Russia’s successful incursion into the 2016 presidential election has opened a new, menacing phase in cyberwarfare and is a harbinger of attacks to come, says President Barack Obama’s former top counterterrorism adviser.
“We in the United States have … crossed into a new threshold where we have state actors and others trying to use these cybertools in new ways to intrude in our election process, to weaponize information,” Lisa Monaco told David Axelrod on “The Axe Files,” a podcast from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN.
Monaco, who served as Obama’s homeland security and counterterrorism adviser, added that it was the consensus of the US intelligence community that “we’re bound to see (attacks) like this again,” initiated by adversarial nations or non-state actors.
She says the US must make it a national priority to better understand the nature of this new threat in order to effectively guard against it.
“I really think we need to be turning a lot more attention to understanding that (threat), shoring up our defenses, and understanding how we can prevent it from happening again,” Monaco said.
During the conversation, Monaco, who previously oversaw counterterrorism prosecutions in the Justice Department, also criticized the Trump administration’s travel ban as a propaganda bonanza for ISIS and other terrorist organizations seeking to depict the US as waging “a clash of civilizations” with the Muslim world.
“When we do things to contribute to that recruiting message, we’re helping (ISIS). We are helping them recruit,” Monaco said. “I, frankly, don’t think we ought to be in the business of that.”
Monaco, who also served as chief of staff to former FBI Director Robert Mueller, dismissed the suggestion that current FBI chief James Comey acted with partisan intent in his handling of the federal investigation into Hillary Clinton’s treatment of classified information as secretary of state. But regardless of his motivation, she said Comey’s public pronouncements on the probe during the campaign were “highly unusual.”
“The process and the procedures that are put in place for not making statements close to an election, et cetera, are in place not for the easy cases but for the really hard times. And it’s important to adhere to them,” Monaco said. “I think I’ll leave it at that.”
To hear the whole conversation with Monaco, click on http://podcast.cnn.com. To get “The Axe Files” podcast every week, subscribe at http://itunes.com/theaxefiles.