Thread by @jseldin

"Today #Russia is doubling down on malign influence operations across #Europe & North America" Penn Biden Center's @mikercarpenter tells House Foreign Affairs Comm "But we remain remian unprepared, underfurnded & often ignorant of the threat"

"It's not just #Russia" per @mikercarpenter "#China & other non-state actors whose influcne and destabilization operations pose a threat to our democracy"

"We urgently need to focus more resources on rooting out Russia's malign networks, addressing our own massive vulnerabilies"

"We need better coordination between our domestic law enforcement agencies & our nat'l security aparatus" per @mikercarpenter "Too often one hand doesn't know what the other is doing"

Another concern - US campaign finance system is "so opaque that we don't even have an inkling how much foreign dark money is sloshing around the system" per @mikercarpenter

"More transparency is need for high end real estate transactions" adds former DASD for #Russia @mikercarpenter

Not enough to target only #Russia's oligarchs, per Carpernter

"It's time to impose real costs on Russia" he says

"#Putin's primary goal is maintaining power" per @SecureDemocracy's @rosenbergerlm "#Russia|n corporations, oligarchs & organized crime networks are all agents of malign influence abroad, often acting on their own to curry favor w/those in power"

"#Russia|n entities provide direct support for #Euro-skeptic & illiberal populist parties" per @rosenbergerlm "Energy investments are used similarly..."

Weak penalties for money laundering, ability to form anonymous companies a vulnerability in combating #Russia's malign influence, per @rosenbergerlm

"The #UnitedStates needs to do more to raise costs on #Moscow by fully implementing existing sanctions as part of a comprehensive strategy with consistent messaging & coordination w/#European allies" per @rosenbergerlm

"#Putin & his cronies rely on the Western financial system to protect & grow their assets even as they seek to weaken us" per @rosenbergerlm "This gives us leverage and we should use it"

#Russia tactics aim to make countries "so beholden to the #Kremlin the country will actually support Russia's interests over its own" per @CSIS's Heather Conley, a former deputy asst sec of state

"We are prone to give a little too much weight & acknowledgement to the so-called brilliance of #Russia|n malign influence operations" per Conley "But they use all of their tools persistently & purposefully. And they use all available means...This can be very overwhelming to us"

"The average American does not know that we are in a daily battle to preserve & protect the integrity of our democracy" per @CSIS' Conley "We're at war but this is a very different kind of war bcs the main battle space a a fight for the integrity of the American mind"

"That is #Russia's strength - our weaknesses" per @CSIS' Conley "Polarization & partisanship is our greatest weakness..."

"We are also not structured to fight this battle. We are structured to fight terrorism and terrorist financing" per Conley "We are not structured to fight malign influence and its many manifestations"

"We are increasingly going to see US voices &US organizations that will be the key disseminators of #Russia|n malign disinformation w/messages targeting vulnerable & divided US communities" per Conley re #Election2020 "This is going to look a lot like domestic campaign messaging"

"I can confirm for this committee the #RussiaIn gvt aims to attack Western political cohesion by using the very strengths of our liberal democratic order against us" per @cepa's @PeterBDoran "It has peddle disinformation and called it 'free speech'"

"When it comes to the corruption combination f money & influence I can think of no better example than #Russia's #NordStream2 pipeline" per @PeterBDoran "It is the crown jewel of #Russia's malign offensive in #Europe"

"As long as we are fighting each other, we are advancing the #Kremlin's agenda" @cepa's @PeterBDoran tells lawmakers

To deal w/#Russia, "We need a lot more sticks & no consideration of carrots or open ended partnerships w/Russia until we see undeniable signs that it has changed strategy" per @PeterBDoran

"The costs we put upon Russia for deploying chaos against us must rise"

"#Russia is limited only by the creativity of the #GRU and some of their malign actors in #Europe" per @cepa's @PeterBDoran "We need to stop playing whack-a-mole w/the #Kremlin. We need to raise the costs"

"We need to make it clear to the #Russia|ns that we can do to you what you can do to us" per @RepKinzinger, citing #ColdWar doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction "Vladimir Putin fears nothing more than losing his grip on power & I think we ought to threaten them that way"

Panel members raising concerns abt #Hungary allowing small #Russia bank to open HQ in #Budapest

"This is a huge vulnerability for not just Hungary but for the entire EU" per @mikercarpenter "This is a potential Trojan Horse for Russian money laundering & covert influence"

"We need to push back on #Hungary" per @mikercarpenter "Hungary has become a mini version of #Russia. It is a kleptocratic & increasingly authoritarian system..."

"Push back much harder on Prime Minister Orban" per @rosenbergerlm "The kind of treatment he received here in the US last week exactly undercuts what we need to be doing and the message we need to be sending"

"It's time to now contemplate sanctioning select Hungarian officials" per @CSIS' Heather Conley "I think it's time to now contemplate, as much as it grieves me, to limit #Hungary's access to @NATO's classified information... We have to take action"

"We really don't know how much of this [#Russia|n] money flows into Europe or into our own system" per @mikercarpenter

"There's a vast amount of resources that are held by oligarchs, tycoons, businessmen, #Russia|n companies that is available for use in dark money operations" per @mikercarpenter "The bottom line is we don't know the extent of it"

"We ourselves desperately need to address the issue of shell companies and beneficial ownership, exposing that ownership so we have a better idea of what the #Russia|ns are doing in our own country" per @mikercarpenter "It's simply all too easy & we don't know the extent"