Defense is a perennial topic in any presidential election season. But during the first Republican debate in Cleveland tonight, the candidates fought not about increasing the number of troops and tanks on the ground, but about how to enhance the country’s cyber security.
It started off with Carly Fiorina—widely considered the winner of the night’s earlier debate for the lower-polling GOP contenders—calling for companies to tear down the so-called “cyberwalls” that prevent the government from accessing data from companies like Google and Apple. Fiorina argued that these barriers make it difficult for security agencies to “connect the dots” around potential risks.
“I certainly support that we need to tear down cyberwalls,” Fiorina said, “not on a mass basis but on a targeted basis.”
And while ISIS was certainly positioned as enemy No. 1 throughout the debate, candidates also discussed recent hacks allegedly carried out by Russia and China as a key threats to national security. During the second debate for the top ten contenders, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said these attacks amounted to acts of cyberwar.
Meanwhile, the most talked-about moment of the night, according to Facebook’s data, was when New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul faced off over the issue of government surveillance.
While Paul stood his ground as a diehard opponent of government collection of public records, Christie said his experience as US Attorney of New Jersey in the aftermath of September 11th convinced him of the importance of surveillance. As president, Christie said he would push to provide even more tools to these agencies.
No matter where the candidates stood, one thing was clear: cyber security is the new national security.
