Edward Snowden Speaks Out on Cyber Warfare

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has warned that cyber warfare could hurt the USA more than any other country in the world. In an interview with PBS, recorded back in June as part of the NOVA Next program but recently released as an unedited transcript and highlights video, Snowden claims that the US relies on computers more than any other nation, and that fact should worry the White House.

In an excerpt from the interview, Snowden said:

“Defending ourselves from internet-based attacks, internet-originated attacks, is much, much more important than our ability to launch attacks against similar targets in foreign countries, because when it comes to the internet, when it comes to our technical economy, we have more to lose than any other nation on Earth.”

But, according to Snowden, the NSA is actually making America’s cyber security weaker by uncovering and exploiting weaknesses and vulnerabilities in the same systems that the organisation uses itself.

“Every time we walk on to the field of battle and the field of battle is the internet, it doesn’t matter if we shoot our opponents a hundred times and hit every time. As long as they’ve hit us once, we’ve lost, because we’re so much more reliant on those systems.

Because of that, we need to be focusing more on creating a more secure, more reliable, more robust, and more trusted internet, not one that’s weaker, not one that relies on this systemic model of exploiting every vulnerability, every threat out there.”

Source: RT