Reince Priebus Quotes

For years, America has helped protect against terrorist attacks by telling Americans, 'If you see something, say something.' The same should go for protecting our elections against foreign interference.

No matter which party is in the White House, doubt in America's democratic institutions rattles our nation to its core. This should not be a partisan issue for any reason, as any candidate or party could be on the receiving end of a hack at any time.

Americans cannot afford to turn a blind eye to Russian interference in our democracy. We need to get to the facts and learn lessons to prevent future misconduct by foreign governments.

Despite the intelligence community's assessment that Russia interfered in our presidential election, President Donald Trump and Republican leadership seem wholly uninterested in examining how and why Russia targeted us - and what we must do to prevent it from happening again.

I'm talking about the finding in October that is public now of 17 different intelligence agencies saying Russia tried to meddle with our elections.

We know for a fact the Russians tried to change the outcome of our election, attacking the very fundamental of democracy. We know they did that. We need to know how, we need to know why, and most of all we need to know what to do to prevent this kind of activity, which they continue to carry on in free nations around the world.

A global world needs global firewalls.

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.

We want to protect American interests. It's America first. I don't want the D.N.C. hacked. I don't want anybody hacked. But I don't know who did the hacking. That's my point.

Today is just to the beginning of a long and overdue national discussion on how to protect ourselves from modern cyber crime and evolving national security threats and how to develop the cyber offense strategies necessary to gain a critical security edge in the 21st century. We need the edge, and ideally, a big one.

As the ranking member of the Rules Committee, I'm particularly concerned about ensuring our elections are safe from foreign interference.

We need to do everything in our power to assure the American people that the election system is secured and that outside forces will not interfere.

We should enable the private sector to engage in self-defense in the cyber world like we do in the physical world.

I think it's important for people to believe their elections are on the up and up and they aren't being tampered with by anyone, and in this particular instance there's a large body of evidence that at a minimum Russia tried to tamper with our election.

We've created these Protected Voices videos to showcase the methods these adversaries might use, and to help campaigns practice good cyber hygiene, because the foundation of election security is cybersecurity.

As individuals and as a nation we have become dependent on a vast digital infrastructure. That, in turn, has made us vulnerable to cybercriminals and foreign adversaries that target that infrastructure.

There's a clear distinction between activities that threaten the security and integrity of our election systems, and the broader threat from influence operations designed to influence voters.

Russia may very well be front and center again in 2020 as they were in 2016 regarding interference in America's presidential election. But the Trump administration is seeking to use its power of diplomacy to bring other countries into the act as well.

We must have the strictest adherence to security procedures to protect against compromise by hostile foreign powers.

We will not stand idly by while any entity - be it a foreign power or corporation - seeks to criminally or unfairly undermine our country's place in the world.

Our folks at the FBI and at DOJ are working their tails off every day to protect our nation's companies, our universities, our computer networks, and our ideas and innovation.

National security is not just things that go boom. It is not just terrorists and foreign adversaries.

When a country is at war we want Congressmen, regardless of party, to back up the government of the United States.

The United States need to be focusing more on creating a more secure, more reliable, more robust, and more trusted internet, not one that's weaker, not one that relies on this systemic model of exploiting every vulnerability, every threat out there.

The two most capable nation state adversaries in the cyber domain are clearly Russia and, of course, China. And I do think Russia poses a huge threat in the way they have used the cyber domain. That, to me, by the way, is the big issue here, is Russian interference in our political process, in our election process. And that is an egregious act by them. And they will continue to do that and I think more aggressively than they have in the past. And I think it's something Americans, all American citizens need to be aware of.