“We’re so obsolete in cyber,” leading Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said in an interview with the New York Times.
In a 100-minute interview focused on foreign policy, Trump was asked how he envisions the use of cyberweapons during a potential Trump presidency.
His answer spoke entirely to the fact that he believes “we’re going backwards with our military” and falling behind countries like China and Russia.
As far as the question he was asked, which was on specifics of how he would and would not use cyberweapons, Trump offered no answer except to stress his belief that “we are frankly not being led very well in terms of the protection of this country.”
SANGER: The question was about cyber, how would you envision using cyberweapons? Cyberweapons in an attack to take out a power grid in a city, so forth.
TRUMP: First off, we’re so obsolete in cyber. We’re the ones that sort of were very much involved with the creation, but we’re so obsolete, we just seem to be toyed with by so many different countries, already. And we don’t know who’s doing what. We don’t know who’s got the power, who’s got that capability, some people say it’s China, some people say it’s Russia. But certainly cyber has to be a, you know, certainly cyber has to be in our thought process, very strongly in our thought process. Inconceivable that, inconceivable the power of cyber. But as you say, you can take out, you can take out, you can make countries nonfunctioning with a strong use of cyber. I don’t think we’re there. I don’t think we’re as advanced as other countries are, and I think you probably would agree with that. I don’t think we’re advanced, I think we’re going backwards in so many different ways. I think we’re going backwards with our military. I certainly don’t think we are, we move forward with cyber, but other countries are moving forward at a much more rapid pace. We are frankly not being led very well in terms of the protection of this country.
Trump proceeded to call Edward Snowden “horrible” because “he’s caused us tremendous problems with trust, with everything about, you know, when they’re showing Merkel’s cellphone has been spied on, and are— Now, they’re doing it to us, and other countries certainly are doing it to us, and but what I think what he did, I think it was a tremendous, a tremendous disservice to the United States. I think and I think it’s amazing that we can’t get him back.”
As far as cybersecurity policy goes, the only thing close to specifics Trump offered was that he would be open to spying on allies like Germany and Israel.
Of course, not answering in specifics is a Trump trademark that he touts as a strength of his campaign and potential presidency.
“I don’t want them to know what I’m thinking,” he told the Times. “The problem we have is that, maybe because it’s a democracy and maybe because we have to be so open—maybe because you have to say what you have to say in order to get elected—who knows? But I wouldn’t want to say. I wouldn’t want them to know what my real thinking is.”
H/T New York Times | Photo via Gage Skidmore/Flickr (CC BY SA 2.0)