We are vulnerable in the military and in our governments, but I think we're most vulnerable to cyber attacks commercially. This challenge is going to significantly increase. It's not going to go away.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Trust me: our critical infrastructure is vulnerable to cyber-attack, to potential terrorist attack, and we are not taking this threat seriously enough.
We face cyber threats from state-sponsored hackers, hackers for hire, global cyber syndicates, and terrorists. They seek our state secrets, our trade secrets, our technology, and our ideas - things of incredible value to all of us. They seek to strike our critical infrastructure and to harm our economy.
All of our intelligence agencies, our Department of Defense, are all working to meet this threat. But it's a fast moving world; it's a place where offense is easier than defense, and keeping up with the next innovation in cyber-warfare is an enormous challenge.
We will build in Britain a cyber strike capability so we can strike back in cyber space against enemies who attack us, putting cyber alongside land, sea, air and space as a mainstream military activity.
Look at what is happening in China and in Russia. They have units that are specifically targeted cyber warfare. They are carrying it out. Our critical infrastructure is attacked thousands of times a day.
Advances in technology - hugely beneficial though they are - render us vulnerable in new ways. For instance, our interconnected world depends on elaborate networks: electric power grids, air traffic control, international finance, just-in-time delivery, and so forth.
The biggest thing that concerns me is when we start getting countries using cybercrime to shut down infrastructure, electricity, communications systems, the Internet, et cetera.
We've always had to worry about the electrical grid and nuclear facilities, and they remain a concern; but cyber-terrorism, you know, which is a word that you hear more and more, I think is a reality.
Computer hacking really results in financial losses and hassles. The objectives of terrorist groups are more serious. That is not to say that cyber groups can't access a telephone switch in Manhattan on a day like 9/11, shut it down, and therefore cause more casualties.
I am still cautiously hopeful about the potential of the Internet. But it seems that the greatest revolution in communication has been hijacked by commercial values.
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