Washington Free Beacon senior editor Bill Gertz said that the United States is "extremely vulnerable" to cyber attacks during a radio interview with Sean Hannity on Tuesday evening. Gertz appeared on Hannity's radio show to discuss his newly released book, iWar: War and Peace in the Information Age.
To begin the interview, Hannity asked Gertz what he thought of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's assertion that he did not receive hacked emails of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign from Russian sources.
"We're going to have to wait to see what the [Obama] administration's investigation of the Russian influence operation is," Gertz responded.
Hannity then referenced his previous interview with Assange in which the WikiLeaks founder claimed to have hacked into NASA at the age of sixteen, prompting Gertz to explain how vulnerable the U.S. is to what he described as information attacks.
"America is extremely vulnerable, and I think that's the bottom line of this book, iWar. We're getting killed in the information space," Gertz said.
Gertz defined the information space as twofold: one part encompasses the use of cyber and technical attacks and the other involves information and content.
In the second chapter of his book, Gertz details the sophistication of North Korean cyber attacks, including the 2014 Sony breach after the entertainment company released a comedic movie that made fun of the North Korean regime. Gertz described an interview with a North Korean defector who "issued a dire warning" that the American government needs to do something to "counterattack North Korean information warfare operations."
Continuing on this point, Gertz asserted that the CIA needs "dire reform." Under the leadership of current CIA Director John Brennan, the organization, Gertz noted, has focused too heavily on drone strikes instead of clandestine information operations.
Hannity then played a brief snippet of his interview with Assange in which he repeatedly denied that the Russian government was behind the leaked Clinton and DNC emails during the 2016 election. Hannity asked Gertz what he thought of Assange's adamant denials of receiving the hacked emails from Russian sources.
"On Assange I think it's clear until he reveals where he obtained the information that he leaked, then I think the onus is going to be on him," Gertz said. "And if he doesn't reveal it, that's going to be a problem."
Later discussing America's relationship with Russia and the country's president, Vladimir Putin, Gertz declared that "we are definitely entering a new Cold War." Gertz explained that in his new book he lays out Putin's strategy to "reestablish the Soviet Union without communism."
Hannity then asked Gertz what the new Trump administration can do to confront Iran after what he described as President Obama's capitulation to Tehran with the Iran nuclear deal and the $1.7 billion payment early last year to the Iranian regime to free American hostages.
"We've got to use an information warfare campaign against Iran," Gertz said, adding that the Obama administration missed a golden opportunity to do so during the Green Revolution in Iran in 2009.
Gertz suggested that the American government could establish a new institution to combat foreign enemies and administrations by using information and political warfare to spread American messages of freedom and democracy.
iWar can be purchased today in print or as an e-book from Amazon and a variety of other booksellers. It can be downloaded as an audiobook through iTunes and Audible.
Gertz is the author of seven books, including the New York Times best-selling Betrayal: How the Clinton Administration Undermined American Security.