George Tenet Quotes

The Russians know that well executed disinformation, when exercised tactically, can quickly metastasize.

We had a general awareness, for example, of Russian use of social media - Facebook ads, use of Twitter, fake news implants - we had a general understanding of that. But now, as time has elapsed and time has gone on, I've certainly learned a lot more about the depth and breadth of what the Russians were about.

An information operations team was sent to Afghanistan to conduct various psychological operations on the Afghans and Taliban. The team was then asked not to focus on the Taliban but on manipulating senators into giving more funds and troops [to the war].

The battle against terrorism is not only a military fight but primarily a battle of information.

While maintaining our nuclear potential at the proper level, we need to devote more attention to developing the entire range of means of information warfare.

Leaflet operations should be expanded to obtain maximum practicable psychological effect on the North Vietnamese population.

I am talking about strategies that were developed, working with the Trump campaign. I really do believe that much of what you saw coming out of Trump's mouth was a play from Putin's playbook.

My experience investigating foreign propaganda operations predated the proliferation of social media platforms.

If we're not vigilant foreign countries can have an impact on the political debate in the United States in ways that might not have been true 10, 20, 30 years ago in - in part because of the way news is transmitted and in part because so many people are skeptical of mainstream news organizations that - everything's true and everything's false.

It shouldn't surprise any American to know that Russia uses its money and its intelligence services to spread disinformation, use subterfuge and deception and manipulation, to try to divide political opinion within the United States, within any Western European country, or among NATO countries. That's one of the techniques that Russia has used for decades, during the Cold War and during the Putin era.

The way the Pentagon and its defenders have pushed back against this story is to say: "They weren't doing psychological operations, they were doing information operations and public affairs. They were just helping us spin senators like we normally do."

World War III is a guerrilla information war with no division between military and civilian participation.

I think raise doubts that's what Russians are doing around the world. I think they're trying to do that. I think they're trying to cause everything to be in question. We see them playing in a lot of different elections and trying to do that, because that's all they've got.

Without a doubt, psychological warfare has proven its right to a place of dignity in our military arsenal.

The art of war is at once comprehensive and complicated; ... it demands much previous study; and ... the possession of it, in its most improved and perfect state, is always a great moment to the security of a nation. This, therefore, ought to be a serious care of every government; and for this purpose, an academy, where a regular course of instruction is given, is an obvious expedient, which different nations have successfully employed.

The Russians are clearly a big adversary, and they demonstrated it by trying to mess around in our election.

Proprietary programming like news can be a great weapon.

I have no doubt that there are Russian efforts to disturb the fabric of American democracy, but they're disruption efforts. They're troublemaking efforts. They're also not illegal.

A lot of campaign lexicon is very militaristic - even the term 'campaign.'

The Russian propaganda machine, even in the U.S., is not to be discounted.

Our adversaries are trying to undermine our country on a persistent and regular basis, whether it's election season or not.

We are at war, if you will, in the cyber domain now, constantly battling countries, such as Russia or China, who are trying to do everything from steal our technology to influence our elections to put out disinformation about the United States.

A rapidly growing number of nation states have determined that cyberespionage is a highly valuable tool not only to steal national and military secrets but also to pillage the most valuable business information from international competitors and pass it on to domestic industries to help them out-innovate and out-negotiate their rivals.

Unlike Hillary Clinton, who has risked so many lives with her careless handling of sensitive information, my administration will not telegraph exactly military plans and what they are.

We need to make it very clear - whether it's Russia, China, Iran or anybody else - the United States has much greater capacity. And we are not going to sit idly by and permit state actors to go after our information, our private-sector information or our public-sector information.