<i>MATT: Estonia:</i> <i>a small European democracy along the Russian border,</i> <i>an American ally,</i> <i>and a country that hadn’t seen political violence once in its modern history,</i> <i>not until April 26th, 2007.</i> [gunfire] [sirens wailing] [glass shattering] [indistinct shouting] <i>REPORTER: [speaking foreign language]</i> LAURA: I, uh, lived quite near to the, uh, main event <i>with my, uh, husband and my oldest child.</i> When I went home, uh, I saw some people there, and, uh, I was pretty scared. [indistinct shouting] My husband was ready to protect, uh, our family then at night. [glass shattering] [crowd chanting in foreign language] REPORTER: They’re chanting “Russia.” LAURA: Yeah, they’re shouting, “Russia, Russia, Russia.” - Do you think that this was spontaneous, or do you think this was being encouraged? - No, this wasn’t spontaneous because a couple of days before, lots of people came from Russia to Estonia, but nobody knew it’s gonna be that massive. Nobody knew. <i>MATT: In 2007, Vladimir Putin’s government</i> <i>interfered in Estonian politics,</i> <i>stoking unrest,</i> <i>mounting cyberattacks,</i> <i>trying to disrupt the government.</i> [glass shatters] <i>Any of this sound familiar?</i> <i>[dramatic string music]</i> <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>[droning music]</i> <i>[pensive electronic music]</i> <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>DONALD TRUMP: Russia, if you’re listening,</i> I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. <i>[curious music]</i> <i>MATT: American authorities have concluded</i> <i>that Vladimir Putin’s government</i> <i>tried to influence the 2016 presidential election.</i> REPORTER: Joining us now, one of the reporters, Matt Apuzzo. - Within the first hours of getting this information... <i>I spent more than a decade in Washington</i> <i>covering intelligence and national security issues, including that attack,</i> <i>and I still don’t understand one thing:</i> <i>how did we not see this coming?</i> [pan sizzling] <i>So I’m meeting CIA’s former top lawyer John Rizzo, to get his take on it.</i> JOHN: Nice to see you. Been a long time. MATT: When I was in Washington and we were covering the Russia story, we had this massive timeline document. And one of the first things on the timeline was, <i>“Russia hacks Estonia.”</i> I got really interested in this—uh, in this Estonia story. It just has this feel of, like, a missed warning sign, and so I’m kind of wrestling with this idea about whether Estonia was—was a one-off, whether it was a cyberattack, or whether it was really the precursor to what got launched in 2016. JOHN: Yeah, the proverbial canary in the coal mine. MATT: It feels a little bit like now we look up and we say, “How did we not see an influence campaign coming?” CIA’s been fighting influence campaigns with Russia forever, right? JOHN: Well, we have, but from 9/11 at least through 2007, a major focus of the agency was the terrorist threat, certainly not necessarily, uh, Russia. MATT: Why did that seem so crazy? - Well, I mean, I think part of it was—was—uh, um, a certain myopia that, “Well, they couldn’t do that.” I mean, you know, “They couldn’t do it. They couldn’t do it” - Yeah, they did. - Yeah, they did. - If you had time in Estonia to go and really deconstruct that campaign, what would you look for? JOHN: I mean, it’s a classic postmortem investigation, from the Kennedy assassination to 9/11, you go back. You examine the entrails. <i>REPORTER: We began with exclusive NBC News reporting</i> <i>on Russia’s involvement in the U.S. election.</i> <i>MATT: When the Kremlin launched its American attack in 2016,</i> <i>it used three key tools: agents promoting unrest on the ground...</i> <i>REPORTER: Russian hackers pretending to be Texans.</i> <i>MATT: Disinformation through social media...</i> <i>REPORTER: He believes that she has brain damage.</i> <i>MATT: And cyberattacks meant to disrupt the electoral system,</i> <i>all to exploit the deepest divisions in the country,</i> <i>sowing chaos, encouraging mistrust.</i> <i>JEFF GREENFIELD: The polls and the political rhetoric</i> speak to a mood of anger, distrust, even outright betrayal. <i>MATT: These attacks felt sophisticated, focused,</i> <i>as if it had all happened before.</i> <i>Had Putin conducted a test run in Estonia in 2007?</i> <i>[spirited string music]</i> <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>Until 1991, Estonia was a Soviet republic tightly controlled by Russia.</i> <i>Today a quarter of the population is ethnic Russian.</i> <i>Most of the rest is native Estonian.</i> <i>Political tension here often stems from the divide between these two groups.</i> <i>And in 2007, that division centered on one object:</i> <i>a statue,</i> <i>a controversial war memorial</i> <i>that became a winning campaign issue for the incoming government.</i> Can you just give me a primer on that moment in Estonian political history? - The elections, if I remember correctly, were held in March 2007, and the events started happening in the end of April, so it was a new government. MATT: Let’s talk about the statue and the events of the 26th and the 27th. - At the heart of Tallinn, there is—there was a statue. MATT: The <i>Bronze Soldier.</i> <i>Russians here see this statue as a tribute to the victory over the Nazis</i> <i>and a memorial to the 8 1/2 million soldiers who died.</i> <i>But Estonians, they see a painful reminder</i> <i>of the brutality of Russian occupation.</i> <i>Think of American Civil War statues, and you get a rough idea.</i> ALL: [shouting in foreign language] <i>MATT: During 2006,</i> <i>ethnic Russian demonstrations at the statue got worse,</i> <i>so in 2007, the new government decided</i> <i>the</i> Bronze Soldier <i>had to be moved before tensions exploded.</i> <i>LAURI: It was obvious that something might happen</i> because it was constantly used as a target for political provocations, but to put an end to those political provocations, <i>something had to be done on part of the government as well,</i> <i>and it was decided that the much more appropriate place</i> would be in the military cemetery. <i>MATT: At this point, it’s important to understand</i> <i>what happened a month before that election:</i> <i>a pointed speech in Munich by Vladimir Putin.</i> <i>He railed against the U.S. and criticized NATO,</i> <i>the alliance created long ago to keep the Soviet Union in check.</i> <i>Putin’s message was clear: NATO’s expansion to his border through Estonia was a threat.</i> VLADIMIR: [speaking Russian] <i>TRANSLATOR: I think it is obvious that NATO expansion</i> <i>does not have any relation with the modernization of the alliance itself</i> <i>or with the ensuring security in Europe.</i> <i>On the contrary, it represents a serious provocation</i> <i>that reduces the level of mutual trust.</i> <i>MATT: Two months after Putin’s speech,</i> <i>all hell breaks loose in Estonia.</i> [crowd chanting in foreign language] PROTESTOR: [speaking foreign language] MAN: [shouting in foreign language] [glass shatters] [gunfire] REPORTER: [speaking foreign language] [indistinct shouting] [gunfire] [crowd chanting in foreign language] REPORTER: [speaking foreign language] - [speaking foreign language] - [speaking foreign language] - [speaking foreign language] <i>LAURA: It’s the first time I’ve seen it.</i> Estonians are, like, very calm people usually. Before that event, I didn’t think that we live in, uh, two different worlds, but after the riots, I knew that we’re not on the same page. <i>There were some, uh, people</i> <i>who wanted it to, uh, become violent.</i> <i>MATT: You started seeing people coming across the border.</i> - There was a clear surge in the number of applications. <i>Some of the names were known previously to Estonian authorities</i> as people involved in different pro—protests, <i>not only in Estonia but also in other countries,</i> so there was intelligence that pro-Soviet forces were planning a major event. <i>It was—it was clearly, uh, uh, meant to escalate these conflicts,</i> <i>so I think that is the—the strategy behind</i> by destabilizing the society and undermining the trust towards democratically elected institutions. <i>[spirited string music]</i> <i>MATT: Putin didn’t create the division between Russians and Estonians,</i> <i>but Moscow knew how to exploit those tensions.</i> <i>It’s a lesson that Russia will put to use again in 2016.</i> <i>During the two nights of riots in 2007,</i> <i>thousands of readers flocked to Estonia’s most popular news site,</i> Delfi. - We created stories which had thousands of comments... - How much of what happened in the streets was being organized online in these comments? <i>For example...</i> <i>MATT: In the first night, a 20-year-old man is killed,</i> <i>dozens are wounded, but the Russian operation is just getting started.</i> <i>[light music]</i> <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>MATT: You had intelligence, even in the moment,</i> that we’re not dealing with a typical moment of unrest. We’re dealing with a foreign government staging this for a political purpose. - I think that would be a pretty good guess, yes. It would be an educated guess. - Well, but it was an educated guess because— or did you have— was there intelligence that backed this up? - Yes, there was information that backed that up. MATT: What’s going through your mind at that point? LAURI: The decision how to react to that situation is starting to be formulated, so remove the statue or not. - Is that a tough call? LAURI: At that moment of time, to get the statue removed, that was the decision that the government made, and that was something that we carried out, and I think it was the right call. <i>MATT: There are no known images of the removal,</i> <i>but the crane operator who took down the statue</i> <i>snapped a photo with his old Nokia.</i> [cell phone chimes] <i>Back in my hotel room, I power up the ancient phone</i> <i>and there it is.</i> <i>But what happened to the statue next?</i> <i>According to the Russian media, it was cut into pieces,</i> <i>a desecration that stoked outrage.</i> <i>REPORTER: [speaking foreign language]</i> - [speaking foreign language] <i>[somber music]</i> <i>MATT: The truth, though, is found in a military cemetery</i> <i>south of the city center.</i> <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>Estonians never cut up the statue.</i> <i>It’s right in front of me.</i> <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>Fake news.</i> <i>And there are more parallels to come.</i> <i>[dramatic music]</i> <i>REPORTER: </i>The New York Times <i>reports</i> <i>on the growing FBI investigation into...</i> <i>MATT: Before the Democratic Convention in July 2016,</i> <i>Russia opened a new front in its influence campaign.</i> <i>REPORTER: Russia likely stole the emails and gave them to WikiLeaks.</i> <i>REPORTER: This is an electronic Watergate.</i> <i>MATT: We now know that the hack</i> <i>was intended to corrupt the presidential election.</i> <i>It was unthinkable.</i> <i>REPORTER: What is going on?</i> <i>MATT: But it shouldn’t have been.</i> <i>In 2007 in Estonia,</i> <i>a different kind of cyberattack followed the riots,</i> <i>but the point was the same: disruption.</i> <i>REPORTER: Estonia was the victim of</i> <i>a sustained hacking campaign and blames Russia...</i> MATT: When did you realize that the battleground has kind of shifted? - As we are there in the police situation room worrying about the situation on the ground. I’m talking to Martin Jasko, the head of government PR. He says that seems we can’t get the press releases up. MATT: You can’t get the press releases onto the website. - Exactly. And then Martin comes back and says, “I think it’s something more serious. I believe we are under cyberattack.” <i>REPORTER: Estonian state internet providers have been bombarded</i> <i>by a wave of virtual attacks via cyberspace.</i> BILL: I got an email saying that there was an incident happening and “your attention is needed.” <i>MATT: This Silicon Valley tech consultant</i> <i>witnessed the events in Estonia firsthand.</i> BILL: The goal of the Russian attack was to send a little bit of traffic from each of hundreds of thousands of other machines towards Estonia in order to swamp the incoming connections into Estonia, stop bank transactions from occurring, that kind of thing, for instance. MATT: Did you know right off the bat that this was Russia? Did they tell you that? - It was obvious given the context. <i>MATT: The Russians attacked Estonian networks</i> <i>with 100 times the normal traffic.</i> <i>They go after banks, media outlets, the government.</i> <i>HILLAR: [speaking foreign language]</i> MATT: When this started to happen, did it seem like stuff you’d studied? - Yes. MATT: The whole strategy is built around the idea that they need to make you afraid. Did they? - Yes. And... - What was Russia’s biggest win? MATT: You think they’re gonna stop hacking? Why? <i>[line trilling]</i> <i>OPERATOR: Hi, Russian embassy.</i> - Hi, can I get Nikolay Lakhonin, please? <i>OPERATOR: Okay. [line trilling]</i> <i>MATT: To this day, Moscow has never admitted</i> <i>to either the Estonian or the U.S. attacks.</i> <i>I tried for weeks to get a detailed response from Russia.</i> <i>I don’t expect an answer...</i> <i>[phone beeps]</i> <i>[intense violin music]</i> <i>And I don’t get one.</i> <i>[intriguing music]</i> <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>MATT: American officials</i> <i>knew the Russians were meddling in 2016,</i> <i>but they decided not to reveal the extent of it</i> <i>for fear of appearing to influence the election.</i> <i>Would going public have made a difference?</i> <i>Hard to say.</i> <i>But the Estonian case suggests yes.</i> - What was crucial and what defined the Estonia’s policy of dealing with cyberattack was that the decision was, “We go—we go public.” MATT: Not only did you talk about it; you said, “We’re under cyberattack. It’s linked to what’s been happening in the streets,” and you had both your prime minister and your justice minister both pointed the finger right at Russia right away. - We thought that we need to ring the bell. <i>MATT: Ringing the bell unified the Estonian people in an hour of crisis.</i> <i>DICK DURBIN: There was a definite attempt by Russia to influence this election.</i> <i>MIKE HUCKABEE: They just don’t believe that the Russians</i> <i>impacted the outcome of the election.</i> <i>MATT: But in 2016, America was anything but united.</i> <i>BILL: As long as we’re all divided and bubbled and compartmentalized,</i> anyone coming forward with this crazy story is not gonna be believed because it seems too ludicrous. Each individual person thinks, “Gosh, the Russians couldn’t be trying to, you know, “influence my individual opinion as a random voter in Ohio. That’s ridiculous.” You know, if I start talking about that, people will think I’ve got a tinfoil hat on. <i>[gentle music]</i> <i>MATT: If you look at what the Russians were targeting in Estonia,</i> it was that chasm of identity, right, the—the different experiences between Russians and Estonians, and if you look at here, it’s all of the same kind of fault lines, right? I mean, it’s race, gender, you know, politics, guns, religion. In that sense, it seems like the divisions are almost the vulnerability here. BILL: Exactly, exactly. <i>For attacks of this nature to succeed,</i> <i>you really have to cleave people from the understanding</i> <i>that we do better collectively.</i> <i>The fact that there’s no one who believes exactly what you believe is not a problem.</i> <i>It’s diversity. It’s strength.</i> MATT: If the Russians figured out “We can use these technological advancements to divide people,” why didn’t we recognize that these technological advancements are going to be used by the Russians to divide us? - There’s no budget for countering this kind of influence. Things have changed so much so quickly. Things are operating at a—a different scale, not a scale twice or ten times but a scale millions of times larger. <i>MATT: The U.S. viewed the Estonian incident as just a cyberattack,</i> <i>entirely missing that it was also an influence operation</i> <i>designed to destabilize a government.</i> <i>This meant no major changes in Washington</i> <i>and no consequences for Russia.</i> <i>So for me, the obvious question is,</i> <i>now what?</i> <i>[somber string music]</i> <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>MATT: The Russians ended the Estonian attack by the summer of 2007</i> <i>and now they had a blueprint.</i> <i>RAIN: In terms of what the—the attacker might have learned from this,</i> well, clearly, there is no real downside. Nobody went to jail for any of this, even though some people stepped forward and said, “Yep, I also participated in some way.” You don’t have to worry about the—the Russian law enforcement knocking on your door and saying that, well, you know, “You took part in this, and we are now going to prosecute you.” Estonians made an official law enforcement cooperation request. MATT: You asked Russia to investigate this. - Yes, as an official request, Estonian law enforcement turned to their colleagues in Russia to investigate these attacks, the cyberattacks, uh, and the response came back, “No, we can’t help you, period.” <i>[dramatic music]</i> MATT: In the United States right now, half the country believes very strongly that Russia messed with the election and maybe even compromised the election, and the other half of the country thinks that’s all just Democratic excuse-making. Does that matter? Does that division matter? Does it have a consequence? - The—the fact that America is so divided today is much more valuable than picking the winner of the presidential race because that means that U.S. is dealing with internal problems and is pulling back internationally so that other forces may fill the void. <i>MATT: In both America and Estonia,</i> <i>the Kremlin had plenty of raw material to work with.</i> <i>In the U.S., that means guns, immigration, and especially race.</i> <i>[somber piano music]</i> <i>In Estonia, it means this place,</i> <i>a reminder of the terrible history</i> <i>that connects and divides Russians and Estonians.</i> “The memorial at Maarjamae to victims of Communism “is dedicated to all Estonian people “who suffered under the terror inflicted by the Soviet Union. “The communist terror regime began with the occupation of Estonia on 17 June, 1940 and ended with the restoration of Estonia’s independence on 20 August, 1991.” HELI: These are the names of the Estonian people who have been deported to Siberia. MATT: But how many people are we talking about here? HELI: 75,000. - 75,000 people were deported from Estonia. HELI: Deporting, killed, uh, or, uh, uh, just, um, vanished. MATT: So how many people in Estonia today have somebody in their family... - Everybody. MATT: Everybody. - Yeah. <i>MATT: For a country mounting an influence operation,</i> <i>histories and divisions are like live rounds of ammo:</i> <i>aim them just right and they can deeply wound a country.</i> How many family members, for you, are on this wall? HELI: So on my mother’s side, roughly 20 people, and on my father’s side, roughly 20 people. It is a memorial for genocide. MATT: And so having a Red Army soldier in the center of Tallinn, uh, it—it symbolized all of this. HELI: Well, we have was a symbol of occupation. MATT: It does feel like Estonia’s been trying to get the world’s attention for a while. You guys are saying, “Cyber’s an issue. Russia’s an issue. Pay attention.” HELI: Yeah, because we were trying to warn everybody. [chuckles] And now I hope we have. <i>MATT: And now I hear the warning.</i> <i>The more divided a country is, the more vulnerable it becomes.</i> <i>It’s not about the last attack.</i> <i>It’s about the next one.</i>