The following is a transcript of an interview with Senator Mark Warner, D-Virginia, which aired on April 21, 2024.
MARGARET BRENNAN: We start today with the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mark Warner. Good morning, and a pleasure to have you here.
SENATOR MARK WARNER (D-VA): Thank you, Margaret.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So Senator $61 billion in aid to Ukraine, about 60% stays as investment in the American industrial base, as I understand it. President Zelenskyy said this morning on another network, it is important that they have crucial long-range artillery, such as attack communications, is this what this money will pay for? And if so, when will they actually get them?
WITHOUT WARNER: Well, the great news is that this is finally happening. It should have been six months ago. The next best time is right now, this week. We have seen Ukrainians perform better. If you step back for a moment and think about the fact that for most of my life, the majority of US defense forces were focused on Russia. Now and the last two years, with less than 3% of our defense budget, two years in a row, with the Ukrainians having eliminated 87% of the Russians' pre-existing ground forces, 63% of their tanks, 32% of their armored personnel carriers, without losing a single American soldier, because of the courage of the Ukrainians and the equipment they have received from us and our European allies. Getting this additional equipment asap, hopefully once it gets to the president on Tuesday or Wednesday, those shipments will literally be launched with this longer range ATACM.
MARGARET BRENNAN
— Next week?
WITHOUT WARNING: I hope that once the president signs, we've been told that the president's signature is there, making sure that Congress does its job to get these materials in transit by the end of the week. And on that schedule, what it's going to do is that it's clearly been the case that the morale of the Ukrainians has been excellent, but it's been undermined over the last two months, when they've been given literally rationed bullets, eight to ten bullets a day. . And in artillery shells, Russians ten to one, you can't underestimate the determination of the Ukrainians, but if they don't have the materials, they can't take this fight to the Russians.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Are they going to get this long-range artillery?
WITHOUT WARNING: Yes
MARGARET BRENNAN: Not just ammunition?
WITHOUT WARNING: ATACMS- I believe the administration prepared for the last two months to prepare or provide ATACMS. It is written in this law.
MARGARET BRENNAN: I understand. So you talked about rebuilding the industrial base and what that does, okay. According to the State Department, China has helped Russia rebuild its defense industrial base, which also has an impact on the battlefield here. How have they been able to overcome or defy US sanctions to help the Russians, who are fighting Ukraine?
WITHOUT WARNER: Well, if we look back again, I think we would all recognize that the sanctions regime has not been as strict as we like to see it. China is the worst offender with direct military support. India, a country I'm very supportive of, but India in terms of buying Russian oil and giving that hard currency to Russia, so they can go to the market and buy weapons. It's one of the reasons I think we're going to pick up this package that the House just passed this week, which says we have to be prepared to be prepared for our national security interests, not just in Ukraine and Russia , also in terms of military assistance to Israel, but with additional humanitarian aid for the Palestinians who are facing major challenges. And there's about eight to $9 billion for the Indo-Pacific region because of the concern we have about China's aggression toward Taiwan. Clearly, Chinese engagement with Russia, combined with the fact that the Iranians are providing drones for, say, Russia and the outlier nation, North Korea. I know the terminology used to be Axis of Evil, this may be the 2024 Axis of Evil combination of nations.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And Speaker Johnson has used that language. One of the other things the House voted on was to pass this TikTok bill. So that would force the Chinese parent company ByteDance itself, to divest, to sell, but they have the better part of a year to do that. The Chinese government says they won't allow it. ByteDance doesn't want to sell it. So if this just gets stuck in court, isn't the reality that TikTok isn't going away?
WITHOUT WARNER: Well, what we've done, and I've been arguing this case for over a year, I had a broad bipartisan bill that said, let's look at these tech companies, not just Chinese, Chinese and Russian in a broader way . basis where they have a day in court, but if they pose national security risks, I mean, a couple of years ago, it was the Chinese telecommunications company Huawei. Many American telecommunications companies we bought them and now we are spending American taxpayer money to tear down these equipment because there are national security risks. Huawei- AND- TikTok, 170 million Americans a day, 90 minutes a day–
MARGARET BRENNAN: — Correct.
WITHOUT WARNING: Frankly, this is more than just eyeballs hitting your net daily. And this information and many young people on TikTok get their news, the idea that we would give the Communist Party a large part of a propaganda tool, as well as the ability to erase the personal data of 170 million million Americans, is a risk to national security. .
MARGARET BRENNAN: It's a national security risk, according to the American intelligence community, that can have a direct impact on the American election. TikTok Accounts–
WITHOUT WARNING: — Regarding this year's US election…
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes, he addressed the candidates of both political parties during the 2022 midterm cycle. This is the global threat assessment…
WITHOUT WARNING:– This is a…
MARGARET BRENNAN: — TikTok won't come out before November.
WITHOUT WARNING: Well, here's the…
MARGARET BRENNAN: –that means it's an active threat.
WITHOUT WARNING: There is a lot of creativity on TikTok, there are people who make a living from TikTok as social influencers. I don't want this to go away. I simply want to make sure that the individuals pulling the strings are not ultimately Chinese Communist Party officials.
MARGARET BRENNAN: I understand, but even with this important bill, the timing is such that it doesn't make it an election risk. And the US government seems to be so limited in many ways when it comes to these electioneering efforts.
WITHOUT DISCLAIMER: The timing of giving this committee a complicated transaction, to give it a full year, I think just from a business standpoint, makes sense. The only thing we have in place, and I'm not taking much solace in it, but I was at the Munich Security Conference earlier this year when the top 20 social media companies, including Tik Tok, including Twitter, X, including Facebook, Google, Amazon, please, they've all said they would have a voluntary agreement on disinformation and disinformation and the election because with artificial intelligence, the possibility of people seeing our images here, maybe with words . that we don't talk
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right.
WITHOUT WARNER: It scares us all. And the truth is that these 20 companies have a guaranteed voluntary agreement, they will take the watermark, which will indicate ultra-ultra content, they will be willing to remove this content, but the proof will be in the pudding. . Parliamentary elections in Europe start in less than 60 days. So we're going to go with our European partners to say okay, the companies that you promised, show us what you're doing.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So this other measure that was also passed, Section 702, which is a key surveillance tool, was reauthorized for two years instead of five. Hear what the CIA director told my colleague Norah O'Donnell on Friday about how his agency uses that authority.
[START SOUND ON TAPE]
BILL BURNS, CIA DIRECTOR: It's a reauthorization, its passage, I think, is a crucial tool in the fight against fentanyl because something like 70% of all successful disruptions of fentanyl traffic moving into the United States from which we have been part of. they come directly from the intelligence derived from the 702.
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MARGARET BRENNAN: So these changes to the 702. How does it help combat fentanyl trafficking? What's the difference?
WITHOUT WARNER: Let's remember what 702 is. It's the ability of the United States government to monitor, to eavesdrop on, non-American aliens who are abroad. And many times the fentanyl drug cartels are staying out of Mexico, often sourcing commodities out of China. And this ability to eavesdrop on villains' communications is extraordinarily powerful. In fact, the president receives a daily summary of all intelligence points from around the world. Sixty percent, sixty percent, of what he reads every day is material that comes out of the 702 program. Now, let me be clear, there have been times in the past when, especially, the FBI didn't even he just followed his own rules to make sure that a foreign individual, a foreign terrorist who might be talking to an American, we put the appropriate protections in place. american
MARGARET BRENNAN: That led to some of that Republican criticism.
WITHOUT WARNER: How independent of any of the debate on the bill, and I was proud to be, as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, the person leading the charge on the bill. But five years ago, the same FBI was hooking 30% of its inquiries, just meeting its own criteria. We launch reforms. Screw level dropped from 30% to less than 1%. We put in requirements so you can no longer do batch queries. We need to make sure that FBI agents have to show a national security purpose. Even if a journalist, a political figure, or a religious figure, were to make an inquiry, you would have to get approval from me, the director, the deputy director, or the head of the National Security Division. We believe that we have a very strong reform project. That's why it passed the Senate 60 to 33. And, but I also have to say that the people who are against it, they have, they have a right. We have to have the kind of strict supervision. We must constantly be wary of misuse or overuse of these tools by government. And I think we had a good debate on Friday night.
MARGARET BRENNAN All right, Senator, I'm really looking forward to telling you about how good it is to have you here in person.
WITHOUT WARNER: Thank you, Margaret.
