulling back to the idea of unmanned
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Ellen Nakashima: systems. Right. I think as technology progresses, I will be interested to see how they're
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Ellen Nakashima: using that. For instance, in the Indo Pacific where they're talking about, you know, using
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Ellen Nakashima: unmanned vessels to submersible. Because this is really key. So if you go back in
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Frank Cilluffo: history, rarely is it the technology itself, but it's how it's applied, and it can
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Frank Cilluffo: have massive tactical effect. But what I think does change the face of conflict today
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Frank Cilluffo: is the surprise element. In other words, you can use an old technology in a
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Frank Cilluffo: new way, or you can use a new technology in an old way that we're
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Frank Cilluffo: not thinking about. That can have significant tactical effect, which can have a strategic effect
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Frank Cilluffo: if they think there are 17 more coming down the path. So technology changes, human
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Frank Cilluffo: nature remains consistent. We're going to continue to see that change. But I do think
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Frank Cilluffo: we overestimate sometimes or have some hubris on how some of our other adversaries can
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Frank Cilluffo: use technology. Take, take the Hermit empire, take North Korea and their sophisticated use. And
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Frank Cilluffo: I know CrowdStrike was deeply involved in the initial Sony hack. Not necessarily the most,
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Frank Cilluffo: but pretty darn sophisticated. For a country that if you see at night, has zero
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Frank Cilluffo: weapons, what has it achieved? Yeah, that's it. Well, now they've turned to crime. Yeah.
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Dmitri Alperovitch: Theft. Absolutely right. Yeah. So they're a state sponsor of crime, and we've had a
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Frank Cilluffo: lot of funding. The missile program, the nuclear program, with cybercrime. Absolutely. An incredible effect
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Dmitri Alperovitch: that they've achieved. Taking out Sony and embarrassing a few Hollywood executives probably was not
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Dmitri Alperovitch: a strategic win for them. Exactly. No. But I still remember you at the time
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Ellen Nakashima: being very impressed by that. And you're saying, hey, that was the playbook that the
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Ellen Nakashima: Russians then followed, and. It was the hack and leak operation. But in both cases,
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Dmitri Alperovitch: I think the effect was much more limited than we often think. But just going
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Dmitri Alperovitch: back to the technology piece, when I look at the UAV developments, it is striking
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Dmitri Alperovitch: to me how much it is attempting to replicate things that have already existed. Right.
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Dmitri Alperovitch: So whether it's the isr, the intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance capabilities, that's replicating essentially the things
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Dmitri Alperovitch: you get with global hawks and satellites and the like, or the longer range drones
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Dmitri Alperovitch: that are basically trying to replicate missiles, where you're now putting jet engines on these
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Dmitri Alperovitch: things. And you were looking and saying, well, what's the difference between that and a
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Dmitri Alperovitch: Tomahawk? These things are becoming really close in terms of capabilities, or what the Ukrainians
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Dmitri Alperovitch: are trying to do in the maritime domain, which has been probably their most successful
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Dmitri Alperovitch: domain, being able to shut off and push back the Black Sea fleet of the
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Dmitri Alperovitch: Russian Navy. But literally talking to them on this issue, they're saying, well, we're basically
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Dmitri Alperovitch: trying to replicate the capabilities of a frigate in terms of defense, in terms of.
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Ellen Nakashima: Offense, men and personnel on board that could die. Correct. But a lot of these
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Dmitri Alperovitch: things function like torpedoes, which we've had of course since the Civil War. So but
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Frank Cilluffo: it is to Ellen's point, there is a difference. When it's click, press a button
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Frank Cilluffo: and you don't have to put people, there's. Evolution in these things. Just like the
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Dmitri Alperovitch: torpedoes we had during the Civil War were not the torpedoes we have today in
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Dmitri Alperovitch: terms of the capabilities. And how many ISR drones can you build for the cost
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Ellen Nakashima: of one Global Hawk? Right. So the cost is probably the biggest issue, although it's
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Dmitri Alperovitch: been really interesting. There was just a hack and leak operation against an IRGC front
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Dmitri Alperovitch: company that revealed the cost at which Iran is selling to Russia these shahed drones
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Dmitri Alperovitch: that have been pummeling Ukraine and they've sold thousands of them at the total cost
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Dmitri Alperovitch: of $1.8 billion that Russia supplied to them in gold. By the way. No one
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Dmitri Alperovitch: wants rubles. Apparently not a big shock, but the cost of each of those drones
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Dmitri Alperovitch: was somewhere in the range of 200,000 to 300,000, a lot higher than most people
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Dmitri Alperovitch: expected. And when you start putting that together, you know, basically four or five of
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Dmitri Alperovitch: these drones is the cost of a Tomahawk missile. And I'd much rather have a
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Dmitri Alperovitch: Tomahawk missile that is a cruise missile that is much more manipulable and has a
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Dmitri Alperovitch: bigger warhead than you can put on these shot hit drones. So these things are
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Dmitri Alperovitch: not simple. And when you start putting EW capabilities on those drones, when you start
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Dmitri Alperovitch: trying to put bigger payloads, faster engines, you start approaching the cost of a missile.
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Dmitri Alperovitch: So I think we often underestimate how much effect you can get when you do
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Dmitri Alperovitch: things really, really cheaply. Well, think about the Cold War. If you go back, the
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Frank Cilluffo: Soviets would put up 50 birds for hour one satellite. And it was sort of
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Frank Cilluffo: a numbers game to some extent. And when we look at we talk China, we
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Frank Cilluffo: lose that numbers game. I don't care how you, I'm not very good at math,
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Frank Cilluffo: but I'm good enough to figure that one out. And that of the equation here,
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Frank Cilluffo: quantity. Has a quality of its own. Right? That's right, exactly. And, and I'm not
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Frank Cilluffo: sure it has to be super capable if the intent is to. Yeah. So don't
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Dmitri Alperovitch: get me wrong, I, I, I'm absolutely in favor of drones and. Well, I'm not
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Frank Cilluffo: suggesting you're against drones. And we, we just have to appreciate their limitations and this
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Dmitri Alperovitch: is not a silver bullet. And that if you want something really, really capable, whether
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Dmitri Alperovitch: it's an ISAR or in loitering munitions or what have you, you Start building additional
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Dmitri Alperovitch: capabilities on them that make the price tag go up dramatically. Guys, this went in
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Frank Cilluffo: so many directions I wasn't expecting. I loved the discussion. What? Didn't I ask that
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Frank Cilluffo: I should. No, I just want to say this last remark that Dimitri just actually
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Ellen Nakashima: sums up sort of what we are all a theme of our discussion, which is
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Ellen Nakashima: just, you know, don't keep things in perspective. Right. We're not totally dismissing the value
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Ellen Nakashima: or worth of a certain platform or weapon or tactic or. But keep it in
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Ellen Nakashima: perspective. Don't, like, overhype it or get blinded by its shiny new packaging. Kind of
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Frank Cilluffo: like kid soccer. We all swarm that shiny ball. And that's the only way to
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Ellen Nakashima: have a really, I think, reasoned, useful conversation and debate about policy and operations. To
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Ellen Nakashima: me, that's the end goal. Right. Whether you're a policymaker, you're a planner or ops
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Ellen Nakashima: person or whatever in the military, you want to get the best information, get it
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Ellen Nakashima: sober, get it right. Don't get it hyped up. So you can make the best
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Ellen Nakashima: decisions possible and plans. Well said. And articulate it in a sound way as well.
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Frank Cilluffo: That's what often gets. Absolutely. And technology has unquestionably had a huge effect on warfare.
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Dmitri Alperovitch: But oftentimes it's not the sexy stuff. It's not the right, you know, go hit
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Dmitri Alperovitch: something and destroy it. It's things like electricity that allows us to operate at nighttime.
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Dmitri Alperovitch: Right. And night vision goggles and intelligence collection that gives us incredible insights and what
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Dmitri Alperovitch: the other site may be doing. Those are the types of things that have completely
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Dmitri Alperovitch: revolutionized warfare, but they're not sort of the sexy things you think about. It's logistics.
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Dmitri Alperovitch: Logistics probably has had the biggest impact from technology. Right. And wars are one with
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Dmitri Alperovitch: logistics, not weapons systems. So those are the things that Marine. Corps adage, and there's
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Frank Cilluffo: a lot of history to show to that, that we. Should be focused on, not
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Dmitri Alperovitch: the sexy stuff of a drone flying into a tank. And we're now saying that
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Dmitri Alperovitch: tanks are obsolete, which is some of the rhetoric you hear on Twitter, which is
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Dmitri Alperovitch: ridiculous. Or that drones are going to replace artillery. I can tell you from talking
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Dmitri Alperovitch: to people on the front line that are out of 155 millimeter artillery shells in
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Dmitri Alperovitch: Ukraine, they're not telling me send us more drones. They're telling us send more artillery.
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Frank Cilluffo: Guys, there's an old adage, amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics. But the reality is
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Frank Cilluffo: you guys did bring sound advice to a strategic discussion, which I think is about
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Frank Cilluffo: perspective. I think all of us can recognize that. And I appreciate all the good
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Frank Cilluffo: work. Dimitri. We'll have you on for your new book, Give it a pitch right
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Frank Cilluffo: now. World on the Brink. How America Can Be China in the 21st century. It
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Dmitri Alperovitch: makes the case that we're, I believe, unquestionably in Cold War two with China. That
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Dmitri Alperovitch: actually has a lot of similarities to Cold War one and gives the grand strategy
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Dmitri Alperovitch: sort of blueprint for how we win it. Ellen, you've done some of the best
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Frank Cilluffo: reporting in the. In the field. I hope we can have you on again soon.
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Frank Cilluffo: And keep it up. And to both of you, thank you. Thank you, thank you.