provide the tools and resources to the private ivate sector to t their systems. if we are aware or can anticipate a given threat, and we ve gone to great lengths this year to work with the intel community to also include otherwise classified information with respect to malware, botnets and other instexfections. we want the private sector to actively defend themselves before they are attacked. do you believe that current law imposes any unnecessary constraints on the private sector s ability to deploy active defense? i would say that i d be happy to work with your staff. it s rather complicated, as you know. there s some limitations with respect to liability. there s other questions with respect to insurance. we do need to continue to work with the private sector to understand if there are any barriers that would prevent them from taking measures to pr teot themselves and the american people. turning to the department s counterterrorism efforts, a
of skype. but now one of the most wired countries in the world, the most crippling cyber attacks the world had ever seen. the attackers created so-called botnets taking over hundreds of thousands of computers to launch the attack. they flooded, they flooded the inputs of servers. tens and hundreds of times more than the servers could handle. and the assault went on for weeks. eventually, estonia had to block all international web traffic to stop the onslaught. disconnecting one of the most connected countries from the rest of the world. no one would get any information from estonia. i think that was also the aaim of the attack, actually. to cut you off. absolutely. so who was behind it? estonia s foreign minister at
the fact that a false narrative had been advanced to the american people month after know something, sarah, if it was me, i cannot imagine, it would be poundd hannity and silenced his voice. think about this, sean, since the russia collusion stories began, all of theeg newspapers have been saying russian disinformation campaign, botnets, the campaign against the republic, and they are trying to change the narrative, but allll and all it was a media that had the disinformation campaign against the president of the united states. and that is something to thinksi about. sean: by the same media that we learned was colluding with the hillary clinton campaign and again, they did not cover that aspect of their courtly man corruption evenve during the campaign. the same media that never vetted
they set up botnets around the world to repeat that. ice ample fight through their botnet and through their trolls. for funtd say, hey, there s one component of this, maybe we weren t involved, maybe just a group of volunteers happened to have done something is extraordinarily disingenuous. patriotic hackers, does that have a nice ring to you? rights, right. well i m only playing. certainly he was he s not ready to take responsibility for what went on. but we know so much about the russian operation. what we really don t know, though, is the degree to which it was coordinated with the trump campaign. and that s what we have to get to the bottom of. by the way, so much of what we re talking about has to do with the president teams efforts to try to eliminate sanctions on russia. they were very eager to do so. a lot of these meetings have to do with that. right now in the foreign
okay. well, at the very least, tony s conversation with guccifer demonstrated once again that the trump campaign officials were communicating with russian operatives. what is less clear, however, is whether the trump campaign ever provided direction to russian operatives or were aware that specific actions were being carried out to influence the election. for example, it has been suggested that last year, the russians used thousands of paid trolls, human trolls. we know this and botnets to flood the internet particularly social media with fake news aimed as the influencing the election and favoring president trump. i m curious wlls such actions were part of a coordinated effort. is there any evidence that the trump campaign assisted or directed those efforts? that s something that i can t answer here but i would refer you back to what i said was the purpose of the investigation to,