Rep. Tulsi Gabbard discussing cyber-security, three-state solution for Iraq, ISIS with Wolf Blitzer

Interview Date: Jun 5, 2015

BLITZER: Joining us now, Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard. She's an Iraq War veteran, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, as well as the House Foreign Affairs Committee. She is joining us from Hawaii.

Congresswoman, thanks very much for joining us.

I want to talk about what's going on in Iraq, the war against ISIS in a moment.

But let me ask first you about that massive cyber-attack on the federal government. Four million current and former employees may have had some of the most sensitive personal information stolen by these hackers. Do you suspect anyone on your staff who may have previously served in the executive branch may have had his or her information stolen?

REP. TULSI GABBARD (D), HAWAII: Yes, aloha, Wolf. Thanks for having me on to talk about this very important issue.

I have been in touch with my staff. And at this point, we have not gotten word that any of them have been a part of the millions whose private information was hacked. But I think we really need to look here at the larger issue of the serious vulnerabilities that we have within our cyber-security systems here in the United States. And we also need to recognize where else these threats are coming from. We have seen recent attacks coming from Russia, from North Korea from Iran, and even reports recently that ISIS themselves are creating their own team of hacking jihadists.

So it's important that the leaders in our country make the necessary investments and really understanding the serious threat we're facing in this relatively newish form of warfare that we have got to deal with now, and going into the future.

BLITZER: How should the U.S. respond to these cyber-attacks?

GABBARD: Well, again, I think this goes into the necessity of, first of all, strengthening our systems.

This has pointed out in the last few times that the United States government as well as those in the private sector have been hacked, and on the government side, it's shown that the resources have not been dedicated towards strengthening our systems to make it so that we are protected, so that the American people are protected from these kinds of attacks.

Secondly, the issue here really that could be devastating to our country is if our core infrastructure was hacked, if you look at our energy grids, if you look at our nuclear energy facilities, you look at some of these core infrastructure elements within our communities all across the country, making sure that those are protected again against these very talented hackers that are being employed by or working for different entities all across the country.

BLITZER: We're following all the breaking developments, Congresswoman, in the war against ISIS. We learned this week that the U.S. Air Force actually used some ISIS social media posts to identify bombing targets. What do you make of this? Is this the best the U.S. can do, to actually go to some ISIS social media posts, find out where some ISIS terrorists are, and launch an airstrike and try to kill them?

GABBARD: Well, first of all, you know, great job to the airmen who are doing this.

But there's something that really bothers me about this. Just as we saw this ISIS guy bragging by taking a selfie, we're seeing now on our side the U.S. is bragging about our own capability, therefore opening up a vulnerability and a weakness.

We have seen this with the situation that just occurred in Boston over the last few days, where, really, frankly, across the board, we're revealing far more information than is necessary, first of all, and revealing far more information that will ultimately point out what our, in the military, we call tactics, techniques and procedures are, therefore causing them to say, OK, look, this is how we have to change our own tactics, so that the United States is no longer able to exploit what they have -- what we have done.

So, this is a problem that needs to be fixed as we look at things that we need to continue to do going forward to defeat ISIS ...

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