enough to protect ourselves from what john mccain describes. how worried are you about the role russia might play in 2018? i m very worried. on two dimensions. one, i don t think we re doing nearly enough nationally as far as cyber security is concerned. i just heard john bolton at the white house is going to do with cyber security coordinator. what russia did in 2016 demonstrates the vulnerability of this country in that digital domain where our adversaries and mal actors can exploit everything in the domain we depend on so heavily. we re not doing enough on cyber security. on russia, i think mr. trump s policies and statements and interactions with mr. putin are really quite perplexing. are they perplexing or becoming more obvious? are you perplexed? well, i m still perplexed as to why he is not doing what he needs to do on behalf of this country. why wouldn t he? well, you know, people have speculated and i have speculated
i want to start in the summer of 2016, okay, in your book here it is on the screen, one day in late august we re getting ready three months from an election. national security adviser susan rice called daniel prito demand he cease and desist in the cyber options. she said don t get ahead of him. daniel and his cyber response group were given strict orders. stand down and then you continue with the salty language where he felt where she was coming from was not correct. where does she give the stand-down order? good question. a slight garble it was michael daniel who was the cyber security coordinator who was given that directive. daniel prieto was the deputy.
profile events and shaping narratives around that. people could go online that day and think they are looking at something that reflects some kind of american debate, whether they agree it or not, but it s reflecting these russian linked attempts to do something that s totally unrelated. fascinating. thanks for sharing your reporting with us. thank you. i want to turn to this other news on russia hacking. in the 2016 election there were problems in the state and local voting systems and were quote, more widespread than previously thought, impacting voter registration, local databases and more. michael daniel who served as cyber security coordinator in the obama white house says we don t know if any of the problems were an accident. the random problems you get with computer systems or whether it was a local hacker or actual malfeasance by a sovereign nation state. michael, you got a preview a
sort of exasper ating about our politics and more straight ahead scary. according to the post s report one of the reasons that the other main reason the obama administration ruled out any pre-election retaliation against moscow is because they feared what putin might do in response about the election. they feared that putin was prepared to go beyond fake news and e-mail dumps. the fbi had detected suspected russian attempts to penetrate election systems in 21 states. at least one senior white house official assumed that moscow would try all 50. michael daniel, who was cyber security coordinator at the white house, tells the washington post we turned to other scenarios that the russians might attempt. as brazen as the russian attacks on the election seemed, obama and his top advisors feared that things could get far worse.
and sort of just more straight ahead scary. according to the post s report, one of the reasons, the other main reason the obama administration, quote, ruled out any preelection retaliation against moscow is because they feared what putin might do in response about the election. they feared that putin, quote, was prepared to go beyond fake news and e-mail dumps. quote, the fbi had detected suspected russian attempts to penetrate election systems in 21 states. at least one senior white house official assumed that moscow would try all 50. michael daniel, who was cyber security coordinator at the white house, tells the washington post, that, quote, we turned to other scenarios that the russians might attempt. quoting from the post, as brazen as the russian attacks on the election seemed, obama and his top advisers feared that things could get far worse. moscow s meddling to that point was seen as deeply concerning but unlikely to materially