The Plot to Hack America Quotes

“The 2016 cyberattack was not just another case of simple Kompromat - meddling in the political affairs of a satellite nation or an individual dissenter. It was a direct attempt to hijack and derail the traditional processes and norms that held the United States together for more than 240 years. The attempt was even more brazen due to the apparent belief that Putin assumed that he and his oligarchy could charm, groom and select a candidate, then with the right amount of cybercrime and enough organized propaganda they could actually choose a president of the United States to do their bidding.”
― Malcolm Nance, The Plot to Hack America: How Putin's Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election

“Due to their meddling, activities which were considered routine politics in America are now suspect.”
― Malcolm Nance, The Plot to Hack America: How Putin's Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election

“The 2016 presidential election was already surreal—a former reality TV host fueled by white backlash had completed a hostile takeover of the Republican Party—before the bears emerged.”
― Malcolm Nance, The Plot to Hack America: How Putin's Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election

“There are no morals in politics; there is only expedience. A scoundrel may be of use to us just because he is a scoundrel. —Vladimir Ilyich Lenin”
― Malcolm Nance, The Plot to Hack America: How Putin's Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election

“Former acting Director and former Deputy Director of the CIA, Michael Morell has served six presidents—three from each party—and has voted for both Democrats and Republicans. He has kept his politics to himself throughout his thirty-three year intelligence career, until now. He takes a dim view of the entire Russian constellation of “coincidences” that surrounds Donald Trump. We may recall the U.S. intelligence community’s observation that “coincidences take a lot of planning.” The Trump coincidences seemed to bear the hallmarks of the sword and the shield of the FSB.”
― Malcolm Nance, The Plot to Hack America: How Putin's Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election

“With that said, Operation LUCKY-7 had its cut-out. The FSB’s Information Warfare Management Cell (IWMC) would create a false flag source to feed Assange the data taken from the DNC and any subsequent hacks through Guccifer 2.0. Assange was desperate to be relevant and the IWMC was going to create a new era where his own hatreds and agenda could be skillfully manipulated by the FSB’s active measures officers, while the cyber teams would keep him well fed. Assange was primed to do LUCKY-7’s bidding and now only needed the data they had stolen. WikiLeaks was now a wholly owned subsidiary of the FSB and essentially the cyber equivalent of a Laundromat, a Russian laundry —ready to clean and give a white appearance to the dirt.”
― Malcolm Nance, The Plot to Hack America: How Putin's Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election

“Russia has perfected political warfare by using cyber assets to personally attack and neutralize political opponents. They call it Kompromat. They hack into computers or phones to gather intelligence, expose this intelligence (or false data they manufacture out of whole cloth) through the media to create scandal, and thereby knock an opponent or nation out of the game. Russia has attacked Estonia, the Ukraine, and Western nations using just these cyberwarfare methods. At some point Russia apparently decided to apply these tactics against the United States and so American democracy itself was hacked.”
― Malcolm W. Nance, The Plot to Hack America: How Putin's Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election

“Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action. —Ian Fleming”
― Malcolm Nance, The Plot to Hack America: How Putin's Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election

“Always remember: cyber or kinetic, your adversaries prefer your silence, apathy and inaction. Be the consequence, not the victim.” —ANTHONY COUCHENOUR, HOPLITE CYBER SECURITY T”
― Malcolm Nance, The Plot to Hack America: How Putin's Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election

“he knows the mind of the wrestling-loving, under-educated, authoritarian-admiring white male populous. This”
― Malcolm Nance, The Plot to Hack America: How Putin's Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election

“But it would not hurt to have a powerful, rich, American blowhard who could inspire the common man in one’s pocket. This”
― Malcolm Nance, The Plot to Hack America: How Putin's Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election

“Imagine two global cyberwars being waged secretly against America and our political establishment incapable of passing a law or allocating funds to stop it because the legislators have already been influenced by a foreign power.”
― Malcolm Nance, The Plot to Hack America: How Putin's Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election

“Though we have yet to see an actual disruption that matters in the lives of the average American citizen, one can be sure that it will come at a time when, once recognized, the only alternative to the attack may be a real war.”
― Malcolm Nance, The Plot to Hack America: How Putin's Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election

“The New York Times had set a new editorial policy stipulating that anything Trump said needed fact checking. Editorial writer Charles Blow wrote an article suggesting that if you support Trump, you support racism.44 Sure enough, within days the CYBER BEARS hacked the New York Times in what appears to be an attempt to gain information to discredit Blow and others. What it did was reveal that anyone who publically goes against Trump is subject to attack.”
― Malcolm Nance, The Plot to Hack America: How Putin's Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election

“The Intelligence Professionals Weigh In As the public has come to learn about more cyber-attacks, numerous officials and cyber security experts have weighed in on the possibility of Russian interference on the 2016 election cycle. Numerous intelligence officials, government, and cyber security experts alike, weighed in on possible Russian involvement. They overwhelmingly agreed that though more evidence is needed, the CYBER BEARS paw prints are all over the hacks.”
― Malcolm Nance, The Plot to Hack America: How Putin's Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election

“President Obama also said “anything’s possible” to NBC, since Russian hackers “on a regular basis, they try to influence elections in Europe.”48”
― Malcolm Nance, The Plot to Hack America: How Putin's Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election

“Without any question, no matter what side of the aisle one sits on, the simple fact is that the United States was attacked by Russian cyber commandos deployed by Vladimir Putin and organized by his intelligence apparatus, the FSB and GRU. It was a serious act of political warfare.”
― Malcolm Nance, The Plot to Hack America: How Putin's Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election

“When asked at the Iraq and Afghanistan Veteran’s of America’s Commander-in-Chief’s forum about Putin Trump said “Well, he does have an 82 percent approval rating, according to the different pollsters, who, by the way, some of them are based right here.” Trump continued,”
― Malcolm Nance, The Plot to Hack America: How Putin's Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election

“Nor are any of the statements or activities of the Trump campaign, no matter how distasteful, the behaviors or actions of clandestine agents of the Russian regime. However, even a cursory glance at the evidence reveals to intelligence professionals that the probability that Vladimir Putin has handled Trump and his associates, doing their bidding without even knowing it, is well within the KGB playbook. These Americans may be not be real agents of the Russian Federation but they may have unwittingly exposed themselves to a massive intelligence manipulation machine that, once involved, may be completely out of their control to extract themselves. The rhetoric election of 2016 reveals that damage has already been done.”
― Malcolm Nance, The Plot to Hack America: How Putin's Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election

“Whether he knew it or not, Trump was the perfect candidate for a political asset. Former KGB officer Yuri Bezmenov said the KGB targeted “Ego-centric people who lack moral principles—who are either too greedy or who suffer from exaggerated self-importance. These are the people the KGB wants and finds easiest to recruit.” This”
― Malcolm Nance, The Plot to Hack America: How Putin's Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election

“It was well known that Paul Manafort is the lawyer who led what is known as the “Torturer’s Lobby.”4”
― Malcolm Nance, The Plot to Hack America: How Putin's Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election

“The attempt was even more brazen due to the apparent belief that Putin assumed that he and his oligarchy could charm, groom, and select a candidate, then with the right amount of cybercrime and enough organized propaganda they could actually choose a president of the United States to do their bidding. The”
― Malcolm Nance, The Plot to Hack America: How Putin's Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election

“The Russian spy agency had been ordered to make a bold move, hack the American elections, and engage in political warfare to elect Donald Trump President. Whether he knew it or not, Trump was the perfect candidate for a political asset. Former KGB officer Yuri Bezmenov said the KGB targeted “Ego-centric people who lack moral principles—who are either too greedy or who suffer from exaggerated self-importance. These are the people the KGB wants and finds easiest to recruit.”
― Malcolm Nance, The Plot to Hack America: How Putin's Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election

“It has long been a dictum of warfare that forewarned is forearmed.”
― Malcolm Nance, The Plot to Hack America: How Putin's Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election

“Nance’s Law of Intelligence Kismet: “Coincidence takes a lot of planning.”
― Malcolm Nance, The Plot to Hack America: How Putin's Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election

“Most importantly, learning to read people, their wants, dreams, likes, dislikes, and desires—all to get them to betray their own country—was the most basic and oldest of all lessons in the Russian intelligence foundations.”
― Malcolm W. Nance, The Plot to Hack America: How Putin's Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election

“Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham were staunch advocates of arming the government of Ukraine in their fight with Russian separatists and Putin. During the Republican National Convention, the party platform committee proposed language to the effect that Ukraine needed U.S. weapons and NATO support to defend itself, in support of a long-held Republican position. Carter Page, now on the Trump campaign team, used to work in the Merrill Lynch’s Moscow office, has personal investments in Gazprom, a Russian state oil conglomerate. He told Bloomberg that his investments have been hurt by the sanctions policy against Russia over Ukraine.39 He has characterized the U.S. policy toward Russia as chattel slavery.”
― Malcolm Nance, The Plot to Hack America: How Putin's Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election

“Attributing culpability for cyberattacks is difficult. Competent spy agencies labor to make it nigh-impossible. But it didn’t take long before Obama administration and congressional leaders started expressing with unusual certainty—off the record, of course—that Russia was behind the assault. A theory emerged. The Russians were putting a digital thumb on the scale of the US election to help the aforementioned reality-TV host—who just happened to be running on the most pro-Russia platform in GOP history.”
― Malcolm Nance, The Plot to Hack America: How Putin's Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election

“After the fall of the Soviet Union the KGB became known as the FSB. In the last ten years Russian intelligence melded all of its offensive techniques to create a new kind of war: Hybrid Warfare—a melange of hostile cyber, political, and psychological operations in support of their national objectives, whether during peacetime or in open war. It is now standard operating procedure.”
― Malcolm Nance, The Plot to Hack America: How Putin's Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election

“All of the old lessons of identifying Russian mantraps started to come back to me as the stolen DNC data was revealed. It had a pattern that was familiar and that virtually every other intelligence officer could recognize. The pattern showed that someone was playing 3 Dimensional chess with our democracy.”
― Malcolm Nance, The Plot to Hack America: How Putin's Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election