Cyber security. Trump mentioned the meeting he had with tech pioneers and Silicon Valley executives back in December as an example of his willingness to work with tech specialists as a way to "form a defense" against cyber threats. "The DNC left themselves open to be hacked," Trump said, crediting his chief of staff Reince Priebus for working with tech firms to make sure the same thing didn't happen to the RNC.
"The US is hacked by everybody – that includes Russia and China, everybody," he said during a much-anticipated meeting with the media in New York on 11 January. When asked about the DNC infiltration, Trump said: "I think it was Russia, but I think we also get hacked by other countries."
Referencing China as a key example, the president-elect pointed to the 2014 breach of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). "I can say that when we lost 22 million names [...] that was something that was extraordinary and probably China," he said.
When discussing hacking, president-elect Trump repeated himself often. One topic that kept returning was a vague and undefined notion of 'hacking defence'.
The incoming commander-in-chief has promised that, within the first 90 days of his administration, a major cybercrime report will be released. "We will be coming up with a major report on hacking defence, how do we stop this new phenomena?" he asked.
"We have much hacking going on and [...] we have some of the greatest computer minds anywhere in the world that we have assembled," he continued. "We are going to put those minds together and we are going to form a defence."
