Podcast: From Vlad to Worse

Transcript

Listen: The Beach Boys aren't the only ones picking up good vibrations.

According to former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, Russian surveillance of his Moscow residence was so intense that officials could eavesdrop on his private conversations by monitoring audio vibrations on windows.

And when it came to meddling in his home country's 2016 elections, McFaul makes it clear that the Russians were no less dedicated.

TRANSCRIPT: From Vlad to Worse

Mike McFaul:

If I were pressed hard, do I predict that Putin is going to disrupt our electoral voting counting procedures? My guess is no.

Ian Bremmer:

Hi, I'm Ian Bremmer, and welcome to the GZERO World Podcast. I'm host of the weekly show "GZERO World" on Facebook Watch. In this podcast, we share extended versions of the big interviews from that show. This week I sit down with Mike McFaul, professor of political science at Stanford University and former US ambassador to Russia. Mike became somewhat of an internet celebrity for his social media savvy and engagement with Twitter followers during his ambassadorship, and he's an expert on both Russian politics and US foreign policy. Today, I'll ask him about where US/Russia relations are headed, and what Putin's play is in Syria and on cyber. Let's get to it.

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Ian Bremmer:

I'm here in Munich with Professor Mike McFaul. Political science, Stanford University. Of course, before that, America's ambassador to the Russian Federation. Mike, wonderful to have you here on The GZERO.

Mike McFaul:

Thanks for having me here.

Ian Bremmer:

So Mike, US/Russia relations today are, shall we say, not good.

Mike McFaul:

Yes.

Ian Bremmer:

If you needed to make historical comparison, they're as bad as...

Mike McFaul:

I just finished writing a book about this. It's called "From Cold War to Hot Peace."

Ian Bremmer:

That's the earliest I've ever seen anyone try to plug a book. That's really astonishing, Mike.

Mike McFaul:

You asked.

Ian Bremmer:

Okay. Yeah.

Mike McFaul:

That's exactly what the book is about.

Ian Bremmer:

Fair enough.

Mike McFaul:

But it's going to set up my answer. Which is to say, after the Soviet Union collapsed, and even earlier than that, the Gorbachev era, the Reagan era, there was a feeling, and I use the word feeling on purpose, in Washington, in Moscow, that Russia was the Soviet Union, and then Russia was entering the West, joining the liberal world order, developing markets and democracy. And I think all the way through 'til about the time I arrived as ambassador, January 2012, ups and downs in that relationship-

Ian Bremmer:

20 years. 20 years.

Mike McFaul:

20 years. 25 years.

Ian Bremmer:

Yeah.

Mike McFaul:

Depending on when you start counting. But Democrats and Republicans, most certainly in the West, believed that that was still happening. And leaders in Russia, to varying degrees, also believed it was still happening. I think 2012, and then really 2014, when Russia invades Ukraine, is when that ends, that project ends. And Putin says earlier, "We don't need to be part of their clubs. We're going to have our own clubs. We're a big enough power that we don't need to be part of the West."

Ian Bremmer:

We have a alliance with the Saudis, but we don't pretend that the Saudis are heading towards the West. It's an authoritarian state. Now, the Russians, it was very clear to anyone watching the Russians that Putin was not a liberal Democrat. That he was not opening his country, he was not making life easier for the opposition, or for the media, or for the NGOs.

Mike McFaul:

Yeah.

Ian Bremmer:

Why did we suspend what otherwise would be fairly common sense when it came to the Russians?

Mike McFaul:

I think the first year or two of Putin, it was clear to me, at least, not clear to everybody, that he was not going to be a liberal Democrat. But then there was another what we call exogenous shock in political science, September 11th. When September 11th happened, there was this new moment between Bush and Putin, President Bush and President Putin, that we are aligned in a kind of civilizational way, by the way, a cultural way against these terrorists that are attacking us. I think that brought new life to the idea that we could be more cooperative.

Ian Bremmer:

Now, is there still a significant level of cooperation between the Americans and Russians today in terms of counter-terrorist activities? Because certainly there, those common interests should, in principle, exist.

Mike McFaul:

To the best of my knowledge, yes. But when I was in the government, I was in the government for five years, first at the White House, then in Moscow with the Obama administration, of course we cooperated on counterterrorism. Because we have mutual interests and we have different capabilities, especially in terms of intelligence gathering. Now, it's tricky. I think it's sometimes too easy to say, "We all hate terrorists. Let's fight terrorists together." Because their definition of a terrorist and our definition of a terrorist are not exactly the same.

Ian Bremmer:

Well, indeed, our definition of terrorists, depending on who you're talking to, can vary.

Mike McFaul:

Correct. It changes. It most certainly does vary. Even in my time in government, it varied. We had some arguments about who is a terrorist and not, for instance, in Syria.

Ian Bremmer:

See, the United States and Russia are close to fighting each other directly in Syria right now.

Mike McFaul:

We may have killed some Russians in Syria, yes.

Ian Bremmer:

Apparently quite a few. What's the threshold, in your view, of conflict between the US and Russia before it becomes something much less controllable?

Mike McFaul:

Well, Syria, even when I was in the government, we were always afraid of these scenarios. Because when you have American planes and Russian planes, and now American soldiers and Russian soldiers fighting in the same place, with very blurry lines about who are good guys and who are bad guys, the potential for conflict is there. And it looks like tragically, that happened. The good news is that the Russian soldiers, it sounds like, were contract. So, they were not part of the Russian command structure. And then I've been very impressed by how cautiously Putin has been in talking about what happened. That's the good news. It's clear to me he does not want escalation with regard to this particular instance. Having said that, Secretary Tillerson actually was just out at Stanford a couple weeks ago outlining their Syria policy. It was a major address, and he made pretty clear that we planned to be in Syria for a long time.

Ian Bremmer:

We've just expanded our footprint there.

Mike McFaul:

We've just expanded.

Ian Bremmer:

Yeah.

Mike McFaul:

We're not going away. And I can tell you, President Putin's not planning to go away either. And I'm not one of these that thinks there'll be a spark there that will lead to some world war between the United States and Russia. That's just not going to happen. But the possibility of another fight, and if it's with regular Russian soldiers, it takes on a much different dimension, I think is there.

Ian Bremmer:

So, more like what happened when the Turks shut down a Russian plane.

Mike McFaul:

Yes.

Ian Bremmer:

With major economic ramifications, diplomatic ramifications.

Mike McFaul:

Yeah. I mean, yes. I mean, the irony of that particular instance was, Erdogan stood up to Putin. And after saying, "Stop doing this," they kept doing it, and finally shot a plane down. And things got really bad for a while, and now they're maybe better than they've ever been.

Ian Bremmer:

Yeah. I've never seen a NATO ally with S-400s before.

Mike McFaul:

Not a good long-term development.

Ian Bremmer:

How much of a threat to American national security do you think Russian cyber capabilities are? How much do you think they're actively trying, not just to get our information, but to damage the United States?

Mike McFaul:

So first of all, their capabilities are enormous, and I think a lot greater than most Americans know.

Ian Bremmer:

Close to parity with the US?

Mike McFaul:

Not parity, but tremendous. And offense has always had a defense when it comes to cyber, and just technology has advanced, especially with respect to gathering intelligence. Quite extraordinary what they can do. I used to live there, so I was surveilled 24/7. And I probably shouldn't talk about exactly all their capabilities, but they have a lot of capabilities.

Ian Bremmer:

Why don't you throw one? Throw one, from your experience, that you think people would be surprised by.

Mike McFaul:

So, I lived in this beautiful mansion. It's called Spaso House. Your viewers should look it up. There's videos of it. Fantastic place. My entire house in Palo Alto could fit in the chandelier room of Spaso House. There's something peculiar about the neighborhood, though. It's right downtown. There are a bunch of apartment complexes that surround it. They have for-rent signs in all the windows, and nobody ever moved in. The entire time we were there, nobody ever moved in. And there are all kinds of glass windows that can see right into your bedroom, right into your study, right into your living room. And just because of the vibration on the windows of people speaking, they can pick up everything you're saying. So we had to learn, as a family, everything we said, everything we did ... Yeah. Your eyebrows are going up. Everything we-

Ian Bremmer:

I wasn't going there, Mike.

Mike McFaul:

Everything that happens on a computer or on a cell phone is surveilled. That technology is available, and it's not just in Russia. They can do things in this country as well. But back to your hard question, which I kind of dodged. So, they have tremendous capability. If they wanted to disrupt markets or things like that, they can do that right now. Likewise, they have tremendous-

Ian Bremmer:

So, shut down an American exchange.

Mike McFaul:

Shut down's a strong word. But create ambiguity about the integrity of that information, that's a different thing. The answer to that is yes. You don't have to shut down things to make people nervous, and that's what scares me most about what they can do with our electoral machinery. So as we learned in 2016, we learned a lot of things in terms of what they did in terms of stealing data and publishing it for political reasons, mixing up in our political debates through their various social media channels, tweeting, #CrookedHillary. That's a pretty deliberate political statement. But what we also learned is that, in two dozen states-

Ian Bremmer:

And we know that was not just random Russians. We know that was linked to the Russian government.

Mike McFaul:

Yes. #CrookedHillary was tweeted out by Sputnik. So, they weren't being very-

Ian Bremmer:

Owned by the Russian government.

Mike McFaul:

Owned by the Russian government. So they were being pretty overt about it, and there's a big normative debate that we haven't had whether we should allow that or not. We don't allow Russians to give money to Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. That's against the law. Why do we allow them to give in-kind assistance for elections?

Mike McFaul:

But the scariest part is that we also learned ... And if we've learned it in the public, that means that those that have read the secret, there's a lot more to this story. That's always my impression. Having read the other side, we're only seeing a little bit. But they're on two-dozen computer systems, voting registration, perhaps even machines that count votes. They did not use that capability to disrupt the vote. That's the good news. And maybe we deterred them, in conversations that President Obama and President Putin had. But the capability's still there. And if that would happen, God forbid, that would raise doubt about the integrity of our electoral process.

Mike McFaul:

Now, I don't think they're going to do it. Everybody's talking 2018. We just heard from a lot of intelligence agencies that they're messing around. And they are in terms of propaganda and in terms of media. Maybe we'll get to that in a minute. If I were pressed hard, do I predict that Putin is going to disrupt our electoral voting counting procedures? My guess is no.

Ian Bremmer:

Are you convinced that they weren't doing that in 2012, 2014, because they didn't have the capabilities or they didn't want to? Or is it plausible that they were, and we just had no clue?

Mike McFaul:

In 2016, we discovered some major things they did. In particular, stealing data from the DNC and John Podesta, the chairman of Clinton's campaign. And then that information was published. And in my mind, there's no doubt that the Russians were the ones that provided that. The thing you need to know as well in terms of intelligence-gathering, and all countries with this capability do it, including our own. They try to do it without you knowing about it. And the Russians are good at it. They have lots of capability.

Mike McFaul:

So that intelligence-gathering is ongoing, and is much better today than it was in 2012, 2014. What they did in terms of actual intervention in the elections, I think, was qualitatively different in 2016, and I think that had to do with President Putin's preferences in that election. He doesn't like Secretary Clinton. I know that. I've witnessed it. I've seen the way they interact. And he believes, firmly believes, that we intervened in his elections back for the parliamentary election in December, 2011, and then his presidential election. He believes that.

Ian Bremmer:

Now, we do generally try to say that we think their system is illegitimate. Right? Not democratic. The elections are kind of fake.

Mike McFaul:

Right.

Ian Bremmer:

The opposition media is-

Mike McFaul:

Right.

Ian Bremmer:

So, I mean, does he have a point?

Mike McFaul:

He does have a point, in my view. So did we give money to the opposition in 2011, 2012? The answer to that's absolutely not. The opposition, by the way, when I was ambassador, most of them never wanted to meet with me because they didn't want to be tainted. Right?

Ian Bremmer:

Yep.

Mike McFaul:

But your point is a very good one. Secretary Clinton did make a statement criticizing the free and fairness of the parliamentary election in 2011. Now, we say we're just holding up universal values when we make those kind of statements. But if you're Putin, that sounds like you're taking a side in that election. And I don't agree with his assessment, but I understand it, and he decided he wanted to push back come 2016.

Ian Bremmer:

It's getting harder to talk about universal values every day.

Mike McFaul:

It is. That's a victory for Putin too, by the way.

Ian Bremmer:

Well, so let's go there. Let's go there, because so many people talking about fake news now. And your view is, that is exactly what Putin wants.

Mike McFaul:

To me, especially their campaign in the United States on their various social media platforms, their bots, and their traditional media, which they also have, that's the goal. So it's not to convince you that Putin is a Democrat. It's to convince you that there are no Democrats. There's no difference between Putin's regime and our regime. It's all whataboutism. That's another thing, a very explicit strategy they have. So, there's no good and bad. They want you to be cynical about everything. And in my view, they've been rather successful.

Ian Bremmer:

They've been successful in terms of supporting their own interests with their intervention in our elections. But you look at Congress today, Democrats and Republicans don't agree on much. They agree on Russia.

Mike McFaul:

Good point.

Ian Bremmer:

Right? Really tough. I mean, was this a massive own goal by Putin?

Mike McFaul:

Well, I think it's mixed. So on the stirring up stuff so that we're fighting amongst ourselves, so that we're pulling back, that we're arguing with each other about fake news, their contributions to that, I think, have been a positive outcome for Putin and his definition of Russian foreign policy. And I want to emphasize that. It's his definition. It's not mine, or I would define Russian interest in a different way. But the second goal, which is to have a president in the White House that was going to be cooperative with Russia, they have not achieved that. You're absolutely right. I think in many ways, it's worse today than it was-

Ian Bremmer:

Than it would've been under Hillary.

Mike McFaul:

Yes. Maybe hard to say with Secretary Clinton, but most certainly there have been... there's a new sanctions law, lethal assistance now to Ukraine. Both of those are new things that happened after Obama. And most certainly, there's been no breakthrough in US/Russian relations. There's hardly anything going on. So, they did not accomplish their ends with respect to that bilateral. Hoping to improve bilateral relations by having Trump elected, that was not achieved.

Ian Bremmer:

Now, how should the Americans counter what the Russians are doing in terms of American national security? I'm not talking Ukraine. I'm not talking Syria. I'm talking explicitly their capabilities and efforts against the United States. What should we be doing that we are not doing right now?

Mike McFaul:

Let's start with practical things that could happen before 2018, because the bigger debate will take longer. Very concrete thing. For every vote that is cast, there needs to be a paper trail for that vote. So that in the event of a computer malfunction, or an intervention, or a sabotage, that we have a way to audit the vote. Right now, there's a dozen states in America that do not have that. And that's just, to me, a no-brainer. We should just do that. That's the first thing.

Ian Bremmer:

We need to get back to hanging chads.

Mike McFaul:

We should just have simple backup. Even me, when I write books, maybe I'm old-fashioned, but every now and then, when I get to the end of a chapter, I print it out. Because God knows what might happen to my computer, and the cloud, and just-

Ian Bremmer:

The Russians. Absolutely.

Mike McFaul:

Just print it out, baby. Just put it in the file, just so you have a hard copy. We should do that with the vote. Number two, basic thing, but everybody that deals with computers and networks that counts votes should have to do dual authentication to get onto your email, to get onto the system. On my Gmail account, just to make it very practical, I can choose whether to use dual authentication or not. That's my choice. At Stanford, I don't get a choice. I can't get onto the Stanford system, I can't read my Stanford email unless I have dual authentication with my phone. Why can't we do that for people that count our votes? That seems pretty elementary. If Stanford can do it, why can't we do it there? Now, there are big constitutional issues here. We do not have a unitary state. So it has to be negotiated, but at least the norms of that should be about that. That's on the first piece.

Mike McFaul:

On the media piece, it's harder, of course, because we have this First Amendment thing. But I would say a couple of things there. One, Russians don't get First Amendment rights. They're not American citizens. And then two, I would say we should just replicate the basic rules that we have for television and for campaign contributions that the Federal Election Commission does. That's got to be now on all platforms. Therefore, in-kind contributions to a campaign for a foreign government should not be legal.

Ian Bremmer:

For any foreign government.

Mike McFaul:

For any foreign government.

Ian Bremmer:

Ally, antagonist, doesn't matter.

Mike McFaul:

Yeah. Now, it gets into some complicated space. So Christopher Steele, he's a UK citizen. Should a UK citizen be allowed to contract with a campaign?

Ian Bremmer:

Under that circumstance, you'd probably say no if you want to be consistent. Right?

Mike McFaul:

I would say no.

Ian Bremmer:

Yeah. You would say no.

Mike McFaul:

I would say no.

Ian Bremmer:

Even though the capabilities are there, can't contract to them. American system. So, what about tit-for-tat sort of thing? So if the Americans-

Mike McFaul:

Deterrence. Yeah.

Ian Bremmer:

... are whacked by the Russians, if an American NGO is shut down, and if an American media organization is shut down in Russia, should Russian media organizations be allowed to operate in the United States, in your view?

Mike McFaul:

Yes. I think they should, with a couple of conditions. So we used to debate this when I was in the government, and I was always convinced by the argument, "We're not them. Let's not do to them what they do to us."

Ian Bremmer:

Now, if you had access to President Trump right now, and you could have him do one thing that would help him improve the state of the US/Russia relationship right now, carrot or stick, it would be what?

Mike McFaul:

I think the one thing he could do is just speak honestly about what happened in 2016.

Ian Bremmer:

You think that would improve the state of the US/Russian relations?

Mike McFaul:

Yes, and here's why. Because right now, there's hope. In fact, I just talked to some Russians downstairs. So, anecdotal evidence from an hour ago. Right now, there's a view in Moscow, there's the good Czar. This is a metaphor from the 19th century. That's Donald Trump. He's trying to do the good things in US/Russian relations, and all of his minions are trying to block him. So they keep hoping that if they can just pull him out, get him away from his national security team, and Secretary Mattis, and all these hardliners, they'll be able to improve relations. I think that's a false illusion. And therefore, to have the Trump administration with one foreign policy, that's the first step before we get to cooperation.

Ian Bremmer:

Mike McFaul. Thank you very much.

Mike McFaul:

Thanks for having me.

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