Interview transcript: former head of the NSA and commander of the US cyber command, General Keith Alexander

CHRISTOPHER JOYE

Recently retired director of the US National Security Agency and commander of the US Cyber Command General Keith Alexander was interviewed by Australian Financial Review contributing editor Christopher Joye. This is a full transcript of the conversation.

BRIEF BIOGRAPHY

General Keith Alexander, who retired on 31 March 2014, was a four-star general of the United States Army and the longest-serving Director of the National Security Agency. He was also the inaugural Commander of US Cyber Command, which includes the Navy’s 10th Fleet, the 24th Air Force, and the Second Army. He served as Director of the NSA between 1 August 2005 and 28 March 2014 and Commander of Cyber Command between 21 May 2010 and 28 March 2014.

His tenure as NSA director covered wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, global counter-terrorist operations, the identification and elimination of Osama bin Laden, the alleged launch of offensive cyber-weapons, like Stuxnet, to slow Iran’s nuclear weapons program, cyber-attacks on the US financial system, significant innovations in intelligence data collection and analysis, and the more recent international controversies surrounding the leaks of vast volumes of classified intelligence by the former NSA contractor, Edward Snowden.

TRANSCRIPT

A.PERSONAL REFLECTIONS ON NSA/CYBER COMMAND

B.NSA OPERATIONS

C.CYBER-THREATS, CYBER-WAR, AND RISK OF PHYSICAL WAR

D.ESPIONAGE/SURVEILLANCE STATE OF PLAY

E.ENCRYPTION AND ZERO-DAY DEBATE

F.SNOWDEN CRISIS

G.METADATA COMMUNICATION COLLECTION DEBATE

H.LIBERTY, SECURITY AND SURVEILLANCE

I.HUAWEI BAN DEBATE

J.OTHER

GEN Alexander: Hi Chris, how are you doing?

AFR: Yes, good thanks. We appreciate you setting aside the time today.

Gen. Alexander: I had to enter the PIN for this conference call facility three times! It wouldn’t accept it the first two times—it must be an anti-NSA device [laughs]!

A.PERSONAL REFLECTIONS ON NSA/CYBER COMMAND

AFR: General Alexander, why did you agree to do such a comprehensive interview on these controversial issues only weeks after stepping-down as the longest-serving director of the NSA?

Gen. Alexander: The reason that I’m doing this is because I fundamentally believe that what the nation has asked the NSA to do—to defend our country, our allies, and our forces abroad while also protecting our civil liberties and privacy under the most comprehensive intelligence oversight regime in the world—is something that, contrary to much reporting, the NSA and all our people have faithfully executed.

NSA has been fulfilling its responsibilities to the nation and yet it is being constantly vilified and misrepresented in the press. The media have presented the unauthorised leaks of stolen US intelligence—most of which has nothing to do with American citizens and privacy but instead represents legitimate foreign intelligence gathering—in such a way that the public is incorrectly led to believe that NSA, and its people, are doing something illegal or improper.

Yet every independent investigation, every independent review, has found that the NSA is doing exactly what the nation—and Congress and the Administration more specifically—have asked us to do.

So, my purpose for doing this interview, Chris, is to help set the record straight. To give folks the real facts. To tell people what NSA is doing, why we’re doing it, and why we’ve been asked to do it.

In my opinion, the NSA has a noble mission and its people—both here and abroad (and I know you’ve talked to some of them in Australia)—are true heroes who have worked tirelessly to protect our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, to repeatedly thwart terrorist attacks globally, and to give our leaders the information they need to navigate through complex geopolitical times. So, that’s why I’m here. And hopefully my responses will be helpful to your readers.

AFR: A new organisation called US Cyber Command, which looks like the military wing of the NSA, was set up in 2010. In your own words, what is US Cyber Command’s job and how is this distinct from the NSA?

Gen. Alexander: The NSA and Cyber Command have synergistic missions. NSA is home to America’s codemakers and codebreakers, who have consistently originated timely and valuable intelligence for our nation’s decision-makers since it was established back in 1952.

NSA has two main missions. The first is foreign intelligence gathering: that is, the collection of foreign “signals”, or communications. NSA collects, decodes, translates, analyses and disseminates foreign signals [transmitted over many mediums including copper, fiber, radio, satellite, or other wireless channels] for intelligence and counterintelligence purposes and to support our military operations.

NSA’s second job is “information assurance”, which involves protecting our government’s security systems. NSA’s difficult challenge is to prevent adversaries from gaining access to the nation’s most sensitive secrets—our government’s intellectual property so to speak.

NSA also enables network warfare operations, like those conducted by Cyber Command, to defeat terrorists and other threats abroad subject to US laws and our exacting governance regime, which includes comprehensive oversight by, and accountability to, the intelligence community’s Inspector General, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the Congress’s House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the Department of Justice’s Oversight Section, and the President and his Administration.

Cyber Command’s mission is three-fold: first, to defend the nation from cyber-attacks; second, to operate and defend the Defense Department’s information networks; and, finally, to support our military combat commanders with the cyber capabilities they need, including conducting full-spectrum military cyber-space operations, when directed, in order to enable our military actions across the air, land, sea, space and cyber domains. In short, Cyber Command’s task is to ensure the military has freedom of action in cyber-space—and to deny the same to our adversaries.

AFR: Do you believe the same person should run both the NSA and Cyber Command, which are both situated at Fort Meade? Critics have argued this gives one person awesome power with Cyber Command now encompassing the Second Army, Tenth Navy Fleet, and the 24th Air Force.

This question comes back to a 2008 decision that Secretary of Defense Gates made, I think correctly, that one person should be responsible for both organisations.

Secretary Gates made that decision in 2008 and actually wrote it down in a memo that came out in June 2009. And the basic reason is that NSA has the technical expertise in cyber-space that Cyber Command could not easily replicate without expending a lot of valuable time and money.

So Secretary Gates and others—myself included—thought the best thing we could do was to leverage NSA’s unique capabilities. NSA and Cyber Command each have their own mission sets, but they both benefit from shared technology and resources.

But do you need one leader? I think that given the operational and technical synergies between NSA and Cyber Command, there are significant advantages in having unity of command and unity of control.

If one person’s in charge who can see clearly what the nation needs from an intelligence perspective, and what its cyber defence needs are, that person will be able to make decisions quickly and efficiently that are in the best interests of our country.

And if that person can’t make a decision, it can be escalated up the chain of command. If it is a contentious question, you can bring it to the President, the Secretary of Defense, and the Director of National Intelligence (DNI).

If you kept the leadership of NSA and Cyber Command separate, the risk is these two interdependent organisations would grow apart, which, I think, would be to the detriment of the nation’s future cyber operations and security.

AFR: So how did NSA come into existence?

Gen. Alexander: The history of the NSA can be traced back to the US Army’s Cipher Bureau in its Military Intelligence Division, which cracked diplomatic codes during and after WWI, and then the US Army’s Signal Intelligence Service (SIS), which in the late 1930s decrypted Japanese diplomatic messages enciphered by cryptodevices nicknamed “RED” and “PURPLE”. The SIS decrypts helped decision-makers understand Japanese intentions prior to WWII and arguably truncated the Pacific war. NSA itself was established by President Truman in 1952 and merged the Army’s and Navy’s crypto capabilities that were breaking foreign codes while protecting our own communications. Today NSA retains both these core job descriptions.

AFR: Rightly or wrongly you’ve been portrayed in a somewhat monochrome fashion in the past. We wanted to start out by getting some more granular human insights. From your personal perspective, what were your best and worst moments running NSA and Cyber Command?

Gen. Alexander: Well, Chris, it was the greatest privilege and honor in my life to lead NSA and Cyber Command, and here’s why. They have tremendous people. You know, eight years and eight months into the job, I came to work every day, and got to collaborate with folks who were dedicating their lives to protecting the nation—to defending our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines abroad—and working with our allies to do the same. And they do it not for the money, but for the mission.

When you reflect on that at the end of your life, and you look back and you ask yourself the question, “Was it a life worth living?”, my response is, “Absolutely: what a remarkable bunch of people to have been associated with”.

We’re not going to make a million dollars, but we’ll have done things that nobody else could have done. We’re going to save lots of lives, work with some of the world’s top talent, and have overcome obstacles that seemed insurmountable to everyone else. And we identify and thwart national security threats abiding by a comprehensive legal and executive oversight regime that safeguards our citizens’ liberties and privacies.

Most of our successes can’t be talked about. But the people at NSA and Cyber Command know what they are. We can stand there and say we made the world a safer place, which I think is just great stuff. It’s a unique, privileged experience.

AFR: On the human front, the outgoing director of our equivalent to the NSA, the Australian Signals Directorate’s Ian McKenzie, told me something similar. He said that ASD “required really smart people—ranging from linguists, engineers, mathematicians, computer scientists, and political scientists—to try to do the impossible”. Can you delve a little more specifically into your highs and lows?

Gen. Alexander: So, one of my best moments—and Ian may have talked to you about this—was probably back in Iraq in 2005 and 2006. The casualties were going up significantly—with a dozen allied soldiers being killed or wounded every day—driven by a surge in roadside bombings or IEDs.

And NSA had an idea that it could radically improve that problem. This involved collecting a much broader range of insurgent communications and then, crucially, compressing the time it took us to get actionable intelligence back into the hands of the end users. We successfully reduced that disconnect from about 16 hours down to around one minute, which was very gratifying.

NSA deployed over 6,000 people to Iraq and Afghanistan—military and civilian—with one sole purpose in mind: the protection of our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines.

Dave Petraeus [a retired four star General and former CIA director] and others have said that the NSA’s innovations and efforts in Iraq were instrumental, “absolutely invaluable” in his words, to combatting the insurgent networks, significantly cutting the monthly casualty toll from IEDs, and keeping coalition forces safe.

That’s one of the proudest moments: when you think about having some of these NSA civilians going into Iraq, going into Afghanistan, “pulling wire” [techie term referring to managing network cable] to save peoples’ lives without a care for themselves—it’s just superb. We lost 22 cryptologists in those wars. So it’s not without serious risk.

Guys like Admiral Bill McRaven [Commander of US Special Operations Command who is credited with masterminding Operation Neptune Spear, the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden] have also been generous in explaining the role of NSA too. , McRaven describes his SOC operators, who are the tip of our nation’s spear, as “Sigint junkies” [“Sigint” denotes signals intelligence]. He told us:

“90 per cent of the Sigint we get—the actual intelligence comes from the NSA…There is no doubt about it: we literally live and die by the quality of signals intelligence that we get from your folks…Of the 1,700 operations completed in a 12 month period, 91 per cent were enabled by signals intelligence, and 80 per cent were triggered by it…The work NSA is doing forward and in the rear is saving US lives and helping us win this fight.”

When you get that feedback, and you witness the results on the ground, you cannot help but say to yourself, “Wow, this is really something special”.

AFR: And your toughest times?

Gen. Alexander: Beyond losing people in conflicts, the leaks to the media about our classified foreign intelligence capabilities have probably presented me with some of the worst moments.

But it’s not just about Snowden. It’s the fact that thousands of hard-working and patriotic Americans, who put their lives on the line, and have been actively saving the lives of those serving in war zones, are being maligned by the press for doing things they’ve never actually done. I think that is just wrong.

AFR: On a personal level, did you find it tough, mentally and physically, dealing with the pressure of leading these Byzantine organizations—and having the responsibility for preventing another 9/11? And related to this, did you ever feel isolated, or did you always have the unconditional support of your superiors?

Gen. Alexander: Well, I think everybody feels isolated when they’re out battling on their own. But we had the support of all of the Administration, Congress and others. Perhaps not as vocal as I would have liked at times, but it was there nonetheless.

And the pressure of doing the job was relieved by having great deputies. Chris Inglis , who served as chief operating officer and Deputy Director of NSA, is one of the best people I have ever met. He was absolutely superb. I could go in on every one of these problems, walk through it with him, and we would develop a great solution for both NSA and the country.

Likewise, on the Cyber Command side, I had Lieutenant General Jon (“Dog”) Davis. He was also superb. A great leader with tremendous skills. He had been the Deputy in the predecessor command for CYBERCOM—the Joint Functional Component Command – Network Warfare—and he’s the one that guaranteed the success of Cyber Command by helping make sure we stood up the cyber force on time. So, I had terrific people working with me—all the way down the line.

While there is no doubt that these are tough jobs, the rewards outweigh the costs. Think about saving somebody’s life—and they’ll never know you did it. Or the chances are they won’t know. But if you could go home at night, and you know that two people, or a whole squad of guys, were just saved because of what you and your colleagues did—it’s priceless.

In Afghanistan we had insights into an attack on a Norwegian convoy. And we were able to contact them before they were attacked, provide them the information they needed to survive, and avert the convoy while others took the attackers on.

And, you know what, a year later, the Norwegians were able to reciprocate and help us defend some of our key leaders with intelligence they had.

Those are the shared experiences that no matter how hard it is, no matter what you’re facing, at the end of the day you say to yourself, “Wow, this is really unique—these people I work with, and our cause, is terrific”.

AFR: In his speech at your retirement ceremony in March, General Dempsey reportedly referred to you having the 007 parking spot at the Fort. Is this right?

Gen. Alexander: That is correct. It shows you that the folks at NSA have a sense of humor. When they were redoing the parking lot, they said we’ve got about 1,000 spaces. We’re going to start out from 001 and go up to 999. And I quipped, “I guess I’ll get 007, right?” And they laughed and, low and behold, that was my parking spot. We would joke about it. But I’d rather be remembered like an Arnold Schwarzenegger in True Lies. My daughters would be much more impressed!

AFR: Did you really have a Hollywood set designer emulate a bridge from the Starship Enterprise in the Army’s Intelligence and Security Command’s “Information Dominance Centre”? What was the thinking behind this?

Gen. Alexander: Well, to add clarity and truth to that story, it actually occurred before I got there. So I inherited the Information Dominance Centre and I believe the thought of my predecessor was, we’re going into a new area—information warfare and cyber—so how do we help build an esprit de corps and come up with something that will help the Army think about this in a new light? We’ve got to get people energized about carrying out this mission set. We’ve got to have them come in and be creatively inspired to bring disparate data together to help secure our nation.

So I believe my predecessor’s focus—and they did bring in some great folks from Imagineering and others—was on how you fuse independent information together in such a way that it helps our analysts understand what that data means. How it can be used to protect our networks, and harnessed to our advantage in cyber-warfare. That was the intent. And I think the consequence has been even greater pride in the development of the Army cyber corps of the future.

AFR: What were the key differences for you as director of NSA serving under presidents Bush and Obama? Did you have a preferred commander in chief?

Gen. Alexander: Obviously they come from different parties, they view things differently, but when it comes to the security of the nation and making those decisions about how to protect our nation, what we need to do to defend it, they are, ironically, very close to the same point. You would get almost the same decision from both of them on key questions about how to defend our nation from terrorists and other threats.

I think that’s why President Obama made the decision to continue with an evolved version of the FISA business records program [which allows for the collection of communications “metadata” that has been the subject of much US public debate]. He saw the national security value in it.

While I think President Obama came at the metadata collection question from a different perspective, and many expected he would cancel the program, he saw the importance of both that capability and others in defending our nation.

So my frank assessment of both individuals is that they are great people. I worked with both of them for four years and it was a privilege and honor to see decision-making at a presidential level with all of the complexities and nuances they have to contend with. I have deep respect and admiration for both presidents. And while I do have a favorite, I’m not going to reveal that right now!

B. NSA OPERATIONS

AFR: Amidst the Snowden-induced introspection on the costs and benefits of intelligence collection, some of the NSA’s operational victories have arguably faded out of the public consciousness. How much satisfaction did you gain from the NSA’s role in, amongst other things, tracking the communications of Osama bin Laden’s people, which was reportedly crucial to his ultimate identification and elimination (and referenced in the 2013 intelligence budget disclosed by Snowden)? And what about NSA’s involvement in helping thwart Iran’s nuclear weapons program?

Gen. Alexander: In the two cases that you hit, Chris, for sure, our nation and your nation, working together, would use all the intelligence available to accomplish those missions, and do it in such a way that limits the use of force.

I think our policymakers, in both the Obama and Bush Administrations, have been superb at getting that balance right. I would also add that it is in operations like these where partnerships amongst our allies have been exceptional.

While I can’t comment on specific operations, let me highlight John McLaughlin’s observations—who was the CIA Deputy Director and Acting Director for a while—because they apply directly to your questions. John said the NSA is the “very foundation of US intelligence”. He continued:

“I don’t mean to diminish the role of other intelligence agencies, and I say this as a 30-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency who is “CIA” through and through. But in most cases, the NSA is the starting point for determining what holes need to be filled through other means of intelligence-collection. That’s because its information on foreign developments is so comprehensive and generally so reliable. It is the core of intelligence support to US troops in battle. Any efforts to “rein in” the agency must allow for the possibility that change risks serious damage to US security and the country’s ability to navigate in an increasingly uncertain world. In my experience, NSA analysts err on the side of caution before touching any data having to do with US citizens.”

AFR: Is there anything you can say about the bin Laden raid (Operation Neptune Spear)?

Gen. Alexander: Not really. And here’s why. If I were to tell you something there is the possibility that divulging that information could limit our ability to cauterise threats in the future. I think that would be bad for all of us. So, in this case, NSA has made a decision not to talk about our specific role. We’re happy just to say we’re proud to be on the team. How’s that?

But there are two operations I can refer you to that shed light on NSA’s contributions. Bill McRaven has said that when he looked across the spectrum of potential SOC operations, hostage rescue of US citizens is obviously key. And he pointed out that this was an area where the NSA, likewise, serves as an invaluable partner. In these instances SOC looks to NSA analysts for rapid monitoring and informed analysis of developing hostage situations.

McRaven cited the April 2009 high-jacking of the US flagged ship Maersk Alabama as a high profile example of NSA’s “terrific contributions”. During this rescue attempt, which has been brought to the forefront of global consciousness via a Hollywood feature film, McRaven said that intelligence provided by the NSA ensured SOC operators were cognisant of pirate plans and intentions, and also the disposition of other pirate vessels and combatants nearby. He said that NSA’s signals intelligence factored considerably into the successful rescue of Maersk Captain Phillips and the neutralization of his captors by US forces.

The second more recent case, in October 2011, was the kidnapping in Somalia of an American doctor, Jessica Buchanan, and a Danish citizen, Poul Thisted. After three months in captivity, it was determined that Dr. Jessica Buchanan was suffering from a life-threatening medical condition. With her health worsening by the day, the US Department of Justice formally requested the Department of Defense’s assistance.

The NSA provided DoD with critical intelligence needed to locate Dr. Buchannan, the Danish citizen, and their captors. Working off of this intelligence, US special operations forces successfully rescued Dr. Buchannan and Thisted, neutralizing nine of the hostage takers in the process.

And I would just tell you, when you think about what’s going on globally with counter-terrorism, there are huge challenges for us out there, and these are the kinds of capabilities that NSA deploys to save peoples’ lives.

And what concerns me about Snowden’s leaks of classified intelligence to the media is that we’re losing some of these capabilities, because they’re being disclosed to our adversaries, which I think is wrong.

C. CYBER-THREATS, CYBER-WAR, AND RISK OF PHYSICAL WAR

AFR: Has globalisation reduced the probability of global war?

Gen. Alexander: No, I don’t think so. In fact, at times globalisation can raise the risk of war. The Arab Spring is a case in point. I think the risk of conflict rises and falls. I believe we’re on an uptick at the moment where there are so many conflicting geopolitical dynamics that the probabilities of miscalculation are growing. I think the prospects of a serious regional conflict in the next decade are higher than they have been in the past decade or two.

AFR: If you were forced to specify and rank them, what do you currently assess to be the main national security threats facing Western allies in order of expected damage (eg, probability multiplied by casualties), or on the basis of whatever benchmark you think most appropriate to rank these risks?

Gen. Alexander: What concerns me the most are terrorist and cyber-attacks, for both your country and mine. Those are the two threats where adversaries can reach far into the homeland and really hurt populations. And I think those risks are growing. We need to be out in front of them understanding the dangers as well as we can and mitigating them. And I’ll talk about that in a minute.

Then I look at regional threats. I think those problems are growing as well. Look at what’s happened in the Crimea. Look at the issues in Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and North Korea. With what’s going on across North Africa, the Middle East and the Pacific, I think you can conclude the world has become a less stable place. I think that these unfolding crises are getting worse—they are deepening.

So I am unsurprisingly anxious that just at the time when the world needs effective intelligence to help understand and manage these dangers, we’re directly undermining our ability to source reliable intelligence. That’s probably the greatest fear I have.

To recap: the threats are arguably coming at us quicker than they ever have before. Terrorism and cyber attacks are my two biggest concerns. But these are being compounded by regional geopolitical fissures that seem to be opening up at an alarming rate.

AFR: What about China and its territorial disputes?

Gen. Alexander: Well, when I look at China, I’m hopeful that China will remain a rational actor. At the end of the day, I hope that the pushback China has gotten from all the other players in the region over the air defense identification zone that it established above the [Senkaku/Diaoyu] islands, and from the various disputes they have in the South China Sea, is sufficiently clear enough for China to recognise that it is in its best interests to respond to these tensions in a rational way. That they don’t want to unilaterally acquire territories in the manner Russia has, because doing so won’t help stability in the Pacific. And so I think China will actually step back. At least I’m hopeful that they will.

Now if they don’t, I’m concerned about countries like Japan, India, South Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam, and others, who will have to step up and say, “If China is going to do this, we will have to arm more”. I think a regional arms race will be bad for everybody.

AFR: Japan is increasing its defence spending in response to the Chinese threat, and looking to increase defence trade with key partners like the US and Australia. Should we welcome Japan’s militarisation, or is it a worry?

Gen. Alexander: If China continues to act aggressively, I believe we should welcome Japan’s increased militarisation.

AFR: Do you have any thoughts on what’s motivating Putin’s strategy in the Crimea and whether it establishes adverse precedents for China?

Gen. Alexander: Well, there are a lot of Russian citizens in Crimea. The status of Russia has dropped over time and I think President Putin would like to see Russia as a world power. I think he’s looking at how he secures his borders and his legacy. And I think there is a lot more to come. That is my speculation. And when I say that I’m talking Eastern Ukraine and other things.

I am hoping that this does not establish precedents for China and that they take a more pragmatic view. I think they will take a longer perspective of things, and I don’t think they will want to alarm the Japanese and others in the region—like yourselves, the Philippines, and the Vietnamese—by taking such a radical approach.

I think war would significantly hurt China and the region, and I think China understands that. China is growing quickly, and having good trade partners is essential to that growth. War would significantly impact their economy.

AFR: How has the rate of change in the frequency of serious threats to which the West is exposed evolved over the last 2-3 decades? Has the diversity and sophistication of threats altered much, or is it just more of the same with a new technical delivery device in the form of the Internet and the technologies it has enabled?

Gen. Alexander: Well I think the frequency of the threats we face is absolutely changing, especially on the terrorism front.

Let me offer you some data that I got from the University of Maryland’s START [National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism] program’s Global Terrorism Database [refers also to chart].

I think this is chilling. People like Bart Gellman [an American journalist] say NSA is “hyping the threat” to justify what we do, but let me just give you the facts, which the University of Maryland’s START program provides to the government and which the State Department includes in its annual Country Reports on Terrorism. In 2012, they said there were 6,771 terrorist attacks worldwide, resulting in over 11,000 deaths with over 2,436 in Iraq alone. In 2013, that grew to 10,301 terrorist attacks, resulting in 20,641 deaths, 7,000 of which were in Iraq.

So when you look at what’s going on in Iraq, what’s happening in Syria, the instability in Egypt and other regions, my objective judgement is that national security hazards are expanding at an alarming rate. And this is supported by the data.

If you reflect on that instability in, for example, the Middle East, I am concerned that individuals and/or nations will miscalculate and something bad will happen as a result.

AFR: When you say “miscalculate,” can you give us a worst case scenario?

Gen. Alexander: Yes, I can. And let’s take another region of the world. Say Asia. Assume one country believes they can hit your nation with a cyber-attack, but that it won’t lead to physical conflict. But in launching that cyber-attack, suppose they actually knock down your stock exchange or temporarily disable your banking system, which is a very real possibility these days.

Your government then feels it has to reciprocate. And we have an unpredictable chain-reaction that could lead to outright war. This is where you would be greatly concerned about what’s going on in South Korea and North Korea. I worry if North Korea launches a cyber-attack on South Korea, as they have done, South Korea feels it has to respond. And I’m not sure that those redlines are well understood. There is a significant probability for miscalculation in these cases—with catastrophic ramifications for everyone.

AFR: Are you talking about South Korea responding to a cyber-attack with more kinetic or physical means and then this escalating in a tit-for-tat exchange that eventually sends the entire peninsula off reservation?

Gen. Alexander: Yes. I am concerned that the cyber-attack on the banking system in South Korea in March and June 2013 could have triggered much more adverse responses. If that attack had been more severe, we simply don’t know how South Korea might have responded, and whether we could constrain that response. What if North Korea took down South Korea’s government networks, or its internet, or the power grid? How would South Korea really react? And what if North Korea concurrently moved troops to give the illusion of a coordinated, physical offensive?

I’m concerned there is a rising chance that individuals and/or nation states miscalculate because they don’t know where the redlines are. And this problem of a lack of transparency on redlines, and agreed escalation protocols, is especially acute in cyber-space.

So what we’re seeing is more folks testing these boundaries with mounting numbers of state-on-state cyber-probes and sometimes cyber-attacks. The obvious public ones are the wiper viruses we have seen used against Saudi Aramco, RASGAS, and South Korea.

AFR: How real is the threat of “cyber terrorism” and is it growing? Have we yet moved to a situation where a figure behind a computer screen can present as a clear danger to human life as a suicide-bomber?

Gen. Alexander: I think we’re quickly getting to that place where cyber-terrorism is becoming a genuine threat. There are clearly serious cyber-threats that can have economic impacts on our banking systems and financial markets.

If you extend those attack vectors to take out power grids, transport systems, and other infrastructure, they can have catastrophic effects. So this is sufficiently serious that security agencies need to get out in front and mitigate the risks. That’s why our countries are working together to address these cyber-threats.

AFR: In 2007 the secretary of the Air Force said he would “dominate cyberspace” just as “today, we dominate air and space”. The Army has said that in “cyberspace...we must use our strategic vision to dominate the information environment.” What do this mean?

Gen. Alexander: When you think about success on the battlefield, you say your artillery has to be the best. Your armor has to be the best. Your infantry has to be the best. The same logic applies in the cyber domain. Those forces that you use need to be the best.

Within that lexicon, leaders want to “dominate” cyber-space in any encounters with adversaries. If we don’t, the adversaries may get the upper hand. If they get an upper hand in the first phase of the conflict, that likely means the second and third phases of conflict are going to go badly for us. If you lose the recon battle, you risk losing the war. If you now lose the cyber battle, you could lose the war.

As a consequence, you need to dominate that phase of the war to be successful in the next phase or to increase your probability of success in the next phase. That’s what we mean.

AFR: How serious do you think the cyber weapons arms race is, and are developed nations around the world creating and constructing offensive cyber munitions with kinetic capabilities?

Gen. Alexander: I think everybody is moving towards developing offensive cyber capabilities. I cannot really talk in detail about that right now. I just do think these capabilities are expanding and there are real risks, which can only be managed by first fixing your own network security.

AFR: Is Stuxnet one harbinger of a new age of cyber warfare, the first potential portent of which was the CIA’s logic bomb back in 1982 that sabotaged the Soviet Urengoy–Surgut–Chelyabinsk natural gas pipeline?

Gen. Alexander: Yes, but I can’t talk about that much. I think there are so many offensive cyber innovations that you could use as a case in point to say there’s a new age emerging.

The new age was not necessarily Stuxnet. It was what happened to Saudi Aramco in August 2012. That’s the wakeup call, I think, for everybody.

Cyber actors targeted Aramco with a large-scale, coordinated DDOS attack. The attack ran through the private networks in the United States and, as an unintended consequence, nearly disabled a major US telecommunications company.

DDOS attackers employed a virus that infected the hard drives of over 30,000 computers at Aramco, overwriting and effectively destroying data.

A similar attack on our critical infrastructure networks could have grave effects on financial markets, communication networks, and health and safety services to name a few.

AFR: You have said that by 2015 Cyber Command will have 13 “offensive” teams. What will these so-called “cyber-warriors” be capable of actually doing in general unclassified terms?

Gen. Alexander: Providing our National Command authority with additional options they can use in crises.

D.ESPIONAGE/SURVEILLANCE STATE OF PLAY

AFR: In the context of mass surveillance fears, you once said: “the great irony is we’re the only ones not spying on the American people.” How much surveillance of the US population is undertaken by other governments? Is it greater or less than what we saw in the Cold War?

Gen. Alexander: There is an enormous amount of espionage taking place. Most of it is not against individual citizens because they are not relevant to nation states’ objectives, and it would just waste their intelligence community’s time.

But there is industrial-scale espionage against private companies, the research and development repositories of our intellectual property, and any target that affords an international competitor a commercial or military edge against us.

The extent of espionage today is far greater than most people understand. In fact, my assessment is that the intellectual property that has been stolen from America over the last decade or two represents the largest and most rapid involuntary transfer of wealth in human history.

What we need to focus on is getting better at hardening the networks that store and sustain our intellectual property, and upon which our critical infrastructure relies. That’s the information assurance side of NSA’s business.

This is an important period. Most of the destructive cyber tools being developed haven’t been actively deployed. We need to use this window of opportunity to better develop our cyber defenses.

When you look at the investments government has made in protecting its most valuable information assets, I think we are obliged to help the private sector do the same thing. We’ve got to provide that same opportunity for those citizens who would like to capitalise on the level of security we have developed in government—to allow them to “opt-in” inside our cyber defenses.

Deputy Secretary of Defense Bill Lynn and I have talked about creating a “secure zone”—a place where individuals and private companies could opt-in to secure their data with the best protections government possesses. As we move forward these are the kinds of ideas that we—your country, mine and others—are going to have to carefully consider.

AFR: In your opinion, do foreign security services, including those in Europe, Russia and China, engage in greater or less mass surveillance of their domestic populations than the NSA, FBI and CIA does in the US?

Gen. Alexander: Absolutely. Just look at what Russia does with SORM 1, 2 and 3. SORM is a compulsory surveillance system passed into Russian law in 1995 that allows the FSB and seven other Russian security agencies to monitor all forms of domestic communications. According to the World Policy Institute, SORM is “Russia’s national system of lawful interception of all electronic utterances”. They say:

“SORM-1 system captures telephone and mobile phone communications, SORM-2 intercepts Internet traffic, and SORM-3 collects information from all forms of communication, providing long-term storage of all information and data on subscribers, including actual recordings and locations”.

And in 2012 Russia introduced a nationwide system of Internet-filtering. Russia also requires their telecommunication companies to bring back any data that they see—no matter where they are in the world—to Russia. The full content—all of it. And the FSB doesn’t need to go to a court to say I’m going to do A, B or C, nor do they have anything like our level of oversight through the Courts and Congress.

So when you look at Russian surveillance, they are doing it for different reasons. They can do it for domestic political purposes—they can do it for international problems.

In contrast, NSA data gathering is based on specific foreign intelligence needs that we have to protect this country from terrorist attacks. And that’s the only reason we can access the FISA metadata. We cannot use it for domestic political purposes or any of the many other internal reasons Russia does.

Any objective analysis shows that Americans’ privacy rights are protected much more than you find in most other countries, and certainly our civil liberties are vastly superior to what you find in China and Russia

AFR: Some lawyers say there are virtually no international laws preventing espionage between states—indeed, espionage is known as the “vanishing point” of international law. All nations arguably carry out “economic espionage”, one way or another. But the US has tried to distinguish itself from China by claiming it does not engage in spying to make its private citizens rich. Is this really a credible argument?

Gen. Alexander: It is to me. Specifically, we use intelligence to help protect our nation and to ensure we make the best possible policy decisions. We do not steal data to help our commercial industries.

E.ENCRYPTION AND ZERO-DAY DEBATE

AFR: Decrypting encoded messages that are used to send secrets between rival parties has been crucial to the outcome of world wars (eg, decrypting Germany’s Enigma machines), identifying the location of terrorists like Osama bin Laden, and preventing states like Iran building nuclear weapons. Yet many now argue that intelligence agencies should not actively undermine encryption standards or technology that are vital to the integrity of global communications. What do you say to this?

Gen. Alexander: NSA is a cryptographic agency that has had responsibility for both making and breaking codes since WWII. This is what NSA does.

The interesting change has been the diffusion of encryption technologies into everyday life. It used to be that only, say, German forces used a crypto-device like Enigma to encipher their messages. But in today’s environment encryption technology is embedded into all our communications.

When the government asks NSA to collect intelligence on terrorist X, and he uses publicly available tools to encode his messages, it is not acceptable for a foreign intelligence agency like NSA to respond, “Sorry we cannot understand what he is saying”. Our job is to break the codes—to strip out the signal in the noise.

But the same rules apply to NSA’s code-breaking program as they do to NSA’s signals intelligence missions. All activities are conducted against a valid, specific foreign intelligence purpose. We focus on the communications our adversaries use that we must break to accomplish our missions.

NSA also leans heavily toward defence. We categorically do not erode the defences of US communications, or water-down security guidance in order to sustain access for foreign intelligence.

In many cases, NSA has increased the protection of communications by disclosing vulnerabilities we discover to the people who are responsible for manufacturing or developing them.

AFR: Like many equivalent intelligence agencies around the world, NSA has both a domestic defensive role in protecting and assuring US government secrets and a foreign information gathering responsibility. Does the NSA need to pro-actively search for vulnerabilities, back-doors, and zero-days in all encryption standards and technology, hardware and software used by the US government in order to effectively protect its secrets?

Well you are right, NSA has the responsibility to ensure that all our governments’ and allies’ communications, and vital information, are absolutely secure.

NSA has to understand and identify all the vulnerabilities—the coding errors, backdoors, zero days etc—in the technology tools that our governments relies on to safeguard those systems from exploitation by adversaries. And NSA has to be able to ultimately encrypt our nation’s most sensitive secrets in a manner that gives us confidence that this information is not being compromised by external parties.

To ask NSA not to look for weaknesses in the technology that we use, and to not seek to break the codes our adversaries employ to encrypt their messages is, I think, misguided. I would love to have all the terrorists just use that one little sandbox over there so that we could focus on them. But they don’t.

They use the same technology products and the same web services that we’ve all got. So what the Courts, Congress and Administration say is, “Okay, if you’re going to go there, here are the rules that you have to follow.” And we follow those rules closely.

It’s a tough area to talk about. Imagine this was the late 1930s or early 1940s and you asked me whether it was true we were hacking into and breaking the Japanese and German codes. How could I respond to that question meaningfully knowing that understanding Japan’s intent and unravelling the Enigma machine was critical to our nations’ future?

The same principles apply today. It is difficult to publicly discuss and debate what we do in terms of code-making and code-breaking without offering adversaries insights that undermine our security.

AFR: How will quantum computing change the global intelligence collection contest?

Gen. Alexander: If a quantum computer is successfully made it will significantly change the global intelligence and communications landscape. Most current encryption systems would be vulnerable to a quantum computer.

F.SNOWDEN CRISIS

AFR: Why did you decide to retire as the NSA director in the first half of 2014? Was this related to the Snowden affair?

Gen. Alexander: When I got to NSA in 2005, I knew it was a three or four year job. So in 2008, I was preparing to retire in the summer of 2009. Secretary Gates called me up and said, “Hey, not so fast. Here’s what we’re going to do with you. We’re going to extend you a few more years to 2012-13”.

So in 2012, I knew I would retire in 2013, but I got a call from Secretary Panetta [former director of CIA and Secretary of Defense] and General Marty Dempsey [chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff], and they again said, “Not so fast. We’d actually like you to extend to the spring of 2014.”

So we negotiated on that and decided on that timeframe—that was a year and a half before I retired and well before the Snowden thing emerged—that I would retire in the early part of 2014, which is what I did. Or a little bit later. I actually delayed my retirement a couple of weeks again in February, from 14 March to 28 March to help ensure that Admiral Mike Rogers [the incoming NSA director] had completed his confirmation process.

So that was well underway. And people have asked me, “Don’t you wish you had retired before?” And in a light-hearted way you say, “Sure, I’d like not to be “wire brushed” every day for the last year in command.”

On the other hand, I think [deputy director] Chris Inglis and I were probably the two best equipped NSA people to handle this problem, as difficult as it may be. And it gave us a great opportunity to show to the folks inside the NSA how highly we respected them with this thought in mind: “You all continue defending the nation—we’ll take the external heat”.

Now I’ve got to be honest with you, Chris, I didn’t realize there would be this much heat!

AFR: Is it true you offered to resign in June 2013, but the Obama Administration asked you not to?

Gen. Alexander: Yes. I thought that when people were saying, “Who should be held accountable?” in response to the leaks, I said, “Me”. “It’s my agency. I’m the director. Ultimately, I’m accountable. If everyone thinks somebody should be fired over the leaks, then it should be me. All the rest of these folks are doing exactly what we asked them to do. If you want to fire somebody, fire me.”

I think the DNI, the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and the White House staff said, “Well, why did you even say that?” And my comment was, “So that you know that I hold myself accountable for the actions of this agency. And if you want to hold somebody accountable, look to me. Don’t look to any of my people—it’s me.” So I did do that and they looked back at me and said, “Thank you for volunteering that information. Now go back to work.” [Laughs]

AFR: The global media has been highly critical of US intelligence and the NSA, in particular, following the leaks of classified NSA material by Snowden. On the rare occasions you have spoken publicly you’ve given the impression you have issues with this coverage. So in your opinion, what has the US and international media got most wrong in its reporting of Snowden’s leaks?

Gen. Alexander: I think the biggest mistake global media have made is projecting the incorrect perception that NSA is collecting the content of all Americans’ phone calls and emails, and reading this material, when we are doing neither of these things.

The reality is that under the FISA laws, NSA must have a finding of probable cause and a warrant to target a specific American’s communications for collection.

The suggestion that we are collecting the content of all innocent peoples’ conversations is completely wrong, would be a grossly inefficient use of our finite intelligence resources, and would be absolutely inconsistent with NSA’s mandate.

Every intelligence review group and every intelligence oversight body has confirmed that NSA is not engaged in this type of surveillance. But the media consistently characterise NSA as doing so, when we are not.

The Courts, Obama Administration and Congress have all found that we are simply doing what we have been asked to do by the government of the day, which is collect intelligence in direct response to requirements levied on us by US policymakers and military commanders in order to protect our nation, our military, and our allies.

So I think the fabrication that we are listening into everyone’s calls, and reading everyone’s emails, is the big misperception that we’ve got to fix.

AFR: What is your personal opinion on the decision to award a Pulitzer Prize to the Guardian and Washington Post newspapers for their “revelation of widespread secret surveillance by the National Security Agency, helping through aggressive reporting to spark a debate about the relationship between the government and the public over issues of security and privacy”?

Gen. Alexander: I’m greatly disappointed that we have rewarded those who have put so many lives at risk. I think that’s the best way to say that.

AFR: Do the benefits of the reporting on the Snowden leaks outweigh the long-term costs of the disclosures?

Gen. Alexander: No. Not at all.

AFR: How has the Snowden affair affected morale inside the NSA?

Gen. Alexander: Clearly, it has negatively impacted NSA morale. And I’ll tell you, it has also affected our allies that do the same job. They’re doing what their governments asked them to do as well. They shouldn’t be pilloried for legally and legitimately seeking to defend their nations and ours. In his 17 January speech President Obama said it best [General Alexander quotes excerpts—full extract is enclosed below]:

“Nothing in that initial review [by the Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technology], and nothing that I have learned since, indicated that our intelligence community has sought to violate the law or is cavalier about the civil liberties of their fellow citizens. To the contrary, in an extraordinarily difficult job -- one in which actions are second-guessed, success is unreported, and failure can be catastrophic -- the men and women of the intelligence community, including the NSA, consistently follow protocols designed to protect the privacy of ordinary people. They’re not abusing authorities in order to listen to your private phone calls or read your emails. When mistakes are made -- which is inevitable in any large and complicated human enterprise -- they correct those mistakes. Laboring in obscurity, often unable to discuss their work even with family and friends, the men and women at the NSA know that if another 9/11 or massive cyber-attack occurs, they will be asked, by Congress and the media, why they failed to connect the dots.”

Another civil libertarian who, with the benefit of full information, arrived at the right conclusions is Chicago University law professor Geoff Stone. Now professor Stone is a member of the National Advisory Council of the American Civil Liberties Union. So when they told me he was on this review group, I went, “Wow, okay, this may not end up being a fair assessment of us”.

But when he came up, I actually got a chance to talk with him after he had met with us several times, and he told me, “You know what deeply impresses me about NSA is the integrity and nobility of what you and your people are doing—it has been unbelievable.” Even more surprisingly for a strong civil libertarian, Professor Stone concluded that the NSA was being “severely—and unfairly—demonized by its critics” in the media, to use his exact words.

“Rather than being a rogue agency that was running amok in disregard of the Constitution and laws of the United States, the NSA was doing its job,” he told us.

Starting off as someone who was very sceptical of the NSA, Professor Stone ended up finding that the“NSA operates with a high degree of integrity and a deep commitment to the rule of law”.

We invited him to come speak to the NSA staff at Fort Meade. And here is exactly what he said [General Alexander quotes excerpts—full extract is enclosed below]:

“From the outset, I approached my responsibilities as a member of the Review Group with great skepticism about the NSA. I am a long-time civil libertarian, a member of the National Advisory Council of the ACLU, and a former Chair of the Board of the American Constitution Society. To say I was skeptical about the NSA is, in truth, an understatement.

I came away from my work on the Review Group with a view of the NSA that I found quite surprising. Not only did I find that the NSA had helped to thwart numerous terrorist plots against the United States and its allies in the years since 9/11, but I also found that it is an organization that operates with a high degree of integrity and a deep commitment to the rule of law.

Like any organization dealing with extremely complex issues, the NSA on occasion made mistakes in the implementation of its authorities, but it invariably reported those mistakes upon discovering them and worked conscientiously to correct its errors. The Review Group found no evidence that the NSA had knowingly or intentionally engaged in unlawful or unauthorized activity. To the contrary, it has put in place carefully-crafted internal procedures to ensure that it operates within the bounds of its lawful authority.

This is not to say that the NSA should have had all of the authorities it was given. The Review Group found that many of the programs undertaken by the NSA were highly problematic and much in need of reform. But the responsibility for directing the NSA to carry out those programs rests not with the NSA, but with the Executive Branch, the Congress, and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which authorized those programs -- sometimes without sufficient attention to the dangers they posed to privacy and civil liberties. The NSA did its job -- it implemented the authorities it was given.

It gradually became apparent to me that in the months after Edward Snowden began releasing information about the government’s foreign intelligence surveillance activities, the NSA was being severely -- and unfairly -- demonized by its critics. Rather than being a rogue agency that was running amok in disregard of the Constitution and laws of the United States, the NSA was doing its job.

It pained me to realize that the hard-working, dedicated, patriotic employees of the NSA, who were often working for far less pay than they could have earned in the private sector because they were determined to help protect their nation from attack, were being castigated in the press for the serious mistakes made, not by them, but by Presidents, the Congress, and the courts.

Of course, “I was only following orders” is not always an excuse. But in no instance was the NSA implementing a program that was so clearly illegal or unconstitutional that it would have been justified in refusing to perform the functions assigned to it by Congress, the President, and the Judiciary.”

So I think it is very disturbing when the press portrays the NSA as the villains when a range of independent experts that carefully reviewed NSA’s activities have found we are doing exactly what this democratic government told us to do—and that these are honest, well-intentioned, hard-working, and patriotic people.

This is the misrepresentation that concerns me. And that’s what Snowden, and those that are supporting him, have done: they’re hurting the people we depend on most to defend our nation.

AFR: Do you have a personal view on what should happen to Snowden when he gets back, if he ever gets back?

Gen. Alexander: I do. Perhaps the best way to say it is I think he should face a trial by his peers, which is exactly the way our American justice system works.

By this I mean that 12 people ought to hear both sides of the argument and determine the fate of Mr. Snowden. I would also like him to really understand the incredible damage he has done.

AFR: How much of what Snowden has disclosed is legitimate whistle-blowing vs. the illegal release of top-secret information on legitimate and lawful intelligence gathering?

Gen. Alexander: Well, he’s not a whistleblower. A whistleblower would tell somebody that, “Hey, I’ve got an issue with this or that practice”. Our government gives concerned stakeholders many ways of blowing the whistle. They can go through the NSA General Counsel, they can go through the Inspector General. If they don’t trust anybody in that chain, they can go to Congress.

Snowden did none of these things. What he did was illegally steal classified information, betray our trust, and flee to a foreign country to release what he stole and defend his actions. And then he kept on leaking the data he had stolen and he is publicly trying to rationalise his decisions.

Make no mistake, what Snowden’s done is hugely illegal and only a fraction of the leaks have anything to do with Americans’ civil liberties. Here I’d encourage you to look at a summary of all the Snowden leaks published by the Lawfare Institute in cooperation with The Brookings Institution.

According to this independent analysis: Snowden has leaked 32 times on our nation’s classified intelligence tools or methods; on nine occasions he leaked the overseas locations of intelligence bases; 25 times he has revealed the identities of foreign officials, governments and capabilities of interest to our intelligence agencies; on 14 instances he disclosed information about companies and governments that facilitate our intelligence activities; and 19 times he released information on technology products and platforms that NSA had been researching.

So Snowden claims he stole American national security secrets for benign reasons, but when you look at the Lawfare Institute’s analysis his leaks cover the whole gamut of what our nation’s foundational intelligence system is based on.

You can’t credibly believe that Snowden is actually doing this to raise awareness about American civil liberties and privacies, when only a tiny share of what he’s been disclosing relates to those issues.

AFR: Can you now quantify the number of documents he stole?

Gen. Alexander: Well, I don’t think anybody really knows what he actually took with him, because the way he did it, we don’t have an accurate way of counting. What we do have an accurate way of counting is what he touched, what he may have downloaded, and that was more than a million documents.

What we’ve seen him give to the press, and you saw this on the British side, when the Brits arrested David Miranda [the partner of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald] he was carrying 58,000 classified documents. So we know that he has given tens of thousands of documents to reporters, probably over 100,000, and maybe even much more than that.

What really worries me is that much of the information that he touched, and probably took, has direct consequences for the safety and security of our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and our ability to protect them.

AFR: When you were first informed about the Snowden compromise, do you recall what your initial reaction was? How long did it take for you to figure out the depth/breadth of the compromise, and the long-term gravity of the consequences of the disclosure of so much classified information?

Gen. Alexander: Wednesday, 5 June 2013, is when I first got the news. I was in Germany meeting with some of our allies, and we were told about one article coming out. We didn’t know at that time who did it. We knew a little bit about it. By that Thursday or Friday, a couple of days later, our counterintelligence people knew who it was. And on Sunday the whole world knew who it was. It took us a couple weeks after that to understand the magnitude of what he had done—how significant his betrayal of our trust really was.

AFR: Do you remember what your reaction was?

Gen. Alexander: When I found out the full scope of what he had stolen, I couldn’t believe it. I thought, “Why would any person do something like this?” And I have not been able to come up with a good answer. It clearly goes far beyond what he claims are his motives.

AFR: What’s your honest assessment of the real damage done by the Snowden leaks to (1) the 5-eyes intelligence gathering capabilities and (2) the counter-intelligence wherewithal of competing states, recognising they are two sides of the same coin? How does this damage rate in a historical context vis-à-vis other intelligence/informational losses?

Gen. Alexander: I think it’s the greatest damage to our combined nations’ intelligence systems that we have ever suffered. The biggest ever. And it has had a huge impact on our combined ability to protect our nations and defend our people.

At the end of the day, I believe peoples’ lives will be lost because of the Snowden leaks because we will not be able to protect them with capabilities that were once effective but are now being rendered ineffective because of these revelations.

Think about in 1998 when somebody disclosed that we were monitoring Osama bin Laden’s communications via his Satcom phone. After that, we never heard bin Laden communications again. And he was free to go on and develop the 9/11 plots.

Now I don’t know if we would have ever been able to prevent 9/11 by monitoring bin Laden’s communications. But we took away that tool through that damaging leak. What Snowden has done—and those that are helping him are doing—is far worse. And I am really concerned that terrorist attacks will get through because of these damaging leaks.

AFR: What have been the key lessons for the US intelligence community from the Snowden experience in respect of (1) what security changes you can make to mitigate the risk of this type of information loss occurring again and (2) the approach the US IC takes to publicly explaining/communicating its actions, publicly defending itself against media attacks, and educating the community on the importance of its mission?

Gen. Alexander: I think the first lesson is around more effectively mitigating insider threats. We’ve undertaken significant improvements inside NSA to ensure we don’t have another Snowden-like event.

Now that doesn’t mean that somebody can’t run out with some material, but we have ways of detecting and minimising insider risks. We came up with 42 different improvements to our systems that we’re sharing not only domestically but also with our allies. So your folks at the Australian Signals Directorate have the same information about what we’re doing.

I think we’ve got to take that another step and we are in terms of not only defending ourselves from insider threats, but continuing to evolve the defense of our systems from external threats as well.

AFR: And in terms of any learnings for the intelligence community as to how it manages these crises in respect of its interactions with the public and the media?

Gen. Alexander: I’m not sure. It’s very hard to talk about those things that you really do need to keep secret to protect lives.

NSA and our Intelligence Community are frankly terrible at their public relations. And part of the reason is nobody wants to make that mistake of revealing how we went after bin Laden, as an example.

We become extremely risk averse about divulging something that might hurt somebody down the track, or that might divulge sources and methods to adversaries, that we limit almost everything we say.

Bottom line is we have not explained ourselves well to the public and so the public has no baseline against which to assess whether what the press, for example, alleges about us is reasonable or not.

So it becomes very easy for a misperception that we are doing something wrong to take hold, when the reality is protecting privacy and civil liberties is baked into everything we do.

We have to become more transparent, even if it means accepting greater risk in divulging how we operate. It will be a challenge for NSA to strike the right balance between transparency and secrecy as the President has asked the agency to do, but I believe there are ways we can talk about the dangerous world we live in, the challenges of performing a Sigint mission in the information age to deal with the threats, and the great care we take to operate under the rule of law.

Part of the public engagement process has to be helping people to understand the very robust legal, executive and Congressional oversight framework that is in place, and has continued to evolve, when we created these programs, and which involves all three branches of our government. There is no doubt that we’ve just got to work harder and get better at that.

AFR: Has the NSA had trouble dealing with US tech firms since Snowden? And for global tech companies, how does the US oversight regime, and protections of individual privacies, compare to other countries?

First let me say that I think that most individuals and companies in America want to defend our nation and our allies, and they want to ensure we’re all safeguarding the civil liberties and privacies that define our freedoms.

We are well aware that media assertions may jeopardize US industry sales, threaten the reputation of some of America’s most important companies, and lead some to question their commitment to user trust. These doubts are undeserved.

US technology companies are the safest in the world. NSA should have done more to set the record straight sooner on companies’ commitment to protecting privacy, the lengths to which companies go to do this, the legally compelled nature of these programs, and that these companies comply with the law.

We must explain to the public that our foreign intelligence collection programs do not involve the tech companies indiscriminately providing wholesale information to the government, and those companies and our government are heavily constrained by the Courts, Congress and the executive branch.

The FAA 702 Program, which compels our technology companies to provide information to the intelligence and law enforcement communities, is similar to programs that all Western countries have.

Communications metadata retention policies have, for example, been implemented in scores of European and Western states and many non-democratic ones. I would argue that none are more carefully regulated and overseen than those in the US.

It is interesting to evaluate the US government’s ability to access private data stored by cloud computers relative to other western democracies. Two legal experts on information privacy and government access to data recently completed a comparative analysis of 10 different governments’ ability to access data in the cloud. The study included Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Spain, the United Kingdom and the US.

The authors noted that EU nations are required to store all metadata on individual communications for between 6 and 24 months and found that in a number of critical areas, US laws impose more restrictions on government access to personal data than EU states. One quote is that “France’s anti-terrorism laws make the US Patriot Act look “namby-pamby” by comparison” [refers to table in study].

So it’s frustrating and ironic that we’re getting beat up around the world for accessing cloud data in a way that is probably more conservative than the approach adopted our allies.

AFR: Do you regret any of the intelligence gathering decisions you made as director of NSA with the benefit of hindsight—or following the debate triggered by the Snowden disclosures?

Gen. Alexander: No. When I look at the last 12 plus years without a major terrorist attack from overseas—and we talked about the number of terrorists’ incidents abroad growing at the alarming rate they are—we look at the success we’ve had in defending our country from terrorist attacks, that’s not by luck.

It’s through a lot of hard work by the intelligence community, the military, law enforcement, and I include in that, of course, the NSA, working together to ensure our country stays safe.

If we didn’t have some of these tools, if you went back in time and said, “Well, what if I took this tool away, how would we replay history?” What I wouldn’t want to see is capability degradation to the point where it would have allowed another 9/11-like attack.

And that is where my concern comes in. I am concerned that with the growing frequency of cyber and terrorist attacks and rising regional tensions that we are observing, undermining our intelligence capability will put our people at bona fide risk.

AFR: Do you think Snowden is being manipulated by, or actively cooperating with, Russian and/or Chinese intelligence?

Gen. Alexander: I think he is now being manipulated by Russian intelligence. I just don’t know when that exactly started or how deep it runs. But that’s my speculation as an intelligence professional.

I suspect Russian intelligence are driving what he does. Understand as well that they’re only going to let him do those things that benefit Russia, or stand to help improve Snowden’s credibility. They’re not going to do things that would hurt themselves. And they’re not going to allow him to do it.

So I wouldn’t fall for the line that everything Snowden is doing is altruistic. The fact is, he’s in Russia, and they’re not going to allow him do something that is detrimental to their interests. They are looking to capitalise on the fact that his actions are enormously disruptive and damaging to US interests.

AFR: What do you think the strategic goal was behind having Snowden ask Russian President Vladimir Putin a question on national TV about whether Russia engages in mass surveillance of the kind Snowden says is undertaken by the US?

Gen. Alexander: I think if anything this probably was organized to help improve Snowden’s credibility so that he could continue to do things and it would appear as if he’s an independent actor. That’s my view.

While one can dwell on what motivated Snowden and how we bring him to justice, I think what you want me and my successor in the NSA director’s job to really worry about is that we are doing everything we can—notwithstanding the damage inflicted on our intelligence systems—to defend the nation and protect our people.

So we absolutely need to know what Russia’s involvement is with Snowden. And I think that is now going to be a job for law enforcement, counterintelligence and those related areas.

The rest of us in the intelligence community need to say, “Okay, we’ve got an even tougher job now. It’s going to be more difficult to defend the front lines. But let’s not waver—let’s double down and make sure we’re protecting our countries to the best of our ability and maximising the resources we have available to us.”

AFR: Can one draw anything from the apparent conflict that on the one hand Snowden claims to be fighting for freedom and civil liberties, and thwarting unauthorised mass surveillance by governments while on the other hand accepting safe harbour from one of the world’s more totalitarian, corrupt, and non-democratic nations, and actively seeking to work outside of the US judicial system?

Gen. Alexander: Yes. The conclusion is that Snowden is not being straightforward.

AFR: The initial revelations about the PRISM program caused significant alarm to US citizens, and also citizens of many other nations, who have come to use many of the cooperating online services on a daily basis. Do you have sympathy with those who feel their privacy has been violated?

Gen. Alexander: Yes, I certainly sympathize with those who feel their privacy is being violated. With how much of the press has mischaracterized NSA operations, I would be worried too.

The problem is that it is being portrayed in the press that everyone’s data was being exploited by the PRISM program, which is wrong. The people are being misinformed and I believe that is a disservice to our country.

The fact is a lot of people use these types of modern media. Good and bad people. What the government has asked NSA to do is to go find the bad people, no matter where they are. Work with industries to make sure that you find them, work with the courts so that you do it right. But at the end of the day if a bad person is on one of those media platforms planning an attack, NSA’s mission is to help stop this from happening within the confines of the constitution and US laws. We are instructed to fulfil our mission in a way that complies with the law and we’re given the oversight mechanisms to prove that we’re doing it right.

So I think where we failed was explaining the difference between myth and reality. The press came out sensationally alleging one thing, when we were doing something very different. And we were terrible at explaining it.

We’ve got to address these pervasive misconceptions and try to ensure we do a much better job of communicating in the future without compromising our capability.

AFR: Do you think the Snowden leaks will reduce information sharing between western intelligence agencies because of the fears of insider threats?

Gen. Alexander: I hope not, and I don’t think so. I think we have a great partnership among our [five-eyes] intelligence sharing allies that’s gone for several decades.

Working with your folks and our other key partners, I think everybody sees the value NSA and its partners deliver. Every country that I’ve talked to privately has said, “Look, we need NSA to keep protecting us. This is a political issue, but don’t stop protecting us. We know what security you provide”. And that “you” is all of us. It’s the entire [five-eyes] “crypt” system that does that as a team.

G.METADATA COMMUNICATION COLLECTION DEBATE

AFR: Is the metadata policy a new capability or an extension of an existing resource that US intelligence has historically had access to via the billing records of telco companies? Is it necessary and, if so, why? Is there any risk it could be abused by US intelligence?

Gen. Alexander: I think it’s an historical capability, now overseen by the Courts, Congress and the Administration. It probably has the most oversight of any program that NSA utilises.

To add clarity, metadata is the least intrusive way to understand relationships between various adversaries, such as terrorists. It would be too manpower intensive to start with the content of communications, so we almost always start with some form of metadata to figure out exactly who the adversaries or terrorists are that we need to target.

I also think it’s important just to document the significant constraints imposed to ensure the protection of American citizens’ privacy. For NSA to use the FISA business records metadata, there must be a reasonable, articulable suspicion that the number that you’re going to query is associated with a foreign terrorist organization. This court-prescribed limitation on the use of the 215 database is one of the most important controls.

The query has to be approved by one of your superiors and only 22 people are authorized to approve numbers to be queried.

Only those numbers that have been approved can be queried. And only a few hundred have been approved at this time despite the fact that there are billions of call detail records a day.

The information returned to the analyst includes only numbers, time date and duration of calls. The program does not allow for collection of content, any identifying subscriber information, or geolocation information. You can only look at numbers “two hops” out. The data is segregated. Access is tightly controlled, documented, and audited.

A full and complete audit of all the approved numbers is done daily by us and can be inspected by the Administration, Congress and the Courts.

If somebody were to mistype a number in there, we have a system called Emphatic Access Restriction, which is the equivalent of a firewall, that ensures that no query can go forward unless it’s on that list of numbers. It also prevents any automated process or subroutine from accessing the FISA data.

The facts and evidence demonstrate that the NSA is judiciously using this metadata to tackle terrorists. They aren’t looking at your data or my data. They aren’t reading our emails or listening to our calls. They’re doing what we need them to do: trying to prevent national security catastrophes.

And I think that’s why Judge Pauley arrived at his finding that the metadata program was perfectly legal and constitutional. And I would recommend to you Judge Pauley’s opening remarks in the suit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union [General Alexander quotes excerpts—complete extract enclosed]:

“The September 11th terrorist attacks revealed, in the starkest terms, just how dangerous and interconnected the world is. While Americans depended on technology for the conveniences of modernity, al-Qaeda plotted in a seventh-century milieu to use that technology against us. It was a bold jujitsu. And it succeeded because conventional intelligence gathering could not detect diffuse filaments connecting al-Qaeda.

Prior to the September 11th attacks, the NSA intercepted seven calls made by hijacker Khalid al-Mihdhar, who was living in San Diego, California, to an al-Qaeda safe house in Yemen. The NSA intercepted those calls using overseas signals intelligence capabilities that could not capture al-Mihdhar’s telephone number identifier. Without that identifier, NSA analysts concluded mistakenly that al-Mihdhar was overseas and not in the United States.

Telephony metadata would have furnished the missing information and might have permitted the NSA to notify the FBI of the fact that al-Mihdhar was calling the Yemeni safe house from inside the United States.

The Government learned from its mistake and adapted to confront a new enemy: a terror network capable of orchestrating attacks across the world. It launched a number of counter-measures, including a bulk telephony metadata collection program-a wide net that could find and isolate gossamer contacts among suspected terrorists in an ocean of seemingly disconnected data.

The natural tension between protecting the nation and preserving civil liberty is squarely presented by the Government’s bulk telephony metadata collection program. Edward Snowden’s unauthorized disclosure of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (”FISC”) orders has provoked a public debate and this litigation. While robust discussions are underway across the nation, in Congress, and at the White House, the question for this Court is whether the Government’s bulk telephony metadata program is lawful. This Court finds it is.”

AFR: After the NSA’s metadata collection activities were revealed by Snowden, you were roundly criticised for a 2012 statement you made that “the story that we have millions or hundreds of millions of dossiers on people is absolutely false”. What’s the difference between the “dossiers on people” you were referencing and anonymised metadata?

Gen. Alexander: The metadata that we get is the two phone numbers, the date time group, and the duration of the call. There is no name. There is no contact address.

There is no way we could build a dossier on anybody with that. And if you think about how our metadata queries are authorised with oversight from several different inspector generals, the Courts and the Administration, we only get to query terrorist related numbers.

People need to understand that the only reason that NSA is querying this data in the first place is because of our foreign intelligence, and counter-terrorist, information gathering responsibilities overseas. The metadata queries are all about the foreign intelligence nexus.

So we’re trying to find out if there are terrorists amongst us, and if so, we give that data to the FBI. It’s absolutely false to believe that NSA is creating millions or hundreds of millions of dossiers on people. We don’t do that. That would be wrong. The intelligence review group would have gone ballistic if they had found anything like that. It’s irresponsible for commentators to suggest that.

AFR: In January President Obama revealed that: “[T]he [intelligence] review group turned up no indication that [Section 215 metadata communications collection program] has been intentionally abused. And I believe it is important that the capability that this program is designed to meet is preserved”. But he also said that critics were right to point out that “it has never been subject to vigorous public debate” of the kind we have seen in Europe. So is the public metadata debate a just one to have?

Gen. Alexander: Pubic debate is necessary for a healthy democracy and ensuring liberty. And transparency is a pre-requisite for informed debate. We need to be transparent about our authorities, processes, oversight, and who we are.

But security is also necessary to preserve liberty. So the question is, “What is the right balance between transparency and secrecy so that we don’t lose essential capabilities that are required to adequately defend the nation?”

We have oversight into our programs from Congress, the Administration, and the Courts. And the who, what and why of what we do are debated at that level to ensure we are protecting the people’s civil liberties and freedoms.

When you have classified ways of stopping a terrorist attack, how much do you reveal so that everybody’s comfortable with what you’re doing, recognizing that those programs and capabilities may become useless for preventing attacks by virtue of their disclosure.

We need a way to assess these risks, and we must be transparent with how the process works. From my perspective, we don’t want to include in this public discussion the “how” as that then tips off the terrorist and other threats of what we are doing to intercept their plans and thwart their attacks.

This is what makes a lot this discussion on transparency so difficult as we are concurrently trying to avoid losing essential capabilities.

This gets to the point that if all the terrorists—the bad guys—would go to one sector of the network, call it badguys.com, then all we would have to do is monitor that area and everybody else’s communications would flow freely. But the reality is, they use the same devices we do, the same networks and platforms we use, and, as a consequence, the communications are intermingled.

So when we go after terrorist communications we have to access these same technologies and data while demonstrating that the way we’re doing it is focused on the bad guys, not everybody else. I think we do that extremely well. In fact, I think our country is better at doing that, with the right oversight and compliance, than anybody else in the world.

AFR: Is it possible for a non-government entity to practically retain the metadata the intelligence community requires to carry out its mission as Obama suggested?

Gen. Alexander: Well, anything is possible. I think the recommendations to the Business Records FISA program the Administration came up with, though, are a better solution. And NSA helped participate in that solution and actually came up with some of the basic ideas to address the civil liberties and privacy concerns people had while ensuring we did not materially undermine our critical capabilities.

We said, “Why don’t we change the system to screen upfront for the specific national security data we require, and then ensure that we get all of that approved data and only that data, and then leave all of the remaining data with the telco companies, with a couple of provisos”.

This does away with the FISA databases as we know it today. We would now only work with the telco companies on specific numbers that have a terrorist nexus, and only on that data.

When we have an emergency, we do need agility to go in there, however. You can bring the Courts, everybody in with us. But we need that agility. Think the Boston Marathon bombing. The FBI needs that agility and they need our support in real-time. It can’t be, Yeah, we’ll go through a court process, and take a couple weeks—because if there’s another follow-on attack, we need to be on that right away.

I actually think that what we’re doing is a step in the right direction, as long as they retain the agility, and they get the data that they need. I think the metadata system will be as effective as it was before. NSA with other members of the community worked very hard over the last three months to get the system right.

AFR: When asked about President Obama’s reforms, Australia’s foreign minister told me that we would not seek to replicate his changes. Our Attorney General recently reiterated this position. Did President Obama go too far in constraining future US intelligence gathering capabilities to sooth discontent raised by the Snowden disclosures (eg, limiting metadata queries to 2 rather than 3 steps and hampering intelligence gathering on foreign heads of states), or did he strike the right balance?

Gen. Alexander: As long as the administration adopts the approach the interagency group, including NSA, have recommended on metadata, and so far they’re doing that, I don’t think we have gone too far.

These changes retain the capabilities that we have right now while also giving us the agility we need in emergencies. If that capability atrophies, then I would be concerned.

But right now, or at least when I left, everything was on track to do it as we had recommended. If they drop off the agility and introduce further rigidities into the process then I would be concerned, and I think FBI and other agencies would be concerned.

H.LIBERTY, SECURITY AND SURVEILLANCE

AFR: Are security and liberty divisible concepts? How would you characterise the relationship between security and liberty?

Gen. Alexander: I do believe some folks think freedom can be separable from security. I think that’s human nature to take our liberties for granted. If you were to go to Bosnia, Iraq, or Syria, and you were to talk to the people and ask them whether they ever thought these crises could happen to them, most would say, “No”. But we can see in the past 25 years how fragile this fabric is that binds our societies together.

Security and liberty are not conflicting values to be balanced. I am worried that the American people are being presented with a false choice: liberty or security. We must have both in order to preserve the way of life we hold dear. I think we should be more conscious of these links tying liberty and security together.

Somebody has to stand the watch. I think this comes back to what you asked me at the beginning. Why I stayed so long. And it wasn’t because I couldn’t get another job. It was that the mission that these people were doing was so noble, so true and so selfless. They understood the security risks to our country and to our allies, and they stood the watch. And they’re standing the watch today.

You can think of nations as boats out on the ocean, on a dark night, with no lights. With all these boats bouncing around you are going to use radar to make sure you don’t bump into others, whether they be good or bad. And our intelligence system helps us navigate through geopolitical waters in such a way that our policymakers can make the best decisions.

So I think there is a tendency to focus on society’s benefits while neglecting to remember that it would not have been a peaceful society without taking down terrorists before they attack. We need information to help our nations address regional crises and other threats before they become so big a problem that many people die, and we then overreact in ways that curtail our liberties.

Now, I am thankful that the FBI, MI5, ASIO, and other security agencies are so good that our societies can instinctively feel this way. What I do not recommend is during the good times ratcheting security down a notch to see what happens. I would say we’ve arrived at a pretty pleasant place in the West today. I have 16 grandchildren. I want them all to live long, healthy, happy lives.

I’ve been down to Australia several times. I’m out there on the harbor. I’ve had a chance to go to the Sydney Opera House and to see that. How nice it is. How safe we are. What an amazing place. And your beer is awesome.

Now jump to the Middle East where thousands of people are being killed. Look at what’s going on in other regions around the world. I can tell you it’s not by happenstance that Australia, Britain, Europe and the United States are safe. It’s because our law enforcement, intelligence and military agencies have stepped up to the plate to mitigate our security problems. And we should not jeopardize that.

I think maybe Judge Pauley and Liam Fox [a British member of Parliament and former secretary of state for defense] said it better than I can. In his finding in the suit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, Judge Pauley wrote [General Alexander quotes excerpts; full extract provided]:

“Liberty and security can be reconciled; and in our system they are reconciled within the framework of the law…The success of one helps protect the other. Like the 911 Commission observed: “The choice between liberty and security is a false one, as nothing is more apt to imperil civil liberties than the success of a terrorist attack on American soil”…A court’s solemn duty is “to reject as false, claims in the name of civil liberty which, if granted, would paralyze or impair authority to defend [the] existence of our society, and to reject as false, claims in the name of security which would undermine our freedoms and open the way to oppression.”

And here’s what Liam Fox said [General Alexander quotes excerpts; full extract provided]:

“Peace and security are not the natural state of affairs. It is a fact of life that many of those who live comfortable middle-class existences in affluent, liberal, pluralistic democracies in the 21st century seem to have forgotten. Those who live without a full grasp of the risks and sacrifices taken by others on their behalf will not understand the constant battle for law and freedom against disorder, anarchy and terror. Just as a gardener fights a constant war against untrammeled nature, but casual observers see only order and tranquillity, a constant struggle is being waged against the forces of disruption and destruction so that we can take the safety and security of our daily lives for granted.

For our intelligence services to operate effectively, and to protect us from these threats, they need to be able to do things in secret, secrets whose public disclosure would be damaging to our national interests. We depend on the legal and moral partnership of our governments and the employees and contractors it uses to maintain the confidentiality of these secrets. Yet all of this has been imperiled over the past 10 months by the slow public parading of intelligence secrets stolen by National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, working with Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald and others”

AFR: Jennifer Granick, Director of Civil Liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, says following a conversation with you that “the good people at NSA have literally pulverized the Fourth Amendment, government accountability, freedom of expression, rule of law, and so many other equally critical components of the American system”.

In contrast, President Obama---a former civil rights attorney and lecturer in constitutional law---who says he has “maintained a healthy scepticism toward our surveillance programs after I became president”, concluded this year that:

“Nothing in that initial review [of intelligence agencies], and nothing that I have learned since, indicated that our intelligence community has sought to violate the law or is cavalier about the civil liberties of their fellow citizens … To the contrary, in an extraordinarily difficult job . . . the men and women of the intelligence community . . . consistently follow protocols designed to protect the privacy of ordinary people. They’re not abusing authorities in order to listen to your private phone calls or read your emails.”

So who is right: Obama or Granick? How do you account for this disconnect in views between civil libertarians?

Gen. Alexander: I honestly don’t know how you account for the disconnect between civil libertarians, Chris. The only thing I can say to Ms Granick is that 16 different federal judges have found this program to be constitutional and within the law 37 different times. And the President has weighed in with the same conclusion.

I think it is valuable to have these differences of opinion. But at the same time the overwhelming evidence falls in favour of the legality and legitimacy of what NSA has done. Here I would refer you again to Judge Pauley’s finding [General Alexander quotes excerpts; full extract provided]:

“There is no evidence that the Government has used any of the bulk telephony metadata it collected for any purpose other than investigating and disrupting terrorist attacks. While there have been unintentional violations of guidelines, those appear to stem from human error and the incredibly complex computer programs that support this vital tool. And once detected, those violations were self-reported and stopped. The bulk telephony metadata collection program is subject to executive and congressional oversight, as well as continual monitoring by a dedicated group of judges who serve on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.”

Now one question is, “Can we do it better?” And the answer is, “I think so”. And that’s what we put on the table as the proposed next step for the Business Records FISA program to address the concerns that have been raised.

I. HUAWEI BAN DEBATE

AFR: Do you think the Australian government made the right decision to completely ban Huawei from the $40 billion National Broadband Network?

Gen. Alexander: I think what Australia did on the Huawei decision was tremendous. I believe the decision-making process, specifically, when they went out and got the best advice they could from everybody to come up with their decision, was outstanding.

My hat’s off to your government for taking that approach. It was a very deliberate process, and I think they made the right decision. And I applaud them for that.

There have been numerous examples that your country has seen where China has exploited various parts of your nation’s government and commercial activities. Giving them direct access to your nation’s networks does not make sense.

AFR: Is the potential for Huawei spying for China any different to what Cisco might be able to do for the NSA?

Gen. Alexander: The close ties between the Chinese government and industry are in no way comparable to the relations between the US government and US industry.

AFR: Do you think the UK government would make a different decision regarding Huawei if it made its decision today rather than in the early 2000s?

Gen. Alexander: I think if they went to talk to your intelligence agencies, and reviewed the process that your government went through, they may change their approach.

J. OTHER

AFR: How close is the intelligence sharing relationship between Australia and the US?

Gen. Alexander: You know, every one of our allies brings a special capability to the table. I will tell you this: it was one of the greatest honors and privileges that I had to deal with my counterparts in Australia. What great people they were: Steve Merchant, Ian McKenzie, Paul Taloni, and all the people that work at the Australian Signals Directorate and your other intelligence organizations.

They protect our troops and your troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, and they have been instrumental in the war on terror and helping to resolve regional conflicts. And they know better than anyone else how to party. What a great team.

AFR: America is Australia’s primary security guarantor through the ANZUS alliance. Yet China is Australia’s largest trading partner and, paradoxically, Australia’s biggest strategic security concern in the Pacific region. Do you think Australia faces a conflict between its security and economic interests? How are any potential conflicts going to be best reconciled?

Gen. Alexander: Nations act in their best interest. In this case China and Australia benefit from trading with each other. China sees that upsetting that relationship will only hurt their future growth. I am hopeful the relationship with China will improve over the next several years.

AFR: Is this the most comprehensive public interview you have given to date?

Gen. Alexander: Yes.

AFR: Okay, General Alexander, thank you so much for the time.

Gen. Alexander: Thank you, Chris. You take care.