Edward Snowden Quotes

A major attack on our cyber systems could shut down our critical infrastructure - financial systems, communications systems, electric grids, power plants, water treatment centers, transportation systems and refineries - that allows us to run our economy and protect the safety of Americans.

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.

Cybersecurity is a new issue for the international community at large. First of all, the technologies are new and the attacks are invisible. Traditionally, if you perceived a threat, it could be seen. It was physical. But not in cyberspace.

Cyberespionage and cyberattack is exploding from our adversaries inside our country. We don't seem capable of stopping it.

America is facing some major threats. Cyber warfare, Islamic terror and Russia, does it sound terrible? It sounds like the end of the world.

It's always been government's role to protect the security of the nation. And cyber-attacks is a security issue, from our perspective. And it's a security issue of particular concern with respect to the nation's core critical infrastructure, the infrastructure everyone relies on, the energy sector, the telecommunications sector, the banking sector.

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.

A lot of countries have advanced capabilities. And given the vulnerabilities of our infrastructure and our economies to digital platforms, we have to be careful in making sure that this doesn't become a lawless, low-level battlefield.

It is interesting that cyberwarfare is developing into something conventional and attacking objects, infrastructure, and critical services.

At present, it's not really clear who is in charge of protecting the nation from solar and nuclear EMP.

My view is that the cyber threat is bigger than any one government agency - or even the government itself. But the FBI brings a rare combination of scope and scale, experience, and tools to the mix. We investigate criminal activity like intrusions and cyber attacks, but we also investigate national security threats like foreign influence.

Some of the greatest national security threats we face cannot be defeated or defended by traditional military hardware, but only by greatly enhanced cyberspace warfare, including both offensive cyber-warfare and cyber-security.

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

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.

In cyberspace, it is becoming increasingly difficult to uphold security for one's own country by sacrificing that of others.

Out of any country on the planet, I can't think of a country that has been more focused than Iran from the high levels of government on cyber, and that includes the United States.

Advanced nation-states are now using cyber power for unrestricted economic warfare and national security-motivated espionage, as well as a force multiplier and signaling instrument in conflicts.

I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems.

As president, improving cyber security will be an immediate and top priority for my administration.

The potential for the next Pearl Harbor could very well be a cyber-attack.

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.

If you look ahead 10 years, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if the people of Russia had become fans of missile defence.

Cyber security will be an issue that I will be absolutely focused on as president. Because whether it's Russia, or China, Iran or North Korea more and more countries are using hacking to steal our information, to use it to their advantage. And we can't let that go on.

If you ask anybody at Cyber Command or look at any of the job listings for openings for their positions, you'll see that the one thing they don't prioritize is computer network defense. It's all about computer network attack and computer network exploitation at Cyber Command.

A stronger defense is an investment in peace.