Donald Trump has finally given up his old, unsecured Android phone; he’s now on an iPhone

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By tech2 News Staff /  21 Mar 2017 , 09:29

If nothing else, US President Donald Trump is a prolific tweeter. With over 30,000 tweets to his name, it’s hard to see him as anything less.

So far, Trump’s tweet-machine of choice has been an Android phone, one that he’s held onto even after taking over as the President of the United States (Potus). The problem with using an Android phone as Potus is that Android is not actually a very secure operating system, as far as presidents are concerned at least.

If Trump was using a modern Android phone, chances are that the device would still be relatively secure, but no. Trump being Trump, he’s been using an ancient Samsung Galaxy S3 since the time he took office. That phone hasn’t received software updates in years. Anonymous even published a very simple guide to hacking Trump’s phone.

Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama used a specially modified iPhone while he was Potus and Trump was expected to do the same. We’re not sure why or how Trump was allowed to use his beloved Tweet machine for so long, but whatever the case, it appears that he’s finally made the switch.

As The Guardian notes, Trump’s Twitter handle has been tweeting from an iPhone app since at least 8 March.

As The Guardian also notes, Trump’s aides do tweet from the President’s handle from time to time as well, but they tend to use iPhones. As such, observers would attribute every tweet made using an Android device to Donald Trump and the rest to his aides. Now that distinction will be less clear.

Of course, it’s also possible that Trump has, as unthinkable as it may sound, relinquished tweeting rights to his aides.

NSA fears talent drain as low morale and worries about Trump’s leadership take toll

  01 Mar 2017 , 19:21

The National Security Agency (NSA) risks a brain-drain of hackers and cyber spies due to a tumultuous reorganization and worries about the acrimonious relationship between the intelligence community and President Donald Trump, according to current and former NSA officials and cybersecurity industry sources. Half-a-dozen cybersecurity executives told Reuters they had witnessed a marked increase in the number of U.S. intelligence officers and government contractors seeking employment in the private sector since Trump took office on January 20.

One of the executives, who would speak only on condition of anonymity, said he was stunned by the caliber of the would-be recruits. They are coming from a variety of government intelligence and law enforcement agencies, multiple executives said, and their interest stems in part from concerns about the direction of U.S intelligence agencies under Trump.

Retaining and recruiting talented technical personnel has become a top national security priority in recent years as Russia, China, Iran and other nation states and criminal groups have sharpened their cyber offensive abilities. NSA and other intelligence agencies have long struggled to deter some of their best employees from leaving for higher-paying jobs in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. The problem is especially acute at NSA, current and former officials said, due to a reorganization known as NSA21 that began last year and aims to merge the agency’s electronic eavesdropping and domestic cyber-security operations.

The two-year overhaul includes expanding parts of NSA that deal with business management and human resources and putting them on par with research and engineering. The aim is to “ensure that we’re using all of our resources to maximum effect to accomplish our mission,” NSA Director Mike Rogers said. The changes include new management structures that have left some career employees uncertain about their missions and prospects. Former employees say the reorganization has failed to address widespread concerns that the agency is falling behind in exploiting private-sector technological breakthroughs.

A former top NSA official said he had been told by three current officials that budget problems meant there was too little money for promotions. That is especially important for younger employees, who sometimes need two jobs to make ends meet in the expensive Washington D.C. area, the official said. “Morale is as low as I’ve ever seen it,” said another former senior NSA official, who maintains close contact with current employees.

Asked about the risk of losing talent from NSA and other agencies, White House spokesman Michael Anton said Trump had sought to reassure the intelligence community by visiting the CIA headquarters on his first full day in office. Anton also pointed to the military spending increase in Trump’s budget proposal released on Monday.

It will likely take more than a visit to the CIA to patch up relations with the intelligence community, the current and former officials said. Trump has attacked findings from intelligence agencies that Russia hacked emails belonging to Democratic Party operatives during the 2016 presidential campaign to help him win, though he did eventually accept the findings. In January, Trump accused intelligence agencies of leaking false information and said it was reminiscent of tactics used in Nazi Germany.

How many?

The breadth of any exodus from the NSA and other intelligence agencies is difficult to quantify. The NSA has “seen a steady rise” in the attrition rate among its roughly 36,000 employees since 2009, and it now sits at a “little less than six percent,” according to an NSA spokesman. NSA director Michael Rogers said last year that the attrition rate was 3.3 percent in 2015, suggesting a sharp jump in departures since then.

Several senior NSA officials who have left or plan to leave, including deputy director Richard Ledgett and the head of cyber defence, Curtis Dukes, have said their departures were unrelated to Trump or the reorganization. Some turnover is normal with any new administration, government and industry officials noted, and a stronger economy has also improved pay and prospects in the private sector.

“During this time the economy has been recovering from the recession, unemployment rates have been falling and the demand for highly skilled technical talent has been increasing,” an NSA spokesman said, when asked to comment on the reports of employee departures. In a statement, Kathy Hutson, NSA’s chief of human resources, said the agency continues “to attract amazing talent necessary to conduct the security mission the nation needs.”

Controversial Boss

Some NSA veterans attribute the morale issues and staff departures to the leadership style of Rogers, who took over the spy agency in 2014 with the task of dousing an international furore caused by leaks from former contractor Edward Snowden. Concern about Rogers reached an apex last October, when former Defense Secretary Ash Carter and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper recommended to then-President Barack Obama that Rogers be removed.

The NSA did not respond to a request for comment on the recommendation last fall that Rogers be replaced. Rogers is now expected to retain his job at NSA for at least another year, according to former officials. Rogers acknowledged concerns about potential morale problems last month, telling a congressional committee that Trump’s broadsides against the intelligence community could create “a situation where our workforce decides to walk.”

Trump’s criticism of the intelligence community has exacerbated the stress caused by the reorganization at the NSA, said Susan Hennessey, a former NSA lawyer now with Brookings Institution. The “tone coming from the White House makes an already difficult situation worse, by eroding the sense of common purpose and service,” she said. A wave of departures of career personnel, Hennessey added, “would represent an incalculable loss to national security.”

Reuters

Twitter’s Periscope adds ‘Proudly made in America by immigrants’ to app loading screen

  31 Jan 2017 , 16:13

As a mark of protest against the US President Donald Trump’s recent executive order banning immigrants from seven Muslim-majority nations, Twitter’s live-streaming app Periscope has updated its loading screen with a small text that reads “Proudly made in America by immigrants”. In a statement, Periscope said on Tuesday that the recent executive order to halt immigration from seven countries in the Middle East and Africa forced them to consider a disturbing alternate reality in which the Periscope team is irreparably changed.

“Periscope is built, maintained, and operated by people from many faiths and countries. Without immigrants and refugees, Periscope would not exist. For this reason, we are updating the Periscope loading screen to make a simple true statement: ‘Proudly made in America by immigrants’,” the statement read. According to a report in VentureBeat, messaging giant Viber revealed it would be offering free calls from the US to the seven countries affected by the executive order.

Google has pledged $4 million to four organisations that support immigrants, while Uber will help drivers with their immigration defence by contributing a $3 million pot. Airbnb has announced free temporary housing to those affected by the order. Earlier, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in his support to the immigrants termed the executive order’s impact as upsetting.

“The Executive Order’s humanitarian and economic impact is real and upsetting. We benefit from what refugees and immigrants bring to the US,” @jack tweeted. The executive order bans immigration from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen under measures to “keep radical Islamic terrorists out”. “I am establishing new vetting measures to keep radical Islamic terrorists out of the US,” Trump said during the signing at the Pentagon after the swearing-in of Defence Secretary James Mattis.

IANS

Silicon Valley isn’t happy: Here’s what top tech CEOs have to say about US President Trump’s immigration order

Image: Reuters

By tech2 News Staff /  29 Jan 2017 , 11:38

US President Donald Trump has passed an executive order which halts immigration from seven Islamic nations including Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, and Syria, for at least 90 days. For Syrian refugees, the ban is indefinite. Trump said that the order was to keep away radical Islamic terrorists.

This has caused a lot of furore not just among the general population, but also among technology companies.

Most of the top technology firms in the US are filled with staff who aren’t native US citizens. And logically enough, most leaders from across the technology industry spectrum have criticised this new temporary ban that Trump has issued.

Microsoft Corp, Alphabet Inc, Apple Inc, Facebook Inc and Uber Technologies and many other companies have expressed concern about the immigration order’s effects on their employees, according to the Wall Street Journal. 

Here is what the heads of top US tech companies have to say about this order.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, himself an immigrant told the Wall Street Journal that he had experienced and seen the positive impact that immigration has had on Microsoft as well as for the US and the world. He said that Microsoft Corp would continue being an advocate on the issue.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has sent an email to his employees assuring them that Apple has contacted the White House to explain the negative effects of such restrictions. Cook had also spoken about the importance of immigration, both to Apple and the US’s future, when he had visited Washington last week.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai said that the order affected close to 187 current Googlers. “We’re upset about the impact of this order and any proposals that could impose restrictions on Googlers and their families, or that could create barriers to bringing great talent to the US. It is painful to see the personal cost of this executive order on our colleagues,” he said.

Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg put out a status on his Facebook pagestating that both his and his wife’s parents were immigrants to the US. “We need to keep this country safe, but we should do that by focusing on people who actually pose a threat. Expanding the focus of law enforcement beyond people who are real threats would make all Americans less safe by diverting resources, while millions of undocumented folks who don’t pose a threat will live in fear of deportation,” said Zuckerberg.

Digital storage firm Box’s CEO Aaron Levie said that the move was quite infuriating and morally wrong. He said that he was looking at ways to get personally involved and fight the order.

Amazon’s vice president for HR, Beth Galetti, said that a diverse workforce helps Amazon make better products for its customers. It has sent out an email to its staffers, recommending US based employees from countries in the ban-list, from travelling outside the US. It has also asked such employees to get in touch with the company if they are already outside the borders for travel or work.

Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings, in a personal post on his Facebook page said, “Trump’s actions are hurting Netflix employees around the world, and are so un-American it pains us all. Worse, these actions will make America less safe (through hatred and loss of allies) rather than more safe. A very sad week, and more to come with the lives of over 600,000 Dreamers here in a America under imminent threat. It is time to link arms together to protect American values of freedom and opportunity.”

Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has sent out an email to his employees titled, ‘Standing up for what’s right.’ Kalanick goes on to talk about the executive order issued by Trump and how it affects Uber drivers. He said that Uber will be reaching out to all its drivers who work in the US but go home for long breaks to be with family. These drivers affected by the order will be compensated for three months, pro bono, said Kalanick.

“While every government has their own immigration controls, allowing people from all around the world to come here and make America their home has largely been the U.S.’s policy since its founding. That means this ban will impact many innocent people—an issue that I will raise this coming Friday when I go to Washington for President Trump’s first business advisory group meeting,” he said.

Google is hiring more conservatives for its lobbying arm as Trump convenes tech meeting

Image: Reuters

  14 Dec 2016 , 18:29

Alphabet’s Google is racing to hire more conservatives for its lobbying and policy arm, trying to get a foothold in President-elect Donald Trump’s Washington after enjoying a uniquely close relationship with the administration of President Barack Obama. In the weeks since the Nov. 8 election, Google has ramped up efforts to hire Republican lobbying firms and in-house lobbyists to change the composition of its Washington office, according to three lobbyists with knowledge of the matter.

The company also posted an advertisement for a manager for conservative outreach and public policy partnership, seeking a “liaison to conservative, libertarian and free market groups.” While the position is not new, it gives Google a chance to make a hire that reflects the new political climate. Conservatives already are represented in the office. A Google spokeswoman declined to comment on the record for this article.

Chief Executive Officer Larry Page of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, is expected to be in the room on Wednesday when Trump convenes a gathering of leaders of some of the largest technology companies in his New York headquarters. The session, organized by Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, adviser Reince Priebus and Trump supporter and tech financier Peter Thiel, is billed as an introductory meeting that would not result in any job or investment announcements, two sources briefed on the talks said.

Others attending are Apple Inc Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook, Facebook Inc Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos, Tesla Motors Inc CEO Elon Musk, Microsoft Corp CEO Satya Nadella and Oracle CEO Safra Catz, according to sources familiar with the session plans. The Information Technology Industry Council, a trade group whose members include Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon, had a conference call last Friday to discuss policy objectives it could agree on to present to Trump, according to a person familiar with the call.

Trump clashed with Silicon Valley on several issues during the election campaign, including immigration, government surveillance and encryption. His surprise victory alarmed many companies, which fear he might follow through on his pledges. Trump has also opposed the Obama administration’s “net neutrality” rules, ordered in 2015 by the communications regulator to reclassify broadband internet services to treat them more like public utilities. The rule is now said to be headed for a reversal.

Google bet heavily on Clinton

Liberal-leaning Silicon Valley bet heavily on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton winning the White House, and many technology companies have found themselves scrambling in the wake of Trump’s election. But Google, which forged deep ties to the Obama White House and was the largest corporate contributor to Clinton’s campaign, appears to have been caught especially off guard, Washington insiders said.

Only 33 employees of Google and its parent company Alphabet donated $201 or more to Trump, for a total of $23,300. Clinton received donations from 1,359 Google or Alphabet employees for a total of $1.6 million. Google NetPAC, the company’s political action committee, made 56 percent of its contributions to Republicans in the 2016 election cycle, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics.

During Obama’s presidency, more than 250 people moved between jobs at Google or related firms and the federal government, national political campaigns and Congress, according to a report this year by the Campaign for Accountability, a watchdog group. The company notched several wins during the administration, including favorable policies on net neutrality. Google seemed poised to enjoy similar treatment under a Clinton administration. Schmidt was seen wearing a staff badge at Clinton’s election night party, a sign of their close relationship. But those ties are now something of a liability as the company tries to re-position its presence, lobbyists said.

The hiring push will adjust the political makeup of Google’s Washington office, where the team of lobbyists for Congress and the agencies contains more Democrats than Republicans, according to people familiar with the operation. Such a skew is not unusual given that Democrats controlled the White House the past eight years. To be sure, conservatives are well-represented in the company’s Washington office: Susan Molinari, a former Republican congresswoman from New York, has been the top lobbyist since 2012, and Seth Webb, who worked for a former Republican speaker of the house, helps lead Congressional lobbying.

But the company has tended toward moderate Republicans in past hiring. Its previous director of conservative outreach was alumnus of Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, and a number of former staffers for Sen. John McCain have passed through the office as well. But the company still has to reconcile the lobbyists it hires with its liberal-leaning existing staff. Said one lobbyist for a rival tech company, “I think they are going to have a tough time really finding the cultural fit.”

Reuters

After Facebook, Google shows fake news in search results, admits it needs to improve

Image: Reuters

  15 Nov 2016 , 14:23

Google’s search engine highlighted an inaccurate story claiming that President-elect Donald Trump won the popular vote in last week’s election, the latest example of bogus information spread by the internet’s gatekeepers. The incorrect results were shown Monday in a two-day-old story posted on the pro-Trump “70 News” site. A link to the site appeared at or near the top of Google’s influential rankings of relevant news stories for searches on the final election results.

Google acknowledged the problem, although as of mid-afternoon Monday, the link to “70 News” remained prominent in its results. Although Google rarely removes content from its search results, the company is taking steps to punish sites that manufacture falsehoods. In a move disclosed Monday, Google says it will prevent its lucrative digital ads from appearing on sites that “misrepresent, misstate, or conceal information.” The action could give sites a bigger incentive to get things right or risk losing a valuable source of revenue.

Fake News on Steroids

False information is nothing new on the internet, where debunkers have been batting down unfounded claims and urban legends for more than two decades. But the problem has gained more attention in the post-mortem of a bitterly contested presidential election in which Trump, a Republican billionaire and former reality TV star, defeated Hillary Clinton, a Democrat and former U.S. secretary of state who had been leading in the polls.

Trump wound up prevailing in enough key states to win the Electoral College’s decisive vote, but is trailing Clinton in the overall popular vote with some ballots still being counted. Clinton’s lead in the popular vote has become one of the flashpoints in the protests against Trump’s election being staged in cities across the country. Google is just the latest company in the crosshairs. Fake news stories uncritically circulated during and after the election on Facebook have sparked a debate over the role of social media companies, which are key sources of news for large numbers of people. Critics suggest that these companies should be more careful to ensure they aren’t passing along misleading information.

Social Media and the News

Google’s dominant search engine is the leading source of traffic to media sites, according to the online analytics firm Chartbeat. Meanwhile, a study by the Pew Research Center found about 60 percent of Americans get at least some of their news from social media sites such as Facebook, which now has 178 million users in the U.S. and Canada. In the election’s aftermath, Facebook has been accused of possibly swaying the election’s outcome by promoting fake news stories on its social network. Last summer, the company fired a handful of journalists who oversaw its “trending” news list and replaced them with an algorithm; fake news stories quickly began to trend.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg brushed off that criticism as “crazy” in an appearance last week. He elaborated in a Saturday post on Facebook in which he asserted that “more than 99 percent of what people see” on Facebook is authentic. Zuckerberg conceded more needs to be done to block bogus information, but said that determining what’s blatantly wrong isn’t always an easy task.

“Identifying the ‘truth’ is complicated,” Zuckerberg wrote. “While some hoaxes can be completely debunked, a greater amount of content, including from mainstream sources, often gets the basic idea right but some details wrong or omitted.” The stories featured in the feeds of Facebook users are primarily selected by automated formulas known as algorithms. Google’s search results are also powered by algorithms that the company regularly revises to thwart sites that attempt to artificially boost their prominence.

More, better Algorithms? 

Google conceded its search engine misfired with the 70 News story that falsely declared Trump the popular vote winner in both its headline and the body of the text. “In this case we clearly didn’t get it right, but we are continually working to improve our algorithms,” the company said in a statement. Bad information in an online headline or at the top of a story can be particularly damaging. Roughly 53 percent of the people who land on a web page stay for 15 seconds or less, according to Chartbeat’s findings.

Incorrect information is bound to ripple across the internet as more people rely on their phones, computers and other digital devices to read news that is picked out for them by automated programs, said media analyst Ken Doctor of Newsonomics.

“What we are seeing is the failure of the algorithm,” Doctor said. “These algorithms bring a lot of things into our lives that humans cannot do. But when algorithms fail, it highlights the fact that they are not just some kind of neutral technology. They are programmed by human beings and they have all the failings of human beings.” It’s difficult to know what happened when an algorithm goes awry because Google, Facebook and other internet companies closely guard how they work, much the way Coca-Cola protects the recipe for its soda.

But the growing power that Google and Facebook hold over the flow of information could increase the political pressure for them to be held more accountable, Doctor said.

In the meantime, most people remain skeptical about what they read online. Only 4 percent of Americans have a lot of confidence in what they read on social media sites, according to Pew. Local news organizations fared better in Pew Research’s survey earlier this year, with 22 percent of Americans saying they trusted the information there.

AP

Facebook denies it distributed fake news to help Trump win

Image: Reuters

  15 Nov 2016 , 11:52

Hit by charges that the social media giant distributed fake news which helped Donald Trump win the US presidential election, Facebook on Tuesday denied any such charges. According to TechCrunch, Facebook “did not build and withhold any News Feed changes based on their potential impact on any one political party”. “It developed two versions of a fix for clickbait this year, and decided to trust algorithmic machine learning detection instead of only user behaviour,” the report said, quoting a Facebook spokesperson.

Media reports said earlier that Facebook shelved a planned update earlier this year that could have identified fake news. TechCrunch now reports that in January 2015, Facebook rolled out an update designed to combat hoax news stories. In August, Facebook released another News Feed update designed to reduce clickbait stories. “Of all the content on Facebook, more than 99 per cent of what people see is authentic. Only a very small amount is fake news and hoaxes. The hoaxes that do exist are not limited to one partisan view, or even to politics,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had said earlier.

According to Facebook, “We always work to make News Feed more meaningful and informative, and that includes examining the quality and accuracy of items shared, such as clickbait, spam and hoaxes”. According to Trump, Facebook and Twitter helped him secure victory. Speaking on CBS’ 60 Minutes programme last weekend, he said: “The fact that I have such power in terms of numbers with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. I think it helped me win all of these races where they’re spending much more money than I spent. I think that social media has more power than the money they spent.”

Trump specified that he has more than 28 million followers across various social media platforms, and said that he was getting more each day.

IANS

Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel to join Trump’s Transition team: Reports

Image: INC

By tech2 News Staff /  11 Nov 2016 , 15:31

According to a report, billionaire Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel is expected to join Donald Trump’s presidential transition team. While the news has not yet been confirmed, multiple sources told a Fortune magazine reporter Dan Primack that Thiel would join the team.

Dan Primack said in a LinkedIn post that, “The venture capitalist and hedge fund manager who also serves on the board of directors at Facebook, has been Trump’s most prominent Silicon Valley supporter, even speaking on his behalf at the Republican National Convention.

There was a Huffington Post story earlier today saying that Thiel might be tapped to lead the transition team ― succeeding the scandal-plagued Chris Christie ― but my sources have not confirmed or denied that.”

Earlier, Thiel himself had suggested that he would advise Trump, “A page in the book of history has turned, and there is an opening to think about some of our problems from a new perspective. I’ll try to help the president in any way I can,” said Thiel in a New York Times interview. Thiel was the only prominent business person from the tech sector to publicly support Trump. That support has also made him a controversial figure in Silicon Valley.

There is no doubt that enterpreneuers as well as established players, especially from the Silicon Valley, will be interested in what Trump has to offer. Trump has been notorious business owner and he could definitely bring something new to the table.

The big picture on big data about the election from mobile photo social network Instagram.

Images: Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump | Instagram

By Dan Patterson | October 13, 2016, 10:50 AM PST



The 2016 election has sparked the most mobile, connected campaigns in history. Both campaigns use social media vociferously, and how each campaign uses the social web is a reflection of the campaign's personality and strategic style. Trump fires multimedia missives about an assortment of topics, while the Clinton campaign creates vertical social media tailored to specific networks with careful precision.

This year has also arguably been the most photographed election in history. Technologically, the 2008 and 2012 campaigns were defined by the emergence of social media, primarily Facebook and Twitter. In 2016, for both presidential campaigns, Instagram is an indispensable tool.

And for good reason: the social network acquired in 2012 for $1 billion in 2012 by Facebook is growing rapidly. As of June 2016, Instagram had over 500 million monthly active users, 100 million more active monthly users than September, 2015. This puts the company ahead of prominent social networks like Twitter, 320 million monthly users, and LinkedIn, 100 million monthly users. Facebook has approximately 1.57 billion monthly users.



Instagram recently improved its brand management and advertising brands. In September the company announced it had half a million advertisers, double what it had six months ago. An additional 1.5 million profiles had been converted to brands pages, giving companies access to

Trump-Clinton race went to new lows in second debate, and social media exploded

Following a week of controversy and scandal, the second US presidential debate got ugly fast on Sunday night, as the rancor turned it into the most tweeted debate of all time.

By Dan Patterson | Terry Collins | October 10, 2016, 5:27 AM PST


This article was originally published on CNET.

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton sparred Sunday night in one of the most contentious debates in modern political history.

Followers of each presidential candidate, unsurprisingly, took the contest online.

The 90-minute duel between the real-estate mogul and seasoned Washington veteran, with just a month to go before Election Day 2016, was the most-tweeted political debate in the 10 years of Twitter, the social network said Sunday. More than 17 million debate-related tweets were sent during the contest and nearly 30 million tweets throughout the course of the day.


Voters were eager to see how Republican nominee Donald Trump would respond to a crumbling presidential campaign, which took a new hit last week with revelations of crude remarks he had made about women. Others were eager to see if his Democratic challengerHillary Clinton would go for the

Trump calls for U.S. to use offensive cyberweapons

Donald Trump at a rally in Florence, South Carolina, on Feb. 5, 2016. Credit: Gage Skidmore/Trump Campaign

Grant Gross
IDG News Service
Oct 3, 2016 10:40 AM
The country shouldn't be shy about attacking those that target its resources, he says.

The U.S. government needs to be ready to use its offensive cyberweapons in response to attacks from other nations, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said Monday.

The U.S. has significant offensive cybercapabilities, but it has been shy about deploying them, Trump said during a speech in Herdon, Virginia. "This is the warfare of the future," he said.

The U.S. should also increase its use of cyberweapons to attack terrorists, Trump said.

President Barack Obama has failed to protect the nation's cybersecurity and a new focus is needed, added Trump, who has largely avoided technology issues in his campaign.

Trump said he will create an international cybersecurity task force to battle hackers, and he will ask U.S. military leaders for suggestions on how to improve the nation's cyberdefenses.

Another team of experts will review all U.S. government cybersecurity systems. "Ultimately, all systems will be reviewed and made as secure as modern technology permits," he said. "The review team will also remain current with constantly evolving new methods of attack and will attempt to anticipate them and develop defense as often as possible before breaches occur."

Trump also called on U.S. agencies to follow "best and strongest" security practices and to set up new security training programs for all employees.

Trump didn't say how he'd pay for an overhaul of the government's IT systems, which could cost tens of billions of dollars. His description of the review team's duties to anticipate attacks mirror efforts that have been in place in the U.S. government for years.

Trump also used the speech to attack Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton's operation of a private email server while she served as Obama's secretary of state.

Trump said his speech on cybersecurity was "just the beginning of a long and overdue discussion" about the issue.

Clinton released a cybersecurity plan months ago. She called on expanded investments in cybersecurity technologies and accelerated adoption of best practices such as the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology Cybersecurity Framework, first issued in February 2014.