Jared Cohen Quotes

The United States cannot wait for the cyber equivalent of the collapse of the World Trade Center.

Our enemies and our would-be enemies are working very hard at cyberterrorism... They're trying to level the playing field because they know they can't beat us tank for tank, plane for plane.

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.

I do agree that when it comes to cyber warfare, we have more to lose than any other nation on earth.

The sooner we act, the sooner we can start turning the tables on cyberattackers.

In a modern digitalized world, it is possible to paralyze a country without attacking its defense forces: The country can be ruined by simply bringing its SCADA systems to a halt. To impoverish a country, one can erase its banking records. The most sophisticated military technology can be rendered irrelevant. In cyberspace, no country is an island.

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.

Cyber attacks are not going away.

The intensity of cyber conflict around the world is increasing, and the tools are becoming cheaper and more readily available.

Further, the next generation of terrorists will grow up in a digital world, with ever more powerful and easy-to-use hacking tools at their disposal.

The single biggest existential threat that's out there, I think, is cyber.

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.

The first deterrence, nuclear deterrence, is presently being superseded by the second deterrence: a type of deterrence based on what I call 'the information bomb' associated with the new weaponry of information and communications technologies.

Establishing robust cyberdefenses no more militarizes cyberspace than having a navy militarizes the ocean.

As our use of technologies grows exponentially, so do our country's vulnerabilities. Our national security depends on the stability and reliability of our communications infrastructure. The cyber threat to IT and national security systems has never been greater.

The Internet definitely could be a weapon of mass destruction - it's not going to come in a bomb, it's going to come as a cyberattack. It's pretty amazing to see what a small group of people can do if they really know how to control the universe.

As a member of the House Intelligence Committee, I have made our nation's response to cyberwarfare a primary focus.

I think we could very easily suffer a seriously catastrophic cyber event.

To my knowledge, no one has died from a cyberattack... but there is a gray area between peace and war.

Today, we face another major potential attack on our country. This attack is not a hijacked plane or bomb, although that remains a threat; rather, it is a cyber attack.

The problem with cyber weapons for a country like ours is the ability to control them.

Until defense of democracy in the digital era is taken up by governments collectively, both in NATO and outside the alliance, liberal democracies will remain vulnerable to the cyberthreats of the 21st century.

In the 21st century, our adversaries will continue to use cyberattacks against us. We need to be prepared to defend our networks against this growing threat to our democracy, especially the most fundamental part of our political system: our elections.

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.