FBI Director Christopher Wray gave a rare on-air interview Thursday, addressing election hacking and foreign threats, as well as taking a swipe at Bob Woodward’s White House memoir.
“I think Americans can have confidence in our election system,” he told CBS News’ Norah O’Donnell. “The use of social media is a bullhorn that allows that kind of information warfare to be inflicted much more effectively, So that’s why it’s something that remains a concern, and could influence individual voters if we’re not, as Americans, vigilant about who’s saying what and where their information is coming from.”
He added that while Russia is a threat that the FBI is taking seriously, China is currently the number one concern.
“There’s no country that presents a more broad and more comprehensive threat to our ideas, to our innovation, to our economic security, in many ways, to so much of our daily lives, than China does,” he said. “We spend a lot of time working on Russia, too, but…China is our top priority in that space.”
On purely domestic matters, Wray was succinct.
He dismissed Woodward’s memoir, “Fear,” out of hand. “I have not seen a nervous breakdown of executive power. I have not read Mr. Woodward’s book – and I’m not sure whether I’ll ever find time,” he said.
The guy who tells us that China is the main threat to election security and that Woodward’s book is fiction tells us that our voting system is secure. Very reassuring! And of course this is one of “the adults in the room.”
Everyone who believes him, raise your hand!
Even normal administrations would spin this. But we’ve got Russians in the election systems, Russians in the power grid, and now we’ve got multiple explosions in Massachusetts and more than happy talk is needed, Chris.
So whose best interest is it to pit China against Russia?
Well, if we had any doubts about which way Wray swings politically, those doubts have now been removed.