John Cohen, ABC News consultant and former counterterrorism coordinator at DHS, interview

John joins Mendte in the Morning to discuss how cybersecurity is a valuable technology for keeping our information safe. Still, it also has its drawbacks, especially when it comes to the federal government. Swatting is adding to the fear of the terror climate issues in our country. This stems from Wednesday's tragedy at a Catholic school in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Because of everything that's going on. This may not be
and have been on your radar, but apparently the terror
climate in this country just continues to rise. And for
that we're going to talk to John Cohen, ABC News consultant.
He is former counter terrorism coordinator at DHS. John, thank

(00:21):
you so much for taking some time to talk to
us today.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
It's great to be with you. Thank you so.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
Explain that that headline that the terror climate continues to rise.
What is causing that?

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Well, there's a variety of factors. But if we take
a step back and look at what's been going on
in this country through last year and into this year,
we are continuing to see mass shootings, some ideologically motivated,
some motivated by a combination of ideology and personal grievance,

(00:53):
some motivated by some type of dispute occurring at a
public place. But we are seeing a mass shooting occur
somewhere in this country almost every single day at the
same time. Just yesterday or a few days ago, the
FBI and members of the intelligence community warned US industries
that countries like China and Russia have essentially infiltrated using

(01:16):
cyber attacks, are telecommunications, infrastructure, and the Internet, and they're
warning people to actually use encrypted signaling apps on their
phones to protect their their conversations. We continue to see
cyber criminal organizations, hostile foreign powers and others use techniques

(01:40):
like swatting, which is using the Internet to create hoax
nine when one calls and the hopes that law enforcement
will descend upon the location, you know, enforce causing disruption
and or j John.

Speaker 1 (01:56):
That's called swatting, right, Is that what you're talking about?

Speaker 2 (01:58):
Yes, yes, swatty. We've been seeing just so in the
past week, we've seen universities across the United States targeted
by a cyber criminal group at the same time that
the city of Minneapolis experience an actual, real mass shooting.
So this is the environment that law enforcement is dealing
with right now, and it's as you and I have
talked about in the past, it continues to be highly volatile,

(02:21):
highly complex, and quite frankly dangerous.

Speaker 1 (02:24):
Let's talk about the cyber attacks for a moment, because
I don't think that gets enough attention. And I've talked
to local homeland security officials about this before and they
say that it is amazing how many attacks are not reported,
mainly because the companies involved don't want them reported, but
they say it happens every day and several times a day.

(02:47):
Is that still the case?

Speaker 2 (02:49):
Absolutely? I mean foreign militaries, foreign intelligence services, even terrorist
groups are targeting our critical infrastructure. They're targeting the industry sector,
They're targeting or telecommunications infrastructure. They're targeting the information and
communications systems that that you know that are are operated
by federal, state and local governments. I think part of

(03:10):
the problem and part of the challenge when talking about
cyber is that the people and this is my profession
who are engaged in cybersecurity usually speak about it in
very technical terms. But the danger of cyber attacks are
far more in the physical world than they are in
the in the digital world. What do I mean by that?

(03:32):
We have seen foreign cyber actors threat actors targeting police
nine one one systems. They will not what we call
denial of service attacks, so they use cyber attacks to
make those nine one one systems inoperable, which means you
can't pick up the phone and call the police in
the emergency. We're seeing cyber attacks directed at state and
local government, so they can't share information, they can't issue

(03:55):
business licenses, they can't you know, their jail management systems
don't work, which runs, which means it runs the risk
of them releasing bad people into our communities. We have
seen cyber attacks that have resulted in sensitive information regarding
in criminal investigations by foreign by foreign criminal organizations, and

(04:17):
they're using that information to threaten law enforcement or to
disrupt investigation. So the danger for cyber is, yes, it
could it can shut down an information network. Yes it
can mean sensitive credit card information and other data can
be stolen. But there's also very real world implications that
can impact the public safety and the public health of

(04:39):
people across the country.

Speaker 1 (04:41):
Now, we're pretty good at stopping this.

Speaker 2 (04:45):
We are actually and this is what is so troubling
to me is that over the past decade, you know
that the first in the first Trump administration, during the
Obama administration, to some degree in the BIDMU stration, you know,
we started putting in place, you know, really good strategies
and tools to empower state and local governments in particular,

(05:09):
but also the private sector to protect themselves against these
cyber attacks. My concern and concern of others today is
that those resources are being reduced, uh and in some
cases being diverted. So we have, for example, law enforcement
personnel with the FBI, UH and and other federal agencies
who in the past were actively involved in counterintelligence cyber

(05:34):
investigations and criminal cyber crime investigations, those resources being reassigned
to work on things such as immigration enforcement. So we
need to you know, every administration has a has a
priority UH and they and that's their right. But I think,
you know what, we we should be making decisions on
resource allocation based on those threats that are impacting our

(05:56):
communities the most. In cyber is clearly one of those
areas well.

Speaker 1 (05:59):
It seems like it may be the biggest area of
concern for the federal government right now because you can
imagine I don't have to tell you all of the
things that could be hacked and the chaos that would cause.
So John, it's always fascinating to talk to you, ABC
News consultant, former counter terrorism coordinator at DHS. I look

(06:20):
forward to talking to you again. Thank you for your time.

Speaker 2 (06:22):
Have a good holiday weekend.