In August, O’Brien said the United States had seen Chinese hackers targeting US electoral infrastructure.
Washington:
China has taken the most active role among countries seeking to interfere in US elections and has the largest program to influence domestic politics, US national security adviser Robert O’Brien said on Friday, without providing details. .
“We know that the Chinese have taken the most active role,” O’Brien told reporters at a briefing.
He said China had “had the most massive program to influence America politically,” followed by Iran and then Russia.
US intelligence discovered that Russia orchestrated a cyber campaign to influence the 2016 presidential election in favor of Republican Donald Trump and there have been reports that hackers could attempt to influence the November 3 election.
Moscow has denied interfering in 2016.
“We have made it very clear to the Chinese, the Russians, the Iranians and others that it has not been publicly revealed that anyone … who tries to interfere with the US elections will face extraordinary consequences,” O’Brien said.
Trump’s appointed attorney general William Barr said on Wednesday that he believed China was more of a threat than Russia when it came to election interference, also without providing details.
In August, O’Brien said the United States had seen Chinese hackers targeting US electoral infrastructure.
China has consistently denied accusations by the US government of hacking US companies, politicians or government agencies.
When asked to comment on O’Brien’s latest remarks, his embassy referred to a statement from the Foreign Ministry last month that China has no interest in interfering in the US elections.
Trump, who has long touted his friendly ties with Chinese President Xi Jinping as he sought to deliver on promises in the trade deal, has made tough on China a key part of his campaign for re-election in November and blames China for the coronavirus pandemic.
In a speech at the Republican National Convention last month, Trump said Beijing supports its Democratic opponent Joe Biden and “desperately” wants him to win the election.
When asked to provide specific details of the Chinese election interference, O’Brien said:
“I am not going to go into all the intelligence, but the massive activities of the Chinese and cyber realms, it is something really extraordinary that we are facing.”
He called the scope of Chinese activity “relentless.”
“We had never seen anything like it. It was nothing like it in the Cold War with the Soviets.”
Earlier this week, Reuters reported that hackers had stepped up their efforts to take the Trump campaign and commercial websites offline ahead of the US elections, in which a security firm working for the campaign said that it could be a preparation for a bigger digital assault.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
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