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President Obama wants to prevent a cyber weapon 'arms race'

President Obama wants to prevent a cyber weapon 'arms race'

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You can’t hug your kids with cyber arms

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During an address to reporters at the G-20 international summit in China, President Obama stated that he’d like to prevent an "arms race" among countries that have various cyber weapons at their disposal. The remarks come after Russian president Vladimir Putin denied having any involvement with the hack of the Democratic National Committee’s emails earlier this summer.

Obama said that the world is "moving into a new era where a number of countries have significant capacities," before noting that the United States has "more capacity than anybody, both offensively and defensively" when it comes to cyber weapons.

Instead of starting a Cold War-like arms race with cyber weapons, however, Obama wants "to start instituting some norms so that everybody’s acting responsibly." He said that "we’re going to have enough problems in the cyber space with nonstate actors who are engaging in theft and using the internet for all kinds of illicit practices," before stating that we "cannot have a situation where this becomes the Wild Wild West, where countries have significant cyber capacity start engaging in ... unhealthy competition or conflict through these means."

You can see the full clip of President Obama’s statements in the video below.