CNN

March 17th, 2013

Chairman Rogers: “We know that terrorists, non-nation states are seeking the capability to do cyberattacks”

Today on CNN’s State of the Union with Candy Crowley, House Intelligence Committee ranking member, Dutch Ruppersberger and chairman, Mike Rogers spoke about the threat of cyberwarfare and discussed Israel, Iran and North Korea. Highlighted excerpts are after the jump and a full transcript may be found here.

Highlighted Excerpts

On Iran

RUPPERSBERGER: You can’t trust Iran. They’re a rogue nation. They’re exporting terrorism. They’re cyberattack is out there. So, we have to deal with that issue, and I think, right now, with the president going to Israel that there, hopefully, will be some agreement between Netanyahu and the president.

On cyberwarfare

RUPPERSBERGER: We’re having attacks as we speak right now… We have attacks right now. We know our Wall Street has been attacked. We have — we have the capability of other countries including Iran for destructive attacks to knock out our grid system, to attack some of our banks. We know that China, especially, has probably stolen more trade secrets, which relates to jobs and money.

The largest amount of theft in the history of the world, and we have got to stop this. Now, One of the issues out there, Mike and I have been working on this now for two years, and we put together a bill that would pass in a bipartisan manner that was last year. It went to the Senate and failed. And, you know, we have to move forward. And people are saying, why do we have to continue?

And that one year, we’ve had more attacks. We know “Washington Post,” “New York Times” has been attacked. These attacks are getting a lot stronger. And people say to me, what keeps you up at night, because Mike and I are the Gang of Eight, and I’ll say spicy food, weapons of mass destruction, and destructive cyberattacks.

On the threat of North Korea

ROGERS: Well, they certainly have a ballistic missile that can reach U.S. shores. They just recently had their third nuclear test. And you know, there was lots of speculation about the tests, a lots of warning to the North Koreans not to do it. They pressed the head. So, you have a 28-year-old leader who is trying to prove himself to the military, and the military eager to have a saber rattling for their own self-interest, and the combination of that is proving to be very,very deadly.

So, the sheer threat that they would openly threaten a nuclear attack against the United States is problem enough, but their military movements along the DMZ, the demilitarized zone in North Korea, a whole new set of problems for us. It’s the largest military in the world still in uniform.

This is something that we have to take seriously, and you can see that they’re looking for some provocations, not just along the border, but there’s some islands that they’re interested in. A few years ago, they fired artillery on the island. This is very, very concerning as we just don’t know the stability of their leader, again, 28 years old. We’re just not confident that we know he wouldn’t take those steps.

CROWLEY: We knew his father better.

ROGERS: Yes, absolutely.