Mike Quigley Quotes

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.

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

And most worryingly, it wouldn't surprise me if Putin ends up starting a major military conflict with the West at some point in the future to save his own skin as head of state in Russia.

Russia is an aggressive revisionist power. And they are working - there's evidence they're working to interfere not just in our electoral process, but the electoral processes of Europeans with the same toolkit - money, fake news, propaganda, and what those Soviets used to call aktivniye meropriyatiya, active measures. This is serious.

The Kremlin hacked our presidential election, is waging a cyberwar against our NATO allies, and is probing opportunities to use similar tactics against democracies worldwide. Why, then, are federal agencies, local and state governments, and millions of Americans unwittingly inviting this threat into their cyber networks and secure spaces?

On Putin's order, Russian security services try to destabilize NATO allies the U.S. has sworn to defend.

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.

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.

Everyone knows: if Russia threatens Ukraine and also has its sights on other states, this concerns the global security of Europe.

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.

We know that the government in China has been involved in cyber attacks before. I look at our partners around the world, our traditional allies, our NATO partners who are making the same assessment. We share so much with them and rely on their technology, their expertise and interoperability in many aspects of our own armed forces.

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.

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.

The Russians are succeeding in continuing their dismemberment of Ukraine, they're succeeding in exerting enormous influence in the Middle East, which they never had before. They are succeeding - they have succeeded in interfering with our election, and we know that they continue that in the French elections and other elections. And so far they have paid a little or no penalty for all of this misbehavior.

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 Americans are focused on Russia's attacks with our electoral system and we're consumed with that. But Russia is pushing against the West generally.

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.

Foreign nations have begun to include information warfare in their war college curricula with respect to both defensive and offensive applications.

I think that all of the cyber attacks that are taking place, but particularly this - the Russian one, had a profound impact on the American system, on our political process, on our - it invaded the space of our election. The releasing on a regular basis of one party's stolen emails had an impact, and I think that other things also had an impact.

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.

The Republican critique here is that Russia is in a weak situation, but has been emboldened by a weak response from the United States, that in Ukraine, that in other places, the United States has not stepped forward.

I thought it was important to speak about what I believe would be the right response to Russian aggression in Ukraine. I'm pleased to hear there is more sanctions maybe coming tomorrow. But the truth of the matter is I think we need less talk and more deeds.

You know, I look at Vladimir Putin as somebody who is an eye-for-an-eye kind of person. We questioned the legitimacy of his election in 2012, Secretary Clinton did - rightly, by the way. It did have - it was quite fraudulent.And so I think he's saying now, I'm going to show you that I can do the same thing.

We are starting to see what may be signs of continuing [Russian] influence in our country. Not just during the campaign but during the [Donald Trump] administration, basically signs of what could be a continuing operation. And those two things together are worth paying attention to.