Carly Fiorina, a Republican candidate for President and former Chief Executive of Hewlett Packard, showed superior prowess on national security issues when compared to her competitors on the debate stage during Thursday’s “happy hour” debate on Fox News.
As a former tech leader, Fiorina was well-suited to comment on how America can defend itself in the cyber domain.
“It is disturbing that every time one of these homegrown terrorist attacks occur… it turns out we had warning signals; it turns out we knew something was wrong; it turns out some dot wasn’t connected,” said Fiorina.
She said that America’s defense assets need to be “attuned to all of these possibilities and symptoms.
“We heard these warning about the Boston Marathon bombers and yet the dots weren’t connected,” she added.
“We need to tear down cyber walls not on a mass basis, but on a targeted basis,” she said relating to the threat posed by homegrown jihadists.
Fiorina added, “We also need to tear down the cyber walls that China is erecting, that Russia is erecting. We need to be very well aware of the fact that China and Russia are using technology to attack us just as ISIS is using technology to recruit those who would murder American citizens.
“I do not believe that we need to wholesale destroy every American’s privacy in order to go after those we know we suspect” are creating problems, she said concerning fears of government intrusion.
Fiorina advocated for a stronger public-private partnership to combat jihadi recruiting and cyber attacks from China and Russia.
When asked what phone calls she would make on her first day in office, Fiorina said: “Its a complicated situation but some things are black and white.”
“On day one in the Oval Office I will make two phone calls,” she continued. “The first one would be to my friend Bibi Netanyahu to assure him we will stand with the state of Israel.”
“The second will be to the Supreme Leader of Iran. He might not take my phone call. But he would get my message. And the message is this: Until you open every nuclear facility and every military facility to full, open, anytime, anywhere inspections — for real — we are going to make it as difficult as possible for you to move money around the global financial system,” she added.
On the Iran deal, she said: “I hope Congress says no to this deal, but realistically, even if they do, the money is flowing. China and Russia have never been on our side of the table. The Europeans have moved on. We have to stop the money flow.”
“Iran is at the heart of most of the evil that is going on in the Middle East,” she added.
When asked what she would do to help America’s allies in the region, Fiorina responded: “Day two in the oval office, I would hold a Camp David summit with our Arab allies, not to talk to them into this lousy deal with Iran, but to say to them, ‘what is it that you need to defeat ISIL?”
The former HP executive said that President Obama’s insistence that we either engage Iran in diplomacy or be forced into war is a “false choice.”
In her closing remarks, Fiorina promised that as President, America would be “back in the leadership business.”
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