VIDEO: Full interview: Hillary Clinton, CodeCon 2017

background information: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/fake-news-macedonia-teen-shows-how-its-done/

CodeCon 2017 Video length 1:17:26 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgdJlzuaJ6k

11:50 (let's talk about weaponization and why weren't you weaponizing it? why is the right wing so good at it?)

Here's how I see it and I hope others will jump into this debate in the months ahead because there's a lot we have to understand if we're going to avoid the continuing assault on our sources of information. ... What we thought we were doing, here's the arena we were playing in, was going to like, Obama 3.0, you know, better targeting, better messaging and the ability to turn out our voters as we identified them and to communicate more broadly with voters.

13:30: Here's what the other side was doing, and they were in a different arena. Through 'content farms' through an enormous investment in falsehoods, fake news, call it what you will, the other side was using 'content' that was just flat-out false and delivering it in a very personalized way. Both above the radar screen and below. ...That really influenced the information that people were relying on. And there's been some studies done since the election that if you look at Facebook, the vast majority of the "news items" posted were fake.

They were connected to, as we now know, the 1,000 Russian agents who were involved in delivering those messages. They were connected to the bots that are just out of control. And we see now this new information about Trump's twitter account being populated by millions of bots, and it was such a new experience...We were, we did not engage in false content, we may have tried to put every piece of information in the best possible light..and explanations, but we weren't in the same category as the other side...(side discussion of weaponizing tech and how the republicans are so far advanced in tech than the dems and how the DNC was bankrupt and insolvent while the RNC invested $100M, which Trump is 'handed')

The question is where and how did the Russians get in this? And I think it's a very important question..Read the declassified report by the intelligence community that came out in early January..17 agencies, all in agreement, which I know from my experience as a senator and secretary of state is hard to get. They concluded with high confidence that the Russians ran an extensive information war campaign against my campaign to influence voters in the election. They did it through paid advertising, we think, they did it through false news sites, they did it through these 1,000 agents, they did it through machine learning, which you know keep spewing this stuff out over and over again, the algorithms that they developed. Now, that was the conclusion.

And I think it's fair to ask, how did that actually influence the campaign and how did they know which messages to deliver? Who told them? Who were they coordinating with or colluding with? Because the Russians historically in the last couple of decades and then increasingly, are launching cyberattacks, and they are stealing vast amounts of information. And a lot of the information they've stolen they've used for internal purposes to affect markets and affect intelligence services, etc. So this was different because they went public and they were conveying this weaponized informaton and the content of it. And they were running..And there's all these stories about these guys over in Macedonia who are running these fake news sites, and I've seen them now, and you sit there and it looks like a low-level CNN operation...

So the Russians, in my opinion, and based on the intel and counter-intel of people I've talked to, could not have known how best to weaponize that information unless they had been guided..guided by Americans...and guided by people who had polling and data information...Now, let me just finish because this is the second and third step..We know that they did that. We understand it. Best example? Within one hour, one hour, of the Access Hollywood tapes being leaked, within one hour the Russians, or say Wikileaks, same thing, dumped the Podesta emails. Now if you've ever read the Podesta emails they are annodine to boredom..But, they were...they were run of the mill emails, especially run of the mill for a campaign, should we do this, what did she say, stuff that was so common, basic. Within one Hour they dumped them and then they began to weaponize them. And they began to have some of their allies within the internet world, like Infowars, take out pieces and begin to say the most outrageous, outlandish absurd lies you could imagine. So they had to be ready for that and they had to have a plan for that, and they had to be given a go-ahead. Ok, this could be the end of the Trump campaign, dump it now, and then let's do everything we can to weaponize it. And we know it hurt us.

You know the Comey letter which was, now we know, partly based on a false memo from the Russians, it was a classic piece of Russian disinformation 'kompromat' they call it. So for whatever reason, and I speculate but I can't look in the guys mind, he dumps that on me in October 28 and I immediately start falling. But what was really interesting...at the same time the biggest Google searches were not for Comey because that information was just lying out there, it was for Wikileaks. So voters who are being targeted with all this false information are genuinely trying to make up their minds - what does it mean? And we know that the Google searches for this stuff were particlarly high in places in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

(Question: Who was directing them, from your perspective, and do you blame, and I'm just going to use Facebook...but do you blame...any of these platforms for doing nothing what should they have done?)

(25:20) We're getting more information about all of the contacts between Trump campaign officials and Trump associates with Russians before, during and after the election so we're hoping that we'll get enough imformaton to be able to answer that question.. Yes, I'm leaning Trump. I think it's pretty hard not to. I think that the marriage of the domestic fake news operations, the domestic RNC, republican ally data, combined with the very effective capabilities that the Russians brought. Basically the group running this was the GRU which is the military intelligence arm of the Russian military and they have a very sophisticated cyber operation. In bed with Wikileaks, in bed with Guccifer, in bed with DCLeaks. And, youknow, DCLeaks and Guccifer which were dropping a lot of this stuff on me, they haven't, they haven't done anything since early January. Their job was done. They got their job was done.

So we're going to I hope connect up a lot of the dots and it's really important because when Comey did testify before being fired this last couple of weeks, he was asked, are the Russians still involved, and he goes 'yes' why wouldn't they be, it worked for them. And it's important that Americans and particularly people in tech and business understand Putin wants to bring us down and he is an old KGB agent. I've had run-ins with him..it's deeper than that, it's way beyond me...I'm, again, not exactly sure what conclusions we should draw but here's what I believe. I believe that what was happening to me was unprecidented and we were scrambling. We went and told everyone we could find in the middle of the summer the Russians were messing with the election and we were basically shooed away. It was oh, there she goes, a vast right wing conspiracy, now it's a vast Russian conspiracy.

Well, turned out we were right. We saw evidence of it and we could track it. We couldn't get the press to follow it. And we never got confirmation. Remember, Comey was more than happy to talk about my emails but he wouldn't talk about investigation of the Russians. So people went to vote on Nov 8 having no idea there was an active counter-intelligence investigation going on with the Trump campaign....

So if I put myself in the position of running a platorm like Facebook, first of all , they've got to get back to trying to curate it more effectively...I don't know enough about what they could do in real time, it's wasn't like we were not having conversations with them, because a lot of people on our team were.

I also think I was the victim of the assumption that I was going to win...The networks...putting {Trump} on all the time...My policies ...got 32 minutes total airtime. Total....and at some point it bleeds over into misogyny...

37:26 - "...I have a new organization called Onward Together and I'm helping some of these new groups that have sprung up online, to recruit candidates, run candidates, help candidates, go to town halls and expose republican members for their hypocricy and the like....All of this depends on what we're talking about. So, if the republicans continue to make progress as they are going into the next generation of personalization, message delivery, phony stories - go to Netflix and, say you want to see a political documentary. Eight of the top 10, last time I checked a few weeks ago, were screeds against President Obama or me. Or both of us.

Now I love Netflix, but we're not making the documentaries that are going to get onto Netflix..Because democrats are not putting their money there. You know, there's a classic line, democrats give money to candidates, they want a personal connection. So the classic line is, democrats like to fall in love, republicans just fall in line. Republicans build institutions, Republicans invest in those institutions. Republicans are much more willing to push and cross the line.

And democrats, I've talked to dozens of donors since my election experience, and I've said, look, I'm all for who you want to support in 2020 but what about 2017 and what about 2018 and what about helping the DNC try to leapfrog over it's horrible data deficit and how about supporting some of these new groups to generate some new activity .. We are not good historically at building institutions and we've got to get a lot better and that includes content...I had to say in practically every one of my speeches, Barack Obama saved the economy and he doesn't get the credit he deserves...

(42:00)...Among the groups I'm supporting is a group called Run for Something which was started by a young woman who worked for me in my campaign. They've had thousands of people go on the website to try to figure out what does it mean to run, and then to put in information, here's what I'm thinking of, and we're beginning to win some races. Another group, that's been around a longer time, called Emerge America, supports women who run. Their grassroots operations invested in women in Nevada. We flipped both houses. I won Nevada, we won the house and the senate in Nevada. So they're playing catch-up and trying to get more progressive and smart about their policies. We've used to leave so many races uncontested; we're not going to do that anymore.

...This goes back to the institution building. Because the media forces on the republican side are entrenched and very effective, you've got obviously Fox, but you've also got Sinclair buying 140+ local stations...local news, yeah there is the internet and everybody gets their news off the internet, but local tv is still incredibly powerful...We're going to have to find other people to compete against what is a considerable advantage on the other side.( discussion of Basos' buying the WaPo 'white-water-level investigations')

(question: How do you respond to articles that you should sunset yourself?)

I'm not going anywhere. I have a big stake in what happens in this country. I'm very unbowed and unbroken about what happened because I don't what it to happen to everyone else, I don't want it to happen to the values and instititions I care about in America. And I think we're at a really pivotal point. Therefore, I"m going to keep writing and keep talking and supporting people on the front lines of The Resistance.

(48:19) (Question: Given...what Donald Trump is saying and doing...it looks like it's a clear and present danger to the world. And we're all talking here, which is good, but I don't feel like we're doing enough, maybe in the US, definitely in the world, right now to eliminate this clear and present danger. What can we do right now?)

YOu know, I'm really glad you asked the question because I do think that what he's doing is very dangerous to our position in the world, our leadership, and the stability of the world. I mean, when you give a blank check to the Russians and the Saudis and others who are engaged in authoritarian and dictatorial regimes, you are sending a message, we don't care what you do. And that message will be heard.

Now, we weren't always able to control what others did, but we sure made it clear we didn't think it was a good idea to engage in invasions and mass murders and other things that we see from the Philippenes to the Middle East. (questioner is smirking) When you turn on your allies and you treat them with such distain and contempt, our democratic, Nato allies, who stood with us and came to our aid after 9/11, you're sending a message you don't care about history or even about the current problems that we face.

Now, the only comfort I can get out of having lost in the way I did, and having the Russians play such a role, is that Macron was ready and able to rebut that. He said 'I'm the Hillary Clinton of this election' and they had certain institutional amd media protections that we don't have, but he also was really smart with how he dealt with it. And it also has given a lot of good understanding to Angela Merkel and her team as she moves toward her election. Ok?

And I think that is important because we need to reform democracies, we need to reform economies, we need to deal with some of the issues that are coming at us, like artificial intelligence and robotics, and what the heck we're going to do with all these people that are not going to have jobs. There's lots of big questions that the democratic world has to face, including Israel.

But we cannot stand idly by and allow Trump to continue to undermine the very strong foundations based on values that we in democracies share. Politicians come and go but these values and the role they've played in stabilizing the world after the worst war in humanity is critically important. You mentioned climate change. Apparently they are debating in the WH whether to pull out of the Paris Agreement. There are only two nations in the world that are not signatories to the Paris Agreement - Nicaragua and Syria. For the US to throw our lot in with this very, very small number of countries that have turned their backs on climate change, is not only a breech of agreement - Usually, when you come into office you can try to reform, maybe tinker with agreements. But part of what keeps us going is America's word is good and you stand with the prior administration whether it was of your party or not. They're looking to throw that out the window.

But what's really stupid about it is you're throwing out the economic opportunities that being a part of the Paris Agreement provide for the US. Now, that is what I find that totally incomprehensible. Now, it's going to be interesting to see where they end up. The president is a very impulsive, reactive personality. So if we all like Paris, the Paris Agreement, he may decide to get out of it. Not even understanding one bit about what that means. Or understanding the economic cost of it.

(53:30) Somebody's going to, really - probably more than one somebody, will really have the market for clean energy exports. China is moving full speed ahead to be that country. Some of the european countries particularly when it comes to wind are already there. Israel, I know, has some great research being done particularly on solar. I mean, there's a huge market that somebody's going to own and we're giving it up. There will be entrepreneurs and businesses and you'll do your best to be competitive, but you won't have the full force and support of your government and I feel that's incredibly foolish.

(question: The present administration is very befuddling. This morning Spicer said only the President and only a small group of people know what covfefe means. You've been a party to a lot of classified information and you were at Donald Trumps wedding. What do you know aobut him we don't and how do you explain his bizarre behavior and appeal?)

You don't have a high enough classification to know what covfefe means. I was never, I was never even a social friend and it was kind of a lark to go to his third wedding. But I have to tell you, I sat behind Shakel O'Neil so I didn't see anything. But, seriously, the behavior that we are now seeing was always present but it was subordinated to real estate interests. He started attacking Reagan in 1988, you know, 'our government is a disgrace', so he's been an equal-opportunity insulter going back many years. ... he latched on to the lie of the birther movement about President Obama, rode that as far as he could.

But he does have a visceral grasp of America's political underbelly. He really understands how to inflame people, how to motivate them, how to bond with them. Over whatever their grievance is. Whatever resentment or point of anger that you may have if he can get into it, whether it's race or sex or xenophobia or anti-islamophobia, whatever it is. And so we're seeing it on a broader stage and it is deeply troubling, for not only for our politics but for our position in the world. And I think the best thing we can do is to continue to stand up and to continue to defend the truth...

We need the media, we need the tech world, we need the online world, we need everybody to be calling them out on their outrageous lies. And make it clear that, we can have a debate about what's the best way to provide healthcare, we can have a debate about a budget, but when you present a budget with a $1T mathmatical error, it's not like we're going to ignore it. And I think the more voices that can be pushing back, especially in areas that you know things about, the better.

(57:45) And I'll just get back to politics and elections, we gotta have your support here in California and across the country to try to take back the House..and field more people to run...now is the time to get in there. Because I think people will be hungry for straight-talking, common sense, factual information. We don't want to act like the American public is incapable of making informed decisions. We just have to make sure the information they get is founded in evidence and reality. And then we can have a real debate.

(question: is the polling industry as inaccurate as we perceive it, and is there any quick suggestions to this crowd on how to fix it?)

...We knew that I'd taken a tremendous hit after the Comey letter and then later I understood the role that Wikileaks played in it. But the Comey letter was measurable; you could see my drop. ...Before the Comey letter, based on our polling, I had about a 22 point lead in the Philidelphia suburbs. After that letter, my momentum, particularly among women in the suburbs, stopped and dropped. ...I just got killed out in the country and my numbers couldn't hold me up. ...I think polling is going to have to undergo some, some revisions on how they actually measure people, how they reach people. The best assessments as of right now are that the polling was not that inaccurate but it was predominately national polling, and I won nationally. What was not as obvious was what was happening in the states where I was under a lot of pressure from Comey, Wikileaks, voter suppression, fake news, all that, and that's what kind of happened.

(question: ...What has to happen in 2018 to get robust activities in the House particularly regarding investigation..and how important is a democrat majority, in your opinion, to have a proper investigation into the Russian stuff and the kleptocracy and the other things that appear to be going on?)

It's critical. Now, one would hope that more republicans, as they did during the Watergate investigation. (ah, because as Rob said, I was on the impeachment inquiry staff of the House judiciary committee) And republicans then, were not happy about investigating a president of their own party but they were open to the evidence. And we ran..a meticulous investigation of facts. We don't have that right now in the republican majority in the House, although they are continuing with the House investigation and I'm hoping that will build some momentum.

The republicans have to be constantly pushed to put country above party. But I think it will more likely happen if we're successful in taking back the House, that's where investigations could come. Now in the best of all worlds, if they would set up a non-partisan, bi-partisan outside committee like we did for 9/11 - and put people of unimpeachable integrity, both republicans and democrats, liberals and conservatives, but people who were willing to go where the facts led them, that would be ideal. I don't see that happening right now.

(1:03:10)The only point I would make is, if the republican leadership begins to believe that Trump is a big political burden to them, then they will begin to be more open to a more thorough investigation.

(follow-on question: What do you think the odds are that McConnell, not Ryan but McConnell, will come to that conclusion? )

It all depends upon the numbers. (question: you know this guy?). Yeah, I do. It all depends upon the numbers. I think the Senate Intelligence Committee is working very well together from everything that I can see. You've got the republican chairman, Senator Berg, working with the democractic vice-chairman Senator Warner. They are pursuing a lot of leads. So, both, I think the House committee is trying, and I have to commend Adam Schiff, if any of you are in his district, he's doing an amazing job, he's just so thorough and he's so clear. So there's some movement.

Now with the special prosecutor being appointed, and I've served with him when I was SOS. He was still at the FBI; he's a man of great integrity. That will affect the pace of the investigation and it will affect what happens probably in the Congress but it will move exorably forward. But they will not be rebuffed the way Congress has been 'til now.

(question: Why didn't you spend more time in Wisconsin?)

WE thought we were doing very well in Wisconsin...We sent a lot of great surrogates including Tim Caine and others...And it turned out that our information was not as reliable as I wish it had been...that's in hindsight. The other thing that's in hindsight that's really troubling..The AP did a really well-researched piece about voter suppression in Wisconsin and they literally found people who showed up to vote and got turned away.

(1:06:00) Because Wisconsin under the current governor, Scott Walker, has been one of the leaders in voter suppression, making it difficult. So the 85yo woman who didn't have a photo ID because she doesn't drive any more shows up with her medicare card and her utility bills and they turn her away. African American. Or the veteran, also african-american, who moved from Illinois to Wisconsin, registers to vote, gets on the rolls but he still has his Illinois DL, shows up and they turn him away. The best estimate is that 200,000 people in Wisconsin were either denied or 'chilled' in their efforts to vote. I don't think we believed at the time before the election that there would be anything like that, anything as big as that.

So, I will also say that I referenced earlier that there were all these Google searches going on about Wikileaks. They were particularly prevalent, very high incidence, in certain counties in Wisconsin. So you had counties that had voted for Obama, and were not particularly keen about voting for Trump, but worried that I was going to jail. Worried that I was, you know, running a child trafficking operation in the basement of a pizzaria, in Wikileaks. And you may laugh but people were obsessing over this stuff, obsessing over it! And you put yourself in the position of a low-information voter and all of a sudden your Facebook feed and your Twitter account is saying oh my gosh, Hillary Clinton is running a child trafficking operation in Washington with John Podesta. Well, you don't believe it but this has been such an unbelievable election you kinda go maybe I aught to look into that. ...And so you begin to get sucked into it. And so some people stayed home, some people voted for Trump, some people stayed with me, and some people went third party. Because they wanted to vote, they thought it was their duty, but they didn't like Trump, and now they thought I was as bad as they were being told. So it was a confluence of a lot of things.

(question: advice to young women ?) (skipped)

(last question: On Twitter, If you weigh all the good qualities of bringing real-time information to everyone and the bad qualities of rewarding sass over substance, and generally not having a lot of nuance, do you think it's been bad or good for our discourse in the United States?)

I think it has certainly provided positive information, quick turnaround information to a very large audience. But I think it has become victimized by deliberate efforts to shape the conversation and push it towards conspiracies, lies, false information. And I think it's the same problem Facebook faces. When you try to be all things to all people and you try to open up your platform so people can come in, and you want to be influential, 'cause you expect people will actually tune you in and read and watch what you have, what do you do to try to contain the weaponization and manipulation of that information? I don't think we know yet. And I have a lot of sympathy at this point...for people trying to make this decision. I would just urge them to hurry up.

Because even if you err slightly more on the curating, editorial decision making so that some voices are going to be cut off, some fake news outlets, the guys in Macedonia are going to be denied entry into your platform, I'd rather see us err on that side for a while to see what the effect are instead of being overwhelmed by the challenge. What do you do? How do you determine who should and shouldn't be on your site? I think it's a mixed bag.

(1:14:15) Why would..who is behind...let me just pose this question..who is behind driving up Trump's Twitter followers by the millions? We know they're bots. Why? What is..I assume there is a reason for everything. Is it to make him look more popular than he is? Is it to try to influence others on Twitter about what the messaging is, so that people get caught up in it and lose sight of what they're trying to say? (host: it gets on more people's feeds)

Well, that's my point. You've got millions of pe - the bots are coming in, you've got these repetitive arguments, you're driving up his numbers. But what is it you're trying to achieve? What is the message behind it..? Your sitting in Moscow, or Macedonia, or the White House, where ever you are. That trip may not have worked out so well. There's some blowback. Pushing the guy, failing to reaffirm our committment to Nato, all of that, and how to we recover from that? Well, we begin to divert people again.

(1:15:40) You can't let Trump and his allies be a diversion, they are a threat. And they have been effective up until now. So Twitter is a perfect example, you're gonna drive up the numbers, you got more people chasing rabbits down rabbit holes, you've got all kinds of stuff happening, why? To divert attention. It's like covfefe. Trending worldwide. Maybe for a minute you'll forget the latest accusations about them conspiring with Russia or their $1T mathematical mistake in their budget or depriving 23Million people of health care. It's, it's the circus, right? It's what a classic authoritarian does. It's not just about influencing your institutions and your values; they want to influence your reality. And, you know, that to me is what we're up against and we can't let that go unanswered. Whether it's on Twitter, Facebook or anywhere else.

END

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.