Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonBarr criticizes DOJ in speech declaring all agency power 'is invested in the attorney general' Virginia Democrat blasts Trump's 'appalling' remark about COVID-19 deaths in 'blue states' The Hill's Campaign Report: Biden asks if public can trust vaccine from Trump ahead of Election Day | Oklahoma health officials raised red flags before Trump rally MORE's former campaign manager on Tuesday likened the hack of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to the Watergate scandal and pushed for reforms to safeguard the country's democratic institutions.

In an op-ed published Tuesday in The New York Times, Robby Mook said the immediate reaction to the hacks at the DNC was "nothing like what followed Watergate."

"That’s because most of us don’t think of hacking as a crime like breaking and entering," Mook wrote.

Before the DNC was hacked, he wrote that he viewed hacking as a "prank by mischievous tech-savvy people to get revenge."

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"It wasn’t until I lived through the Russian hackings of Democratic staff members and organizations that I realized how dangerous such an attitude could be," he wrote.

The perception of cybercrimes has to change, Mook said, noting he wasn't referring specifically to the incident at the DNC but rather to cyber crimes in general.

"Unless we realize how vulnerable we are, we are playing into the hands of foreign aggressors like Mr. Putin," he wrote.