The Trump administration’s Treasury Department is “pushing as hard as we can” on cybersecurity, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said during a policy event with Breitbart News.
Host Matthew Boyle, Breitbart News’s Washington Bureau Chief, noted that Americans have seen international criminal syndicates engaged in financial scams.
“There’s a lot of financial institutions in this room today, and people that represent various financial institutions. What steps do you think this administration, through the Treasury Department, Justice Department, et cetera, are prepared to take to work with the private sector to go after those criminal syndicates who are engaged in financial scams of people?” he asked.
Bessent said they are currently “pushing as hard as we can on cybersecurity,” explaining that the Treasury was hacked before he came on the scene, likely by Chinese hackers.
“[The] Treasury was hacked before I arrived. OCC was hacked. We believe that they were both Chinese hackers, which were brought up during our meetings yesterday or in the two days,” Bessent said, adding that they are “holding a tabletop exercise with the regulators.”
“I believe we just did it two weeks ago in case of a large scale cyber attack, and we were pushing as hard as we can on this because, again, with generative AI — that they could just grab your voice and do it is, you know, I think my team, my public affairs team, I think, pulled down 30 false Facebook pages of me, of things I said,” Bessent said, putting this threat in greater perspective.
“You know, somebody came out and said, ‘Oh, like, sell everything, buy this,’” he said.
Bessent added that this is the “real challenge of the day” for financial firms, adding that while older people are more vulnerable, everyone faces digital risks.
WATCH the event below:
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