Donald Trump's complicated relationship with the internet continues to evolve in interesting ways.
Many people were parsing the transcript of Trump's discussion with the New York Timeson Thursday. While many media organizations were discussing Trump's comments on pornhub homemade sex videosNATO, The Vergefocused on a strange passage on cyberattacks.
SEE ALSO: Donald Trump slams Apple over San Bernardino iPhone: 'Who do they think they are?'These attacks are a huge concern for the United States. Last year, information on millions of federal employees was accessed in a massive data breach, just one of several attacks against the U.S. government. And just a few weeks ago, Russian hackers accessed the Democrats' opposition research on Trump.
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On the other side, the Pentagon now has cyberattacks in its arsenal in the fight against the Islamic State.
Overall, cybersecurity is a huge issue for whoever takes the reigns of the White House in January 2017. Which is what makes Trump's comments so baffling.
From the Times transcript:
SANGER:We’re under regular cyberattack. Would you use cyberweapons before you used military force?TRUMP:Cyber is absolutely a thing of the future and the present. Look, we’re under cyberattack, forget about them. And we don’t even know where it’s coming from.SANGER:Some days we do, and some days we don’t.TRUMP:Because we’re obsolete. Right now, Russia and China in particular and other places.SANGER:Would you support the United States’ not only developing as we are but fielding cyberweapons as an alternative?TRUMP:Yes. I am a fan of the future, and cyber is the future.
Trump's comments follow a series of similar instances in which Trump indicates either only a vague understanding of the subject or an unwillingness to directly address the issue.
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The Vergenotes another conversation Trump had with the Times, this one in March 2016, in which Trump implies that the United States is trailing other countries in terms of cybersecurity, in that long, round-about Trump way of speaking.
We don’t know who’s got the power, who’s got that capability, some people say it’s China, some people say it’s Russia. But certainly cyber has to be a, you know, certainly cyber has to be in our thought process, very strongly in our thought process. Inconceivable that, inconceivable the power of cyber. But as you say, you can take out, you can take out, you can make countries nonfunctioning with a strong use of cyber. I don’t think we’re there. I don’t think we’re as advanced as other countries are, and I think you probably would agree with that.
On other web and security issues, Trump also expressed a fuzzy understanding of how to keep track of radicalization -- specifically associated with ISIS -- across the internet (or, at least, one that's much closer to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's method of dealing with such issues).
In December, Trump suggested using Bill Gates to close the part of the internet which was being used potential terrorists.
"We're losing a lot of people because of the Internet," Trump said. "We have to go see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what's happening. We have to talk to them about, maybe in certain areas, closing that Internet up in some way. Somebody will say, 'Oh freedom of speech, freedom of speech.' These are foolish people. We have a lot of foolish people."
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Earlier this year, Trump weighed in on the Apple versus FBI debate over the tech giant's refusal to create a backdoor to access data on locked iPhones, specifically the phone belonging to one of the San Bernardino shooters. Said Trump, "To think that Apple won't allow us to get into [the shooter's] cellphone? Who do they think they are? No, we have to open it up."
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Trump was so upset he called for a boycott of Apple products, though his personal boycott didn't last long as he was soon tweeting again from his iPhone.
(Not that this was the first time Trump seemed to let emotion outweigh policy when addressing the issue; shortly after the Edward Snowden leak happened, Trump suggested execution may be a fitting sentence for the former NSA employee.)
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In the meantime, unless it pertains to Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server, Trump has mostly avoided the topic of digital security in speeches and has no official position on cybersecurity as part of his campaign as we head into the general election.
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