If you haven’t heard yet, John McAfee is running for President

Seriously.

His ticket? Personal privacy… and digital freedom, for all Americans. Call it the “Cyber Party”.

Like him or not, McAfee is good for the election because he is going to force the action around cybersecurity. Our nation is at risk for cyber-warfare. Our corporations are at risk for cyber-espionage and digital crime. Our citizens are at risk for identity theft, and their rights to digital privacy. Our kids are at risk for cyberbullying. Someone needs to raise the noise-level on all of this – and no one is better suited to it than McAfee.

McAfee has spent decades building up a large following from the tech industry – and the media who follow his personal antics have turned him into a celebrity. Millions of people know his name.

First and foremost, John McAfee is a cybersecurity legend… the pioneer and founder of the 80’s namesake company he founded – McAfee Software – which became the leading antivirus company and ultimately sold to Intel Corporation (while still bearing his name) for $7.7 billion in 2010. He has remained in the tech industry all of these years – despite media depictions that he’s jumped off the deep end. His latest startup, Future Tense Central, is a mobile and web app security and privacy company. McAfee is periodically the keynote speaker and main draw at cybersecurity conferences and hacker conventions.

Bottom line on McAfee – he has a lot of street cred when it comes to cybersecurity. It doesn’t hurt that he’s 70 but looks 60, is handsome, fit, well spoken, and has a good sense of humor. If you watch him when he’s well behaved, then you might throw everything you thought you knew about him out the window and write it all off as a gag – and listen up to him on cybersecurity. His opinions are his opinions and whether you agree with them or not, it is hard not to agree that cybersecurity needs to be run up the flagpole for every American voter to pay attention on.

How will McAfee generate more talk on cybersecurity amongst the Presidential hopefuls? Just by throwing his hat in the ring, McAfee has the political media all over him. Like Donald Trump – he’s a good interview. In the past month, McAfee has been featured or interviewed by major media outlets including BBC, CNBC, CNET, CNNMoney, Fortune, FOX News, Inc., NBC News, New York Daily News, Time, Wired, USA Today, and others.

The media loves to spin John McAfee and the storylines run the gamut from eccentric millionaire to ex-fugitive to security’s comeback kid. And McAfee has fun spinning himself – like his YouTube video on how to de-install the McAfee antivirus software currently on the market.

America loves an entrepreneur.. see Donald Trump. And McAfee is the ultimate entrepreneur. He didn’t startup in business with his Dad’s money. He did all by himself – conceived of a product, developed it, slapped his name on it, sold it to millions of consumers and corporations globally, and then cashed-out.

Point is, millions of people are paying attention to McAfee… and more of them are going to tune in. The media is using him to shine a spotlight on cybersecurity. Whether he makes a serious run for the Presidency or not, he is going to get the other candidates on topic, and cyber defense has the potential to become a much more important topic to voters.

We caught up with John McAfee to get his take on the Presidential frontrunners, starting with the Republicans – and he offered some insightful commentary.

McAfee on Jeb Bush

Jeb Bush has been very vocal on cybersecurity. He recently posted “Strengthening Cybersecurity” on his Jeb! 2016 website. A few months earlier (in June), he posted “The President Must Prioritize Cybersecurity“.

McAfee’s take on Bush:

“Jeb Bush certainly has the most to say about cybersecurity, but if we look deeply into what is said, there is little real substance, and the substance that is there is ill focused and counter productive. Let’s start with his statement:

“Reduce legal and technical barriers to cybersecurity information sharing between the federal government and private sector”

This demonstrates the inverted thinking that many current politicians subscribe to. The private sector has little or no information about the real threats to our national security. The private sector can certainly inform the government about the comings and goings of American citizens – where we were, what we bought, what we said, who we were with, what our opinions might be, etc. But the likelihood of the American citizenry being the source of a cyber war is slim to none in the face of our current reality. China has already declared cyber war against America with its theft of more than 14 million records of every government employee to have worked for the government for the past 40 years – including every embedded agent in every country in the world. Our response has been to shrug it off. We absolutely must stop spying on the American public through the devious contrivance of “Information Sharing” and start spying the external agencies from which a cyber attack is certain to occur.

Let’s look further. Bush’s section on making the person in charge “responsible” for cyber security issues is vacuous and naive. This will certainly make it easier for us all to.point fingers and assign blame, but, for heaven’s sake, how does this help us? It should be understood that everyone in a position of responsibility is held accountable for everything that happens on their watch. Have we reached the level of naiveté where we have to actually write it down and remind one another? If so we are lost. We don’t need to enforce accountability. We need new people in charge. No matter how much you enforce a person’s responsibility, if the talents required to do the job are missing, we will fail. We need people who are fluent in the science of cyber security to run every critical department. To be illiterate in cyber science, in this day and age, is unpardonable. I defy you to find a single leader in China who cannot program a computer. It would be, to us, like electing a president who could not read or write, but who promised to hire advisors who would explain words to them.

Let’s go deeper. Bush wants to “reform our acquisition process” in order to help firm up cyber security. This statement alone indicates a position of being totally out of touch with reality. We are no longer in a world where our weapons, both defensive and offensive are made of steel and complex materials, which require massive industrial capacity to produce. Cyber weapons are 99% software and firmware. Why on earth would we not produce these weapons entirely within the government. 40,000 white and black hat hackers attended Defcon in Las Vegas less than two months ago. They represented the ultimate in cyber talents on this planet. If I had been in charge of the Executive branch at that time, I would have had hundreds of recruiters offering whatever it took to hire 5,000 of them. I guarantee that within a year America would possess cyber weapons and defensive systems that would be second to none. We don’t contract out the management of our military personnel. Where on earth would we contract out the intelligence necessary to wage cyber warfare?

The only point that I agreed with Jeb Bush about was his comment that we “need to remove barriers to innovation in Business”. We need to go further and get the hell out of the way of American Business entirely.”

McAfee on Carly Fiorina

Carly Fiorina told BloombergPolitics that U.S. cybersecurity operations need to be centralized – under the Department of Defense (DoD), or other.

McAfee’s feedback on Fiorina:

“The central point that “Cyber security operations need to be centralized under the DoD or other agency” is as far as we need to go disqualify her from making decisions regarding cyber security. It also demonstrates that Fiorina does not read newspapers or watch TV. We need only look at the largest single governmental hack in world history to disprove this thesis – the Office Of Personnel Management (OPM) hack. No Department could be further removed from from the DoD or from any sensible agency where one might want to centralize cyber security. The OPM performs a purely administrative function, yet it is hard to imagine a hack that could have been more damaging to U.S. national interests. There is no agency within the U.S. government that does not need to be in charge of its own cyber security. Every department poses new and unique challenges to implementing cyber security procedures, and industry learned long ago that centralized standards create an imperfect cyber world.

McAfee on Donald Trump

Donald Trump has said very little to the media about cybersecurity.

McAfee sums up Trump:

“In regards to Donald Trump I believe we can sum up his cyber acumen by noting his statement that “I have never written an email”. Surely I do not need to say more.”

When McAfee appeared on FOX News with Greta Van Susteren, he got a laugh when he made fun of Trump’s hair. If Trump decides to talk cyber, it may get an even bigger laugh from McAfee.

Could McAfee be the one who prods Trump into speaking up on a topic that is so critical to our national security?

McAfee on Ben Carson

Carson lays out the major issues for voters, and where he stands, on his website. Cybersecurity is noticeably absent.

McAfee comforted by Carson:

“I would like to take this opportunity to point out that Carson’s silence on the issue is more comforting to me than all of the other candidates’ pronouncements. It gives a tiny hope that he may have a grasp of the problems. He may know, for example that the F-22 Raptor, just recently unveiled as the most advanced stealth fighter on the planet, began its design in 1985 – when the word “hacker” was entirely unknown. He may know that that the Raptor’s control and weaponry systems are controlled by software designed before the Internet was even conceived. He may know that three months ago Wired Magazine published a story about two hackers who took full control of a jeep automobile, remotely, over the internet, and ran it into a ditch. He may know that Chris Roberts demonstrated, in a simulator, the truth that all hackers know, that commercial airlines can be commandeered remotely over the internet. He may have the talents to put all of this together and discern that our most advanced fighter could be easily turned against us.

He may know, in addition, that China has deployed EMP cannons all across China that can create a pulse barrier that will immediately bring down any aircraft that passes through it, stealth or not. For those unfamiliar with EMPs, they are electromagnetic pulses used to disable any and all types of computer systems.

He may know that the entire fabric of our nation is held together by a network of intercommunicating systems with varying levels of cyber protection, and that a major disruption in that network would leave us semi-permanently without electricity, medical services, emergency services, food and potable water. He may know these things, and more, and he may have the wherewithal to fix them. I do not know. As to those candidates who have spoken, and I would have advised – “It is better to say nothing and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt”.

No one says McAfee doesn’t go on rants, and that was a mouthful put onto Carson. Nonetheless, these are the types of threats that McAfee can draw attention to. This is a softball for Carson if he wants to step up to the plate and take a big swing at cybersecurity. Ben?

McAfee on Marco Rubio

Rubio told The Hill that the Chinese are responsible for cyber-espionage and attacks against U.S.

McAfee is silent on Rubio:

Never at a loss for words, McAfee had no comment on Rubio. Hmm… could it be that Rubio is speaking McAfee’s own words — and that Rubio’s statements about the Chinese threat mirror McAfee’s keynote to DEF CON (the hacking conference) in 2014? They sure sound familiar.

Stay tuned. We’ll check back in with John McAfee shortly for his thoughts on the Democratic frontrunners. He offers a sneak preview — “And as to Hillary (Clinton), her belief that wiping a disk involves using a damp cloth, should make us all shudder.”

(John McAfee’s quotes were provided to us directly by him, and unedited except for spell-checking.)

This article was written by Steve Morgan from Forbes and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.





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