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Director of NSA Rejects Joint U.S.-Russian Cybersecurity Unit

NSA security advisory

The director of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) has publicly stated his objection to any cooperative U.S.-Russian cybersecurity unit. It has been reported that President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin supposedly discussed the idea in private at the recently concluded Group of 20 Summit Meeting in Hamburg, Germany.

The idea comes amid the ongoing and expanding investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election and possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian agents. U.S. intelligence agencies have already concluded that there was Russian interference in the election and the scope of it continues to be investigated.

While attending the Aspen Security Forum and questioned about the possibility of a joint cyber security effort, NSA Director Mike Rogers said: “I’m not a policy guy here … I would argue now is probably not the best time to be doing this.”

Once the idea was floated publicly, Trump backed off of it on Twitter, saying: “The fact that President Putin and I discussed a Cyber Security unit doesn’t mean I think it can happen. It can’t.”

Lawmakers in Congress, including senior Republicans, rejected the idea.

Rogers concluded by saying the idea was “something that you might want to build over time were we to see changes in (Russia’s) behavior.”