It was "really rather bizarre" that President Joe Biden would have given Russian President Vladimir Putin a list of 16 strategic sectors that should remain "off-limits" from being targets of cyber attacks, Sen. Marsha Blackburn told Newsmax Thursday.
"They ought not to be hacking anything," the Tennessee Republican said on Newsmax's "Wake Up America." "This is part of the problem that we have, whether it's the Communist Chinese or whether it's Vladimir Putin and the Russians. We don't want them hacking anything. This is not what they're supposed to be doing ... I don't know what the president was going for there if he says, you can't hack these 16 things but go hack at everything else."
Biden on Wednesday, after his discussions with Putin, said he gave the Russian leader a list of 16 sectors that are critical infrastructure and should be off-limits to cyber attackers, including chemicals, commercial facilities, communications, critical manufacturing, dams, defense, emergency management, energy, financial, food or agriculture, government facilities, healthcare, information technology, nuclear, transportation, or water.
"When it comes to protecting our virtual space, we have to realize more Americans individually move more of their transactional life online every single day and because of that, we have to make certain that this virtual space is safe," said Blackburn. "Of course with the Chinese, we've had a terrible issue with Huawei and that technology because they embed the spyware into their hardware. Blackburn said she thinks it was a "terrible mistake" for Biden to allow Putin's press conference to go first after their meeting.
"The leader of the free world should have gone first and set the tone and tenor and the message on this meeting, but instead they let Putin go out there and set the tone, and then you had President Biden come in and try," she said. "He was completely on defense, and I think it showed at the end of his remarks. He was really quite frustrated not only with the situation but with the press."
Blackburn on Thursday also spoke out against the Fed's announcement about wanting to raise rates, particularly considering the rising rates of inflation in the country.
"When you talk about what people are seeing in cash registers, in the gas pump, they are seeing higher prices," said Blackburn. "All this is about is we have to eliminate hydrocarbons. Where do they think the wrappers on the food at the grocery store, come from the packaging, the plastic for the water, where do you get all of these polymers...people need to think about this. The logistics, the transport. The delivery of every bit of this food. You are going to have to have those hydrocarbons and Joe Biden is running the cost up of every bit of this."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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