CHUCK TODD:
This Sunday, the cyber threat.
SHAWN HENRY:
We’re one step away from cities being plunged into darkness.
CHUCK TODD:
Ransomware attacks targeting American institutions from coast to coast.
CHRIS KREBS:
They went after our gas and they went after our hot dogs. No one is out of bounds here. Everyone is in play.
CHUCK TODD:
Many cybercriminals based in Russia and protected by Vladimir Putin.
LISA MONACO:
We can not give any quarter, and no country should be harboring criminal actors of any type.
CHUCK TODD:
How will the U.S. respond to this growing national security threat?
REPORTER:
Do you think Putin is testing you?
PRES. JOE BIDEN:
No.
CHUCK TODD:
My guests this morning, Democratic Senator Mark Warner of Virginia and Republican Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri. Plus, rebuilding America.
PETE BUTTIGIEG:
Inaction is unacceptable.
CHUCK TODD:
Both parties still far apart on fixing the country’s roads, bridges and more —
PRES. JOE BIDEN:
We need to make those investments today to continue to be able to succeed tomorrow.
CHUCK TODD:
— with no certainty that a deal will be struck.
SEN. MITCH McCONNELL:
I don’t know whether we’re going to reach an agreement or not.
CHUCK TODD:
What’s the price tag, who should pay and could Democrats try to going it alone? I’ll talk to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm about the risks she sees if there’s no agreement. Also, former President Trump rallies North Carolina Republicans by pushing the big lie. How Republican candidates may not be able to win without Mr. Trump and the party may not be able to thrive with him. Joining me for insight and analysis are Anne Gearan, White House correspondent for The Washington Post, former Hardball anchor on MSNBC Chris Matthews, Kimberly Atkins Stohr, opinion writer for The Boston Globe and Lanhee Chen, a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. Welcome to Sunday. It’s Meet the Press.
ANNOUNCER:
From NBC News in Washington, the longest running show in television history. This is Meet the Press with Chuck Todd.
CHUCK TODD:
And a good Sunday morning. We are a nation under attack right now, cyberattack. Last week, cybercriminals slowed food production here and abroad. Last month, the hackers caused gas lines up and down the East Coast. And in between there have been countless other, unreported cases of ransomware attacks almost on a daily basis. The U.S. is a target-rich environment for these cybercriminals. So much of our commerce is conducted online leaving so many areas at risk and so many companies with enough money to pay the ransom. Many of those payments are done in cryptocurrency, which is much harder to trace. The main culprits are cybercriminals based in Russia which as a nation-state is offering them safe harbor as long as their targets are in the West. The problem has become so acute that officials tell NBC News the U.S. is considering offensive cyber operations against the criminals inside of Russia. It all raises this bigger question and an uncomfortable one: Is this all a plan of Vladimir Putin’s to test our new president Joe Biden? And we are going to find out how the president decides to respond when he meets with Putin, one-on-one, ten days from now in Geneva. Ultimately, does our high-tech society leave us uniquely vulnerable to attacks like this, unable to discourage a criminal enterprise shielded by one of our chief adversaries at the cost of trillions to American businesses and consumers?
ESIAS OROSCO:
It’s almost like your house getting broken into. You know, there’s a, there’s a sense of security that you lose,
CHUCK TODD:
Last week it was the world’s largest beef supplier. A month ago, Colonial Pipeline, supplying roughly 45% of the East Coast’s fuel, paid a $4.4 million dollar ransom to Russian hackers in bitcoin, after they accessed its system with a compromised password.
PRES. JOE BIDEN:
Our Justice Department has launched a new task force dedicated to prosecuting ransomware hackers to the full extent of the law.
CHUCK TODD:
Ransomware attacks have become routine hitting everything from groceries to gas, hospitals to transportation to local governments.
CHUCK SCARBOROUGH:
The largest public transit authority in the United States has fallen victim to a cyberattack.
AUDREY ASISTIO:
The headaches for the steamship authority continue today following a ransomware attack.
JIM PAYNE:
UF Health is the target of a ransomware attack
CHUCK TODD:
The FBI confirms to NBC News it is investigating 100 different types of ransomware, each responsible for multiple attacks in the U.S., many originating from Russia. It’s a challenge director Christopher Wray compares to 9/11.
SHAWN HENRY:
We’re one step away from cities being plunged into darkness – and that is not fear and uncertainty – that’s based on facts.
LEON PANNETTA:
You could take down our electric grid, our transportation, our financial systems, you could virtually paralyze the country.
CHUCK TODD:
The Justice Department signaled in a memo on Thursday it plans to treat ransomware cases with the same priority as terrorism cases, centralizing internal tracking of investigations and prosecutions.
LISA MONACO:
The criminal groups that fuel many of these attacks, including the recent ransomware attacks that we’ve seen, come from groups that have links to Russia. We cannot give any quarter and no country should be harboring criminal actors of any type.
CHUCK TODD:
How will the U.S. respond? Back in 2016, after Russian interference in the election:
CHUCK TODD:
Why haven’t we sent a message yet to Putin?
VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN:
We’re sending a message. We have the capacity to do it. And the message —
CHUCK TODD:
He’ll know it?
VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN:
— he’ll know it. And it will be at the time of our choosing. And under the circumstances that have the greatest impact.
CHUCK TODD:
Now, ahead of a June 16 summit with Putin, the Biden administration is considering offensive cyber operations against hackers inside of Russia.
REPORTER:
Mr. President, will you retaliate against Russia for this latest ransomware attack?
PRES. JOE BIDEN:
We’re looking closely at that issue.
JEN PSAKI:
The president’s message will be that responsible states do not harbor ransomware criminals and responsible countries must take decisive action against these ransomware networks.
CHUCK TODD:
On Friday, Putin called the allegations “nonsense” and decided to escalate the back and forth by expressing sympathy for the January 6 insurrectionists.
VLADIMIR PUTIN:
These were not just plunderers or robbers. They came with political demands.
CHUCK TODD:
And joining me now is Democratic Senator Mark Warner of Virginia. He is, of course, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Senator Warner, welcome back to Meet the Press. The FBI Director Christopher Wray in a Wall Street Journal interview essentially invoked 9/11 in sort of how to deal with these asymmetrical groups, these cells. Well, we called them terrorist cells in 2001 and 2002. Are these cybercriminals terrorists?
SEN. MARK WARNER:
Well, Chuck, let’s step back and look at this problem. We’ve been talking about cyber for a long time, but finally the American public is starting to wake up to the ramifications of these attacks. There’s generally been two types of cyber incidents. One, where a nation-state steals information. Two, where cybercriminals come in and threaten to shut down a system and demand ransomware. We’ve seen these individual attacks against pipeline companies, ferry companies, meat packing companies. What I’m really worried about is if we saw the kind of massive, across-the-system attack that took place last year, the SolarWinds attack. There Russians got into 18,000 different companies. If that attack had been an effort to shut down our system, our economy would have come to a halt the way when Russia attacked Ukraine. So, I think we ought to do three things. One, we ought to put in place, we’ve got bipartisan legislation to do this, to require that when companies get attacked, they notify the government. There is no requirement right now. Second, we do need international norms, so that when cyber groups out of Russia, because they’re not just attacking us, they shut down the Irish healthcare system, we need international norms. And third, we need to have more transparency. There’s going to be a debate about whether these companies should pay ransomware. But there ought to be more transparency, if a company does pay, so we can go after the bad guys.
CHUCK TODD:
All right. You have pre-answered a couple of questions I had, but I’m going to pick up on that last point. Should we make it illegal to pay ransoms? I mean it’s a simple — many people think this is a simple solution, right? You don’t pay the ransoms, the attacks will stop coming.
SEN. MARK WARNER:
Well, I think that’s a debate worth having. I’m not sure what the answer is at this point. Because the alternative, if you shut down a system, and in the case of Colonial Pipeline, we saw even after they paid the ransom it took five days. But what we should make sure, as we have that debate, let’s make sure if companies do pay, there is transparency to those payments. Last year, I worked on legislation that became law to tighten up our, you know, illegal cash payments, the use of dummy corporations. America was frankly not even at international standards. We need more transparency. Because right now what’s happening around ransomware, not only are the companies often not reporting that they are attacked, but they’re not reporting the ransomware payments.
CHUCK TODD:
Look, I want to get to the ransomware payment issue in a second, but I want to talk about — you said you want to make it basically illegal to not report a ransomware attack, if you’re a company based in the United States. What about a step further where you mandate a minimum level of security? If you want to be a defense contractor, you have to prove your ability to handle classified information. You know this very well. At some point, is that how Colonial has to be treated? JBS? Anybody that sells essentially goods and services in the United States?
SEN. MARK WARNER:
Chuck, here’s the challenge. We do need higher cybersecurity standards. There ought to be penalties. I think many of us remember a few years back when Equifax lost all our information. In that case, it was to the Chinese. They were totally negligent. So, there does need to be, I believe, some level of liability for companies that don’t hit these standards. But the truth is when you’ve got a tier one adversary like Russia or China, not so much these cybercriminals but a tier one adversary in terms of their spy services, it’s tough to be 100 percent perfect all the time. That’s why if we have an incident reporting requirement mid-attack and I give the company some limited liability protection, and that needs to come into the government but also share with the private sector. Microsoft, Amazon, the Cloud providers, the other cybersecurity companies. We need to have a public-private response team to this, and that’s going to require that mandatory reporting.
CHUCK TODD:
Look, there’s another idea that’s out there. Simply this, in the Wall Street Journal: ban cryptocurrency to fight ransomware. The fact of the matter is without the ability of the anonymity of crypto we would not have this intense situation now. I know how popular it is. There’s, like, a rave going down in Miami this weekend for people wanting crypto. But crypto’s popularity is its anonymity, and it seems as if why people like it is they get to hide where their money came from. Sounds like an illegal enterprise to me.
SEN. MARK WARNER:
Well, Chuck, I’ve got a lot of questions about crypto. There was some good things coming out of distributed ledger technology, but we are seeing now some of the dark underbelly, the challenge is, and that’s why I’m focusing more on transparency. The truth is there are ways that we can break through some of these systems, but if we don’t have a trans — if a company is paying, if there’s not some transparency of that payment, the bad guys will simply find another way to hide it. So, this is an area where, frankly, again, our country has been behind the international norms. We’ve gotten better on bipartisan legislation last year, but this debate about crypto and ransomware is just starting. So, that’s why in the meantime, let’s put in place these transparency requirements.
CHUCK TODD:
All right, there’s one other idea out there and it’s about going on, more on the offensive against Russia for being a safe harbor and for doing what they did. But I want to show you something here, I hope you can see this graphic. These are all the different ways the United States has tried to confront Russian aggression, going back to 2014. We’ve ejected them from the, from the G7, right, it’s not the G8 anymore. Plenty of sanctions. There have been import restrictions. We’ve expelled diplomats. We’ve seized their assets. We’ve had indictments. None of it has stopped this behavior. What, what would it take, do you think, to curtail Putin’s behavior here?
SEN. MARK WARNER:
Well, two things, Chuck. One, I do think we need to have the ability to use some of our offensive capabilities. And we have done a better job on that, if we look at our ability to cut back on some of the Russian election interference. That was because we were willing to punch back. But what we also need and this is why I say we need these level of international norms, so that a country like Russia would know if they are harboring cybercriminals and you’re shutting down a healthcare system, for example, the way these cybercriminals did in Ireland recently, there needs to be international repercussions, not simply one off, the United States acting alone. That’s why President Biden going and rallying the democracies at the G7 meeting is so important.
CHUCK TODD:
Senator Mark Warner, I’m going to have to leave it there. Chair of the Senate Intel Committee. We will find out in about ten days how well Biden’s confrontation goes with Putin. Much appreciated. But I want to continue this conversation —
SEN. MARK WARNER:
Thank you.
CHUCK TODD:
— on the other side of the aisle. Joining me now, he’s the chair of the Senate Republican Policy Committee. It’s Roy Blunt of Missouri. He’s also a member of the Intelligence Committee. And let me pick up on holding Putin accountable, Senator Blunt. I go back. You saw here, you know, there has been plenty of attempts. It hasn’t worked. Is there a better way to hold Putin accountable that we haven’t tried?
SEN. ROY BLUNT:
Well, as Chairman Warner pointed out, we did see, when the 2018 elections were, we really did push back. Remember, 2016, as late as early 2017, we had cyber defense capabilities, but we didn’t have the authority — the president had never given the authority — for cyber offense. And so when we did push back, we pushed back pretty hard. In 2018, it stopped. I think to some extent, Chuck, you really have to treat Russia like it’s virtually a criminal enterprise. You know, they harbor criminals, they, they don’t appreciate the rule of law or any kind of level of personal freedom. And I do think we have to push back. When there’s no, no penalty, there’s no sanctions, hard to find who’s doing it. Even when you can find where they are, we haven’t really effectively sanctioned the companies — the countries that are protecting this kind of activity. It has to stop. On one question you asked Chairman Warner, “Could we say that companies have to guarantee their system to be a U.S. vendor?”
CHUCK TODD:Right.
SEN. ROY BLUNT:
— Or whatever the other guarantee might be. The truth is, we haven’t been able to guarantee our own system. You know, on the SolarWinds, they got in the government system as well. We didn’t know they were there. We don’t know how long they were there. We’re not absolutely sure they’re not there still. And so, you know, saying that companies would have to meet a standard we can’t meet would be one thing. And let me make one other point. On the Colonial Pipeline, it was a very simple way in. They used an old account that was no longer even a person who — that account was not even part of the system anymore, but it wasn’t taken out of the system. There was a place where maybe a two-part authentication would have made a big difference. We’ve worked hard on this, both in Intel and the Republican Policy Committee, trying to alert companies but also our own colleagues of how broad the danger could be here.
CHUCK TODD:
What —
SEN. ROY BLUNT:
And I’m glad this is getting the attention it’s now finally getting. It took gasoline and beef —
CHUCK TODD:
Well, that’s right. It’s when it hits —
SEN. ROY BLUNT:
— for us to think this is really a serious problem —
CHUCK TODD:
That’s right. No, when it hits, when it hits people at home. And I think this is one of those things. This feels like a crime wave, and you guys are supposed to keep us safe, right? You’re our elected officials. You guys got to keep us safe. So I guess I want to push back on this idea that you, you can’t hold business to a standard that the government can’t meet. Well, why can’t everybody be mandated to meet this standard? I understand what you’re saying about the government. But the 2012 cybersecurity bill, one of the reasons it didn’t pass is because there was this debate you were asking too much of private, private sector. I think that was one of the reasons you were not ready to support it then. Shouldn’t we be asking American business to do more?
SEN. ROY BLUNT:
Well, I don’t remember the 2012 cybersecurity bill. I do remember at that same time, Senator Carper and I were actually leading the effort to try to have reporting as part of the requirement. And, you know, there was a lot of pushback. Nobody wanted to report that they had been hacked. That was a fight we’ve been having now for almost a decade. And the only way you can begin to get on top of this is to know how pervasive the problem is, try to develop a pattern. This cryptocurrency — not allow that to be just behind the scenes in the entire system. We have a lot of cash requirements in our country, but we haven’t figured out in the country or in the world how to trace cryptocurrency. So, one, fairly easy to do. People almost always pay the ransom. There are very few consequences. And you can’t trace the ransomware — the ransom payment of choice now. And we’ve got to do a better job here.
CHUCK TODD:
Look, Vladimir Putin scoffed at the charges that somehow he was behind these attacks. And then he went on to say something else over the weekend that was quite disturbing. He essentially praised the January 6th insurrectionists, or he seemed to say that it was nothing but a political dispute. Considering that Putin is now picking up on this as a way to divide this nation, does, does that make you reconsider your opposition to a January 6th commission? Because I know your argument against it right now. You think there’s some bipartisan action happening. I get that. But you know we need as credible of a review as we can to get on the same page as a country with facts. Don’t you see the January 6th as doing that — commission as doing that?
SEN. ROY BLUNT:
You know, my, my point from not just last month but from the very moment this commission idea came up, I never said, you know, I’d be for it if it was more bipartisan. It was very non-bipartisan in the first proposal. I never said that. What I said was, I think we know what we need to do here. And a commission in my view, an immediate commission, would slow us up in saying, “Well, we need to wait until we know all the facts. We need to wait for the commission.” We will come up, out with a bipartisan two-committee report next week. The Rules Committee that I was the chairman of, now the ranking member — Senator Klobuchar and I on that committee, Senator Portman and Senator Peters on the other committee — we’re going to have a pretty extensive report on what happened, over a hundred page report with a significant number of recommendations, in my view, all of which could be put in place immediately. And my sense was it’s more important to act and get — and do what we know we need to do than to get in a position where we start waiting for a commission —
CHUCK TODD:
Alright.
SEN. ROY BLUNT:
— to come forth with a report that we, I think, are going to be happy — I think you’re going to be really pleased with the report you see. And we’ll see then where we need to go next after that report’s out.
CHUCK TODD:
Well, I want to talk, though, but I don’t know if your report is going to deal with the root cause, right? The root cause is you have the leader of your party, you know — whether, whether everybody wants to acknowledge the former president as the leader of the Republican Party right now or not — he seems to be the biggest, biggest fish in this pond now. He’s had — his chief of staff was pushing the idea that Italy used military satellites to somehow rig the election. And he keeps doing this. And he did it last night in North Carolina. You’re part of this group of Republicans that has stated that you don’t believe in that nonsense, but you don’t, you don’t really push back at the president for spreading these falsehoods so much. Are you not — do you fear you’re not doing enough? I mean, one in four people in your party believe these delusional things. Are you concerned about this?
SEN. ROY BLUNT:
Well, I’m concerned we’re losing faith in the election system. I do think it’s important to have a bipartisan belief that the election system does what it’s supposed to do, that the results that are the results of Election Day are what absolutely happened. You know, I served for eight years as the chief election official in my state. I was pleased to see Senator Manchin have the same view that we need to move forward on election reforms in a bipartisan way. I look forward to being a part of that. We’ll see what happens with the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and other issues I think we can deal with and deal with in a way that’s less partisan in trying to create political advantage for either side.
CHUCK TODD:
Do you think the president believes this stuff or is exploiting a chunk of your party into convincing them to believe it?
SEN. ROY BLUNT:
You know, I really can’t analyze whether he believes it or not. I’m sure he believes that in a fair election he couldn’t have possibly lost. And of course, he had the ability to go to court and prove whether that election was fair or not. Every — the courts did not accept those, those ideas, and so we moved forward, and we continue to move forward. I do think President Trump is an incredibly popular figure in our party, certainly a political figure in my state. I’d like to see him get focused on the 2022 elections. There are plenty of things for Republicans to be talking about besides —
CHUCK TODD:
Look, you’re not the only —
SEN. ROY BLUNT:
— the election process itself.
CHUCK TODD:
Sorry, Senator. You’re not the only senator — Republican that has said, “Hey, look. The guy’s popular in the party, and there’s only so much –” The implication is, “There’s only so much I can say or so much I can do to push back.” It sounds almost like you’re surrendering —
SEN. ROY BLUNT:
No, that’s not —
CHUCK TODD:
— to this nonsense.
SEN. ROY BLUNT:
You know, I’m not running for office again. I’m not running for office again. So that’s not my point. My point is he’s popular and could be incredibly helpful in 2022 if he gets focused on 2022 and the differences in the two political parties. The Biden agenda is an agenda that Republicans are going to be talking about, defining themselves based on our differences on things like what is infrastructure. There are a lot of things to talk about. I think 2022 has great potential to be an important and good year for Republicans, and I hope President Trump puts his energy in that effort.
CHUCK TODD:
Senator Roy Blunt, as you mentioned, you’re not running for reelection in 2022, but you are a Republican senator from Missouri right now. And I appreciate you coming on and sharing your perspective with us, sir. Thank you.
SEN. ROY BLUNT:
I am. Good to be with you.
CHUCK TODD:
When we come back, John McCain warned years ago that cyber would be the key new battlefield of the 21st century. Turns out he was very right on this one. The panel is next.
CHUCK TODD:
Welcome back. The panel is with us. Anne Gearan, White House correspondent for The Washington Post. Former Hardball anchor on MSNBC, Chris Matthews. He’s author of a new book, “This Country: My Life in Politics and History.” Kimberly Atkins Stohr, senior opinion writer for The Boston Globe. And Lanhee Chen, a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. Anne, I want to start with what I found interesting from both Warner and Blunt, which is they both seem to separate a bit more from Putin versus what we’re dealing with with cyber, just as the White House seemed to be telling, indicating they’re ready to actually hold Putin more accountable. Where is the Biden White House on this? Do they want to treat this as a Putin problem or as a criminal problem?
ANNE GEARAN:
You know, we’ve really seen an evolution in the way the government writ large is approaching the ransomware and cyberhacking problems together. And I think from the White House perspective right now, they are trying to do a little bit of the same thing that both senators were doing there and talk about this as a problem that is, you know, larger than one country and one individual national security relationship between the United States and Russia. While at the same time, making very clear that President Biden plans to raise ransomware specifically and other kinds of cybercriminal activity that is housed in Russia with Putin when they meet in Geneva. What they have not said is exactly how threatening the president plans to be, or whether he will walk into that meeting saying, “We are going to do X, Y and Z, if you don’t cut this out.”
CHUCK TODD:
You know, Lanhee Chen, I know you — at the Hoover Institution, you’ve got a lot of people you walk the halls with that have spent a lot of time in the Defense Department and in the State Department and understand these issues here. Is there an effective tool against Putin right now in our, in our toolbox that, number one, wouldn’t punish Russian citizens, but actually could curtail Putin’s behavior?
LANHEE CHEN:
Yeah, I think it’s very difficult to draw that distinction. I do think there’s a few factors there. First of all, we can go after some of the infrastructure that facilitates this criminal activity in Russia. And that would be targeted. That’s something that our Cyber Command is capable of. Now, obviously, that runs into some international issues — does it violate international norms, existing international rules? We’d have to get into that. But fundamentally, we have the capacity to disrupt some of this behavior. I think on Putin, it is important for us to continue to send a strong signal. By the way, the sanctions that were put in place by this administration and the previous administration, those are working. They are starting to take a bite out of long term economic growth in Russia. So, that’s the right course. We have to continue that regime. That sanctions regime is very important. But I do think it’s important for the president as well to send a very strong signal to Putin, that to the extent that he understands this activity is going on — which I think he certainly does — the United States will not tolerate it and will continue to put pressure on the Russian economy, up to and including additional sanctions on the Central Bank, as well as on elements of Putin’s government.
CHUCK TODD:
You know, Kimberly, this feels like one of these here we have this national security challenge that’s one of these challenges that actually impacts our day to — suddenly is starting to impact our day to day lives. And I equate it, if you live in a city and there’s a crime wave, you go to the mayor and the police commissioner, you’re like, “You do something about this.” And that sort of was my feeling, like, “Okay, guys. Do something about this.” But I get a sense that everybody is looking for the handcuffs and not the solution.
KIMBERLY ATKINS STOHR:
I think that is right. And I think we are here in part because of that tension that you talked about with both senators before. This idea that holding companies — not just companies that provide essential services and goods to America — but private companies who are in charge of parts of critical infrastructure. This idea that we don’t want to force them to do too much because that could hurt business. You know, with great power comes great responsibility and there need to be requirements that companies shore up their cybersecurity and the government needs to give them both help, but also impose requirements on them in order to do that, while shoring up the federal government. You can do both at the same time and we see how critical that need is.
CHUCK TODD:
Chris, I know you’ve been doing some reporting on this. What does, what does an effective response look like from the United States against the Russians?
CHRIS MATTHEWS:
Well, first of all, we have to play offense and defense. And the government’s role is offense because only a government, our government under our system, is allowed to counterattack, to take any kind of forceful action against Moscow and its ransomware allies, in this case. But here at home, it’s going to be a lot like Covid, our Covid response. We have to use public and private. And clearly, what we have to do is do what we did after 9/11, which was to build a good defense system. We upgraded our air traffic control systems after 9/11 to keep track of airplanes that might be hijacked. We want to know if anybody is off course. In this case, we have to have business work together to put the dots on the screen, like an air traffic controller screen. Where is there people, ransomware people, trying to get at our companies? Where are they trying to hold us up? You’ve got to report it in real-time. In many ways, that’s like a police case where you’ve got a kidnapping in progress and you have to know when it’s happening, when it’s happening and you have to go to the police. So, I think it’s a, it’s a combination of warning the Russians. But, you know, I keep looking at that guy Putin, Chuck. And I look him in the eyes. You show up a picture of him and he says, “Nonsense.” And I say, “We can’t read that guy like we read normal human beings.” This guy is a KGB officer. He and Biden grew up in the Cold War. They know what this game’s about. It’s using other forces like the Russians used to use, countries’ wars of national liberation where they’re giving them all the guns to fight us. We’re distracted by them while they’re pretending a little bit to be innocent. I look at those eyes of Putin, and when I look into his eyes, I see the Cold War coming back as a cyberwar.
CHUCK TODD:
Anne Gearan, it comes back to what posture do they want Americans to view Joe Biden as having when he confronts Putin? I mean, you know, do they want to be seen as aggressively confronting Putin? And do they have an idea what that looks like?
ANNE GEARAN:
Well, I think the answer to the first is yes. They do want — they, the White House — does want to position the president for a pretty forceful interaction with Putin, or they wouldn’t be having this summit now. I mean, this was, this was a choice. And Biden invited Putin to do it. So, I mean, they, he is saying very affirmatively here that he wants to talk to Putin about a range of things, which are in almost all cases, problems in the U.S. view. So, I mean, it’s not going to be a pleasant meeting, I think. But, you know, the question very specifically on cyber is a really difficult one because these are not Russian government agents. They’re people who live in Russia and are, to a degree, under Russian protection.
CHUCK TODD:
Well, I remember safe harbors in Afghanistan and Yemen and all of those things back right after 9/11. I wonder if we’re going to start hearing conversations like that in the next few weeks and months. I’m going to pause it right there. When we come back, as the two parties fight over rebuilding America, one person with a huge stake in the outcome is keeping a close watch. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm joins me next.
CHUCK TODD:
Welcome back. If you want an easy summary on where the Washington talks on infrastructure stand, try this. President Biden and Republicans can’t agree on how much to spend, on where the money should come from, or even what is and isn’t infrastructure. But other than that, things look great. Perhaps more significant though, the recent spate of cyber attacks calls into question the safety of our energy grid including oil pipelines as we saw with the Colonial Pipeline attack. So joining me now is someone that does have a lot on her plate these days with both of those topics. It’s Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm. Secretary Granholm, welcome back to Meet the Press.
SEC. JENNIFER GRANHOLM:
Thanks so much, Chuck.
CHUCK TODD:
Hey, I want to talk about what your response at the Energy Department has been since the Colonial Pipeline attack. I think about what happens if the Plantation run pipeline goes down? You have Enbridge, which controls the pipeline that comes from Canada, provides the middle of the country gas. If one of those pipelines went down in the next — this summer, are we — are we better prepared to handle the crisis than we were just a month ago? Or do we have a ways to go?
SEC. JENNIFER GRANHOLM:
Well, here’s what I would say is that the TSA actually just put out a series of regulations requiring pipelines to let us know if they have been the victim, and whenever — in the real time. This is just like what Chris Matthews was just saying. Where are these attacks happening, so that we know and we can coordinate with our intelligence community to determine not just how to respond in a long term, but how to respond immediately. So to that extent, yes. The president has issued this executive order that really focuses on what the federal government should be doing. But as you’ve noted, these are a lot of private sector entities that run the grids, that run the pipelines. And so one of the reasons why the American Jobs Plan is so important and so curious, Chuck, why the investment that the president proposed in transmission grids, which would not just increase capacity and increase resilience, but also address cyber. Why that isn’t a part of what the Republicans’ counter proposal was. And hopefully, it will be. But it’s a bit frustrating that it hasn’t been.
CHUCK TODD:
What kind of authority do you have right now that — you know, so you oversee the safety of our nuclear power plants. There’s a certain level — and those are, in some cases, run by private companies. There’s a certain level of security they have to meet that meets federal regulation. Is there anything — can you demand certain standards of Colonial and these other pipeline companies? Or do you not have that authority at the Energy Department?
SEC. JENNIFER GRANHOLM:
At the — right now on pipelines, no. I mean, we have an agreement with the private sector on the transmission grid. There are basic standards, cyber standards, that they adhere to, cyber standards that are developed by the Department of Commerce. And we need that same sort of regime with pipelines. And that does not exist at the moment. This notion of requiring them to report is important. That’s a first step. We need to take the next step. They need to — we need to work together. And it’s not just cyber on grids and pipeline. It’s cyber for across the country. It is a huge issue. And everyone needs to wake up and up their game in terms of protecting themselves, but also in terms of telling the federal government if they are a target of attacks. Many of these private companies are — you know, don’t want to let people know. They should not be paying ransomware, but they should be letting us know so we can protect the rest of the country.
CHUCK TODD:
So do you think there should be a law on the books that bans the payment of ransom? I mean, you may have to actually outlaw the ransom payments. Are you ready to go there?
SEC. JENNIFER GRANHOLM:
Yeah. Well, I mean, I would, I will say that. But I don’t know whether Congress or the president is at that point. But I think that we need to send this strong message that paying a ransomware only exacerbates and accelerates this problem. You are encouraging the bad actors when that happens. And I will say, you know the president — you know to the conversation that you were just having, the president is really focused on the international regime of this as well, working with our allies, every country. No country wants to be the victim of major cyberattacks, of any cyberattack.
CHUCK TODD:
Right —
SEC. JENNIFER GRANHOLM:
So international, private sector, inside the federal government all of us have to be —
you know, the president is working on a 360 degree solution.
CHUCK TODD:
You’ve been tapped to —
SEC. JENNIFER GRANHOLM:
A solution, there’s not just one solution. I’ll say that.
CHUCK TODD:
You’ve been tapped to help build support for the president’s infrastructure proposal. That took you to West Virginia this week. And when you hear the words “West Virginia” and “Washington,” it means Joe Manchin. When we hear Joe Manchin say he’s not, he still thinks there’s going to be bipartisan support, do you think his definition of bipartisanship is ten Republican senators, or do you think it’s Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski?
SEC. JENNIFER GRANHOLM:
No, I think he really believes there are votes for infrastructure from at least ten Republicans. And he’s got some data on this, which is, I mean, just in my world, in the world of energy, in 2020, in December, there was overwhelming bipartisan support for pieces of energy infrastructure that the president put into the American Jobs Plan, but that has not been part of the Republican counterproposal. For example, investment in the transmission grid or investment in nuclear energy, which Republicans have long supported and are not in the counterproposal, but was in the president’s bill. Capping of oil and gas wells and coal mines, which could put a lot of people to work. Republicans have supported that. The president put it in his bill. They didn’t come back with a counter that included that. It’s just — or, Chuck, the big thing, I mean, just coming from West Virginia, it’s a fossil fuel state. The week before, I was in Texas, another fossil fuel state.
CHUCK TODD:
Mmm-hmm.
SEC. JENNIFER GRANHOLM:
Republicans and Democrats have asked for the technology and the pipelines to take carbon pollution out of fossil fuel production and you put it in the ground. It’s called carbon capture.
CHUCK TODD:
Right.
SEC. JENNIFER GRANHOLM:
The president put it in his plan. Republicans have been clamoring for it. It wasn’t in their counterproposal. It’s just curious. So the bottom line is he’s got reason, he, meaning Joe Manchin, has reason to believe that there’s bipartisan support. We just need to see it in the counterproposal.
CHUCK TODD:
You brought up climate. And I’m curious, when it comes to getting the oil and gas industry to participate in helping to mitigate climate change, we’ve seen the Netherlands essentially use a court order to force Shell to do things. We’ve seen shareholders get some board seats on Exxon and Chevron. What do you believe is the most effective way to engage industry? You were a state attorney general. Would you have filed a lawsuit in the state of Michigan against an oil company? Or would you be pursuing this shareholder strategy?
SEC. JENNIFER GRANHOLM:
Well or I think that, honestly, these companies are seeing where the globe is going. They are seeing that their biggest customers are demanding that they produce energy in a cleaner way. And so they want to see things like this solution of adding technology to remove CO2 from their production as part of the solution. So, to me, the carets that the president has put into his plan are really carets that the private sector is asking for, even the fossil fuel companies. I won’t say all of them, clearly. But a lot of them, the big oil companies have all, not all, but many of them have the same goals of getting to net zero carbon emissions by 2050. They’re not going to be able to do it without the technology that will allow them to remove CO2 from their production.
CHUCK TODD:
Alright.
SEC. JENNIFER GRANHOLM:
But again, the president put it in his plan. And I think that’s a way to go.
CHUCK TODD:
Yeah. Optimism that the capital markets will force the oil and gas industry to change. We shall see. Anyway, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, thanks for coming on and sharing your perspective with us. I appreciate it.
SEC. JENNIFER GRANHOLM:
You bet.
CHUCK TODD:
When we come back, how our post-pandemic world may look very different from the one we are used to. Stay with us.
CHUCK TODD:
Welcome back, Data Download time. As the summer heats up and vaccinations rise, economists are hoping for more and more good news about people returning to work, but it may not be that simple. There are signs that a broader shift may be remaking the economy in much bigger ways, making the road ahead harder to see. Let me show you something about our employment picture. Look, pre-pandemic, we are at three and a half percent. Right now, we’re at five and a half percent. But the key has been the labor participation rate. So these numbers may look good, but this is only among people who are actively looking for work or are in the job market. Let me show you the labor participation rate here. So, right now, among men and women, as of April of ’21, it is down basically year over year because of Covid. You can see here, 1.6% among men, basically the same among women, overall the change. And what does 1.6% translate to? Three and a half million actual people. So, three and a half million fewer people in the workforce. So, how does this translate to where the economy is today, to where it was in the past? Check this out. We’re — our labor force participation rate right now is essentially where it was in January of 1977. Think about what the workforce looked like in January of ’77. Fewer than half of the workforce was made up of women then. That is not the case now. So, if we’re there, we’ve got bigger problems here with our labor participation rate. So, look, it’s not clear what’s holding things back. Is it generous unemployment benefits? Or is it low wages? Is it the lack of childcare? All of it may play a role. But as we shop and order food online more and commute to work less, all as a result of this pandemic, the question is are these short-term adjustments or long-term behavioral shifts that will result in fewer workers being needed? When we come back, former President Trump back on the stage. Does the Republican party need him or need him to go away?
CHUCK TODD:
Welcome back. The panel is back with us. Well, the former president is back on the trail. And Chris Matthews, you know, normal political science would say if you’re a political party focused on the past and you’re running against a political party running on the future, the future defeats the past. Yet, the Republican Party seems to be stuck in this no man’s land of their leader relitigates the past, and Roy Blunt and others are saying, “Please talk about the future.” What does –– what, what should they be doing differently that they’re not doing now?
CHRIS MATTHEWS:
Well, Chuck, this show, Meet the Press, is about facts, not opinion. And the fact is, Donald Trump lost the election. He lost it by seven million people, seven million votes. The last time, he lost by four million votes. The electoral college vote was the same as he got when he lost, when he won last time, 302. The facts are there. Every political phenomenon I’ve ever followed since I was a kid was somebody wins, somebody loses. But the loser — and this is the deal we never thought would ever happen — the loser has to say, “I lost.” Just like in tag, you got me. I’m it, you’re it, whatever. You’re out. You’re out. You know, it’s a strike. I’m sorry. We live on the basic facts of life. Somebody wins, somebody –– the concession speech is maybe the best thing in politics because it’s when the losers say, “Damn it, I lost.” Hillary Clinton did it, Mitt Romney did it, John McCain, John Kerry, Al Gore. We’ve watched it every four years. Honest people honestly accept facts. This president –– this former president, I should say, is not honest. And therefore he’s taking the cheap route so that all his followers will say, “Yeah, he won.” They know he didn’t win.
CHUCK TODD:
Lanhee, I was intrigued by Ross Douthat’s piece today in the Times because he basically talked about the three different ways that different factions are trying to check Trump. What do you think is the best way to check Trump? Because sadly, more people now believe this nonsense than they did actually three months ago. That’s a problem inside the information ecosystem in the right wing.
LANHEE CHEN:
Yeah, I think the focus has to be on how you build a movement that’s durable going forward. And that’s not by focusing on the remarks or the thoughts of one person. And I do think, you know, look, there are a lot of different ways to do this. You could talk about the policy contrasts going into 2022. You could talk about the ways in which you build upon various groups, for example the Hispanic vote that seemed to improve for Republicans in 2020. Or you can talk about whether there are various figures preparing to run in 2024 who are not Donald Trump. There’s all sorts of ways to do this, but fundamentally, it’s got to be a practice of addition by addition, not addition by subtraction. The notion that you’ve got to cut people out of the party because they don’t agree with Donald Trump, that to me is the wrong way for the party to succeed and to be more popular and to garner more support in the long run.
CHUCK TODD:
Alright, Kimberly, then how do you kick, how do you kick Trump out without his people, right? Is that the problem? Is that the devil’s bargain here?
KIMBERLY ATKINS STOHR:
Well, I don’t think that that’s the issue here. I think what Lanhee pointed out was a decision that Republicans had to make after the election in November and they chose not to. I don’t think this is an idea of a party being held hostage by someone. I think it’s a party that has adopted the views of that person. This is a party not just of Trump, but of Trumpism. And they believe that the big lie is advantageous to them politically, that trying to restrict voting is advantageous for them politically, and everything else that the former president is seeking to do. So, I think the party has already made that decision and it has already become the party of Trumpism.
CHUCK TODD:
You know, Anne Gearan, the Biden White House continues to believe that if they project normalcy that time will somehow make that wing of the, of the GOP fade away. Are they still believing this?
ANNE GEARAN:
I think so, Chuck. I mean, certainly, we had an example this week where the press secretary, Jen Psaki, was asked about Trump being suspended from Facebook for two years and did she think that was a good idea. And that’s a, you know, that was a sweet pitch. She could have just knocked that out of the park and gone to town, and she didn’t. She basically just said, “He’s not our problem. We’re, we’re focused on other things.” It goes to Biden’s basic view that he has to show the work and that the only way to get Democrats elected in 2022 and for him to be re-elected is for them to, you know, do stuff, not talk about the past.
CHUCK TODD:
Chris, you and I are going to talk more extensively on a podcast later this month, but I’m curious, this past year, what have you learned? What have you reflected on?
CHRIS MATTHEWS:
Well, you know, when you’re not on the air every week or every night, you do sort of get a little distance. Like when I was in the Peace Corps and I would keep up with events by reading Atlantic Magazine. So, I mean, you do see the pattern. And you know, what happened the other day with General, General Flynn saying we ought to have or should have a military coup, isn’t such a big jump from “the election was stolen from me; we don’t have a legitimate government.” Two-thirds of the Republican Party saying the election wasn’t fair. It’s not a big jump to say, “Okay, that’s not a legitimate government. We can overthrow it.” But just remember, all these people, men and women who’ve served in our military all the way up swore an oath to the Constitution. Let’s not forget, they swore an oath, just like Donald Trump did.
CHUCK TODD:
Don’t forget his book right there, Chris Matthews, “This Country: My Life in Politics and History.” Thank you all for watching today. And remember, if it’s Sunday, it’s Meet The Press.