melissa: i don t trust them to do anything, i m with you. the keyword is that is any adversary interfering. not just russia, also focusing on the chinese, anybody else north koreans. interference is defined as hacking attempts against election infrastructure, efforts to sway public opinion through digital propaganda and solicit private information. they re learning lessons from 2016 and applying them to the new executive order. melissa: in the financial news community we have been aware of this for a long time. companies get attacked, banks get attacked probably millions of times per day. everybody is investing a lot of money in cyber security, they look to the government has really good defense and good infrastructure as far as the business community. we do better and need to. i think i had an interesting conversation with neil degrass tyson, one of those people respected, having space-related.
hackers that meddled in the election in 2016, about that we re certain. that same group is now trying to do it again before the mid-terms. that is the word not from the government, but from microsoft which reports that it uncovered the latest hacking attempts. the latest target, the u.s. senate and conservative think tanks that have criticized president trump and called for sanctions on russia. no big surprise. the claims are called unfounded by vladimir putin and it s unclear who the hackers are. it s not unclear. microsoft president says there s no doubt, none at all, that it is the same group associated with the russian government that hacked the clinton campaign and the dnc. this all comes weeks after the democratic senator claire mccaskill of missouri revealed that russian hackers tried to break into her senate computer network. she s running for re-election in a red state. susan lee is here.
the warning lights are blinking red. that is what our nation s top intelligence officials said about cyber threats against the upcoming midterm elections, and right now, there s already hard evidence it s happening. microsoft says it has identified and blocked hacking attempts against three congressional candidates and at least two candidates have come out and said they were victims. one candidate, a democrat running for congress in california, the other, senator claire mccaskill. so the big question as we get closer to november, are our elections safe? for that, impact to bring in kevin. he is one of the world s top hackers turned cyber security consultant. at one time, in fact, he was one of the fbi s most wanted after hacking 40 companies for fun. so, kevin, you re the perfect person to have this discussion with. candidates, we know, are being
actual hacking attempts on at least one u.s. senator. in this case i think what s interesting is indeed how these groups are interacting. in the past we have seen them perhaps russian groups draw out real world american protesters, but in this case they were teaming up with actual genuine american groups and activists who didn t realize they were in the hands essentially of a foreign actor. in the case of the unite the right counterprotest for this white nationalist protest next week in d.c., the activists on the left who were planning to counterprotest this event are real people, i met some of them, and they did not realize their groups had teamed up with essentially with a foreign group. elizabeth, one of the points that has been made is facebook is moving forward to be more open about what they were doing. before they were not even admitting that they had a specialized group, if you will, a task force, right, going after this stuff and now they re being very open about it, putti
hacking attempts, is the fbi ready or our military ready for the blowback from this. this is cyber war that has to be coordinated from the very top and everybody is going to be on board. i wonder if these leaders are trying to coordinate with each other and, oh, by the way, don t mention it to the white house, we have to protect ourself. clint watts, former fbi special agent. author of messing with the enemy. up next, brand new reporting on who robert mueller now wants to interview about that infamous trump tower meeting. why he wants to talk to a russian pop star who once featured president trump in a music video. you re watching msnbc. treba® r. now i m doing more to lower my a1c. i take tresiba® once a day. tresiba® controls blood sugar for 24 hours for powerful a1c reduction. (woman) we d been counting down to his retirement.