Chrystia Freeland Quotes

I'm worried about privacy issues, I'm worried about Russian attacks. They literally, if you if you look at what their insidious aims are - to divide this country, is to make us hate each other, to make us not to trust media.

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.

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.

Russia has conducted a coordinated cyberattack on state election systems and hacked critical infrastructure. They have used social media to sow chaos and discord in our society. They have beaten and harassed U.S. diplomats and violated anti-proliferation treaties.

Russia has a long history of propaganda and trying to influence various nation's cultures and elections. It's happening. They seem to have stepped up their game.

The Internet allows foreign adversaries to attack America in new and unexpected ways. Free and fair elections are hard-fought and contentious. There will always be adversaries who work to exacerbate domestic differences and try to confuse, divide, and conquer us.

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.

I think it's safe to say that the Russians are extremely interested in anything that has to do with the U.S. political system. And it's not out of the realm of possibility that they are in many other systems.

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.

I think that what is true is that the Russians intended to meddle, and they meddled. And it could be another country in the future.

The day after the Republican convention ended, there was another political bomb that was dropped on the U.S. presidential election [2016] from Russia. The day after the Republican convention ended, right before the Democratic Convention began we got what U.S. intelligence agencies believed to be the next big Russian incursion into our election. We got the first WikiLeaks dump.

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.

It shouldn't just be Russia we're concerned about, because many countries that are not our friends have been hacking into American accounts across the board.

Cyber espionage is very lucrative for economic benefit to a nation.

It is time to investigate Russian interference in our democracy and to address it in a manner that will help restore Americans' trust in their government.

Many observers believe that the greatest damage Russia has done to U.S. interests in recent years stems from the Kremlin's interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential race. Although there is no question that Moscow's meddling in American elections is deeply worrying, it is just one aspect of the threat Russia poses.

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 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.

Even heads of our own security agency said, you know, we need to take a deep breath on this. This really doesn't seem to be happening [that Russians are trying to influence American domestic politics ].

I know Donald's [Trump] very praiseworthy of Vladimir Putin, but Putin is playing a really tough, long game here. And one of the things he's done is to let loose cyber attackers to hack into government files, to hack into personal files, hack into the Democratic National Committee. And we recently have learned that, you know, that this is one of their preferred methods of trying to wreak havoc and collect information.

Take cyber-capabilities. We have way more cyber-capability than Russia do. We could intervene in their elections easily. We choose not to do so because we're a different country. That's what Obama was trying to say.

Russian hackers interfered in our elections, and we like penalized a few of them. Whatever they're doing underground, we don't know. No, this is going to be a big issue. And I have to say the Barack Obama - the Donald Trump position is, A, mystifying, but, B, doomed. He has a nice little Vladimir Putin romance going on right now. I think we're going to get out the hankies, because this is going to turn into an ugly relationship within a year or two.

American democracy has been hacked.

It's been reported - in fact, The New York Times has reported that intelligence agencies have told the White House that they now have, quote, "high confidence" that the Russian government was behind the hack.

The thing that has disturbed me most about the Russian hacking episode is - and the thing that surprised me most has not been the fact of Russian hacking. The cyber world is full of information gathering, you know, propaganda, et cetera. I have been concerned about the degree to which, in some circles, you've seen people suggest that Vladimir Putin has more credibility than the U.S. government. I think that's something new.