President Obama says he underestimated the digital risk to democracy, not Vladimir Putin

President Barack Obama
(Image credit: Pool/Getty Images)

President Obama did not misjudge possible threats from Russia, he said Sunday in an interview with ABC News, but did not realize the risk of digital election interference.

"I don't think I underestimated [Russian President Vladimir Putin]," Obama mused, "but I think that I underestimated the degree to which, in this new information age, it is possible for misinformation, for cyberhacking and so forth, to have an impact on our open societies, our open systems, to insinuate themselves into our democratic practices in ways that I think are accelerating."

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.