President Obama on Monday confirmed he spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin about cyber security during the leaders’ tense 90-minute meeting at the G20 summit in China.
While Obama said in a press conference he would not comment on specific open investigations, he said, “We’ve had problems with cyber intrusions from Russia in the past.”
He also the U.S. wants to avoid a cyber espionage arms race with other world powers.
“We’re moving into a new era here and frankly, we’ve got more capacity than anybody both offensively and defensively,” he said.
“What we cannot do is have a situation where this becomes the wild, wild West, where countries that have significant cyber capacity start engaging in unhealthy competition or conflict through these means,” Obama continued.
Obama went on to say countries will have enough threats to contend with from non-state actors without having to worry about state-backed hackers.
As the FBI investigates cyber attacks at the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, sources have attributed the attacks to Russian government-linked hackers, leading some to speculate that Putin is trying to influence the U.S. election in Donald Trump’s favor.
