President Putin and the Russian security services operate like a super PAC. They deploy millions of dollars to weaponize our own political opposition research and false narratives.
On Putin's order, Russian security services try to destabilize NATO allies the U.S. has sworn to defend.
Putin operates like a super PAC, taking advantage of opportunities for negative campaigning. The purpose is to show that the U.S. has no moral authority.
President-elect Donald Trump has a host of national security challenges to deal with as he assumes office, from the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan to the grinding Syrian civil war to the flexing of Russian muscles under President Vladimir Putin to how to deal with ISIS as the terrorist army retreats in Iraq.
Vladimir Putin is a Russian czar. He's kind of a mix of Peter the Great and Stalin. He's got both in his veins. And he looks out first and foremost for the national security interests of Russia. He accepts that, in Eastern Europe, that is a Russian backyard, that is a Russian sphere of influence. Ukraine lives most uncomfortably and unhappily in a Russian backyard.
Putin has mobilized and gathered the desires of millions upon millions of people who have been lied to, cheated, who lost out in the new order of things - and in each of these people is a bit of Putin. They have come together to make the image we know as Putin. Putin himself is just the tip of an iceberg.
Companies spend millions of dollars on firewalls and secure access devices, and it's money wasted because none of these measures address the weakest link in the security chain: the people who use, administer and operate computer systems
The Russian economy is tanking. It's gotten so bad that today Vladimir Putin had to pawn his stolen Super Bowl ring. And Putin will finance his next invasion on Kickstarter.
I understand why Vladimir Putin is very popular in Russia - he's probably the first Russian leader to not apologize for being Russian. People always pin it down to one man, but there's hundreds of millions of Russians of various sorts. Putin does seem to be very popular in Russia, if only because he stands up for Russians wherever they are, which is exactly what Americans do with Americans, of course.
We know that Russian intelligence services, which is part of the Russian government which is under the firm control of Vladimir Putin, hacked into the DNC. And we know that he arranged for a lot of those emails to be released.
Most advertisers spend millions upon millions of dollars to buy commercial time during the Super Bowl, and millions in creating eye-popping ads, hoping to create catchy, unforgettable commercials. Unfortunately, most Super Bowl commercials end up being unmemorable. Costly mistakes for brands and creative flameouts for advertising firms.
Donald Trump didn't even understand, right, that [Vladimir] Putin was playing him. So, in Putin's mind, I have no doubt that Putin thinks that he's an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation, although Putin would never say that.
Companies spend millions of dollars on firewalls, encryption, and secure access devices and it's money wasted because none of these measures address the weakest link in the security chain: the people who use, administer, operate and account for computer systems that contain protected information.
From Ukraine to Syria, he [Vladimir Putin] is behaving like the world's new general and celebrating victories, while the American president sits on the sidelines and Europe sleeps. The West's behavior toward Putin is political and moral capitulation.
The only successor to President Putin is President Putin himself and we could of course dream about President Putin stepping down voluntarily and picking out successor which would be probably as bad as him.
Alexei Navalny, the opposition politician who has led anti-corruption protests, had a blog about a credit line to a company owned by Vladimir Putin's son-in-law, $1.75 billion from Russian state funds; this is one transaction. Putin controls more money directly and indirectly than any individual in human history.
The facts are the vice president's company that he was CEO of, that did business with sworn enemies of the United States, paid millions of dollars in fines for providing false financial information, it's under investigation for bribing foreign officials.