Quote

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.

The fact of the matter is that the United States faces real threats from criminals, terrorists, spies, and malicious cyber actors.

Cyber-enabled theft of trade secrets by state actors in China has emerged as a major threat to our economic and, thus, national security.

Because there are little to no consequences for conducting cyberattacks, criminals and nation-states are becoming bolder in their threats and behavior. Russia, China, North Korea and Iran are increasingly hacking into U.S. companies and government networks for espionage purposes or financial gain.

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.

Activists from the Middle East to Asia to the former Soviet states have all been telling me that they suffer from increasingly sophisticated cyber-attacks.

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.

China is one of the world's greatest proliferators of weapons of mass destruction to these rogue nations.

Many agree that the worst thing that could ever happen is if Russia and China get closer.

The United States is afraid of China; it is not a military threat to anyone and is the least aggressive of all the major military powers.