Biden May Not Be Savvy About Big Tech, But He Understands Cybersecurity

Nor has "Biden for Blockchain" or the chant, "Hey, Ho, Uncle Joe for Crypto!" And no matter how Joe Biden fares in the rest of this election, it is unlikely he will barnstorm the primaries with speeches that extol the merits of cryptocurrency, the versatility of ethereum or the elegance of decentralized ledgers.

"Often the public doesn't see the full extent of what our adversaries are doing in the cyber domain, but I think Biden understands both the significance and scope of this threat," says Michael Carpenter, who worked in the Pentagon as the deputy assistant secretary of Defense, and is now the managing director for the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement.

Plus, Biden has the classic problem of that 30-year business executive with a five-page resume - it's almost too long and tedious to read. So it's easy to overlook his cybersecurity wins.

Politifact fact-checked the claim and deemed it "Mostly true," as a study from FireFye, a cybersecurity company, found that after the treaty Biden touts, Chinese cyber-theft did indeed begin to "Significantly decline, especially against the U.S," before rising again under Donald Trump.

In January of 2015, in the wake of the Sony Pictures data hack, Biden announced a $25 million federal grant for cybersecurity education.

Speaking to undergraduate students, Biden noted that the starting salary for cybersecurity professions is $85,000, and telling them, "These are good middle-class jobs."

The founding members include the president of Mexico, president of Estonia and Joe Biden.

The point is that cybersecurity isn't just a buzzy issue Biden recently adopted; he has worked on this for years, and his track record is consistent.

In February of 2019, at a Munich Security Conference, Biden warned of "Cyberattacks, dark money influence operations, and disinformation" from Russia, adding, "Foreign election interference is not only a serious threat to our democratic institutions, I believe it's a threat to our national security."

How does Biden's campaign score on cybersecurity hygiene? In June 2019, The Washington Post asked all of the Democratic presidential candidates - then 23 - if they had taken basic cybersecurity measures.