Leave it to Fox News to find a way to malign the Obama administration’s indictment of five Chinese nationals for hacking into six American companies. On Special Report last week, panelist Charles Krauthammer got an unusual amount of time to accuse the administration of not doing enough – and likening the effort to the much maligned by Fox #BringBackOurGirls Twitter campaign.
Krauthammer said:
If you want to do something about this, announce: a) a doubling of our cyber defense budget and add a whole section openly that we are going to now work, double our spending on cyber attacks. Do something serious.
I mean, the way that the Justice Department announced this as a new groundbreaking step, this is like tweeting Ukraine or tweeting the Boko Haram kidnappings. This is a government with power not using it and engaging in empty gestures instead.
Kirsten Powers fought back. She said, “I think that Obama got criticized when he shifted money in the defense budget precisely for this reason, to spend more money on cyber attacks. He has already done that. And then he was accused of weakening our foreign policy by doing exactly what you just said he should be doing.”
Powers is correct. According to InformationWeek, funding for the US Cyber Command doubles this year, and the budget increases money for cyber security.
Watch the discussion from the May 19th Special Report.
