Russia but china is very aggressive on not only hacking into senior leadership, but they steal $500 billion a year of intellectual property. we have to engage with the chinese government. there are things we have to cooperate. but we do have to realize, this is communist party of china has a goal of trying to not only hurt our economy but in many ways hack into all of our systems. the timing of this is suspicious or auspicious because it happened, we believe, after the balloon incident in february and before the may efforts to try to restart relations where secretary blinken was getting ready to go. how does that affect us diplomatically when he is there today? i think the timing was actually the discovery was
Top chinese official at the sidelines of an asian summit, one day after the state department confirmed its emails were hacked in a major breach. the chinese-backed hackers hack ed the emails. here is evidence of what they have been doing in terms of cyber. how serious is the damage? how well defended were we? it was unclassified email. it was unclassified. it feels like every six months or so we have a major hack. so much of this is coming either from china or russia. it was a few years back it was hacking into all the office of personnel management, current and former employees. then it was equifax, personal information.
the prigozhin issue of where and when or if he will turn up, we need to stay tuned. remember, prigozhin, as he launched his effort to take on the russian military leadership, he laid out in vivid detail how putin s invasion was not based on facts, that ukraine was never full of nazis or fascists, there had been no provocation. he told the truth. what will happen to prigozhin is a question. clearly, it shows a putin that is more and more removed. nobody wants to tell him the truth about what really is happening on the ground. i think we are seeing increasing instability in the senior russian leadership after prigozhin s activities. briefly, the president said today in finland that we don t know what s happened to prigozhin, but that he would be careful if he were prigozhin about what he eats or watch himself. i think do we have good intelligence
Trump republicans to remain in the alliance. president biden also was trying to patch over differences the u.s. has with allies, including great britain, our closest ally, over not giving ukraine a clearer time line of when it could join nato once the war is over. there were disagreements over the president s decision to provide ukraine with cluster munitions, which have been banned by more than 100 countries, including many nato members. peter alexander is in finland and has been with the president throughout the trip. the president just wrapped up that press conference with finland s leader, an hour ago. we saw the reporters asking tough questions about back home. reporter: you are right. that s a concern not unique to finland but across much of europe, particularly among nations like finland that border russia right now, amid real concerns that if former president trump, the republican frontrunner, were to become president of the united states again, that the u.s. strong
That rebellion against vladimir putin. here is part of what the president said on that issue. god only knows what he is likely to do. i m not even sure, we re not even sure where he is and what relationship he has. if i were he, i would be careful what i eat. i would keep my eye on my menu. all kidding aside, i don t know. i don t think any of us know what the future of prigozhin is in russia. i don t know how to answer that question beyond that. reporter: one of the many headlines from the president s comments today, as it related to prigozhin, the wagner group former commander. i think it was notable that sitting in the room this on this same week five years ago, former president trump stood opposite vladimir putin at the time, president trump said of putin that he believed his denials,