Senior US Senator and former presidential candidate John McCain says Russia’s alleged cyber attacks against political organizations to influence the 2016 presidential election amounted to an “act of war.”
McCain, a Republican from Arizona, has scheduled a hearing for next week on foreign cyber attacks targeting the US, which will also focus on Russian hacking.
He has invited Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Director of the National Security Agency Mike Rogers and Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Marcel Lettre, to next week’s hearing
McCain, who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is one of Washington’s most well-known foreign policy hawks.
“When you attack a country, it’s an act of war,” McCain said of the recent hackings on Ukrainian TV while on a visit to Kiev.
“And so we have to make sure that there is a price to pay so that we can perhaps persuade Russians to stop this kind of attacks on our very…