Richard Burr Quotes

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.

Americans were outraged by Russia's interference in our presidential election, but a wider threat is Russia's doctrine of hybrid warfare, which includes cybersabotage of critical American infrastructure from nuclear plants to electrical grids.

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.

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.

It's public knowledge that there have been efforts - as U.S. intelligence sources have said - by Russia to destabilize the U.S. political system. I think that Canadians and, indeed, other Western countries should be prepared for similar efforts to be directed at us.

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.

While the specifics of Russia's interference in the 2016 American election remain unclear, no one doubts that Moscow has built a robust technological arsenal for waging cyberattacks.

When I see something like Russian intelligence services interfering with our electoral process, I find that incredibly offensive.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Russian government attacked our election.

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.

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.

We need to be very well aware of the fact that China and Russia are using technology to attack us, just as ISIS is using technology to recruit those who would murder American citizens.

The Russians have a long history of interfering in elections - theirs and other people's.

It's no surprise that hackers working for North Korea, Iran's mullahs, Vladimir V. Putin in Russia, and the People's Liberation Army of China have all learned that the great advantage of cyberweapons is that they are the opposite of a nuke: hard to detect, easy to deny, and increasingly finely targeted.

The fact that Russia has shown a willingness to disrupt elections and undermine institutions should come as no surprise. Just ask our allies across Europe, particularly in places like Georgia and Ukraine.

No single solution or actor can deal with the complex and interrelated challenges to electoral integrity arising from manipulated data, hate speech, and fake news. These phenomena are not new; they have been part of electoral cycles since the advent of democracy.

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.

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.

I think that Russian meddling in the election is an important issue.

We do need to get to the bottom of what Russia did and their interference in the election. And we need to also figure out how the Obama administration failed so miserably to allow Russia to have this type of impact in our country.