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Salon
Salon
Politics
David Edwards

Trump: Cyberattack fix? Return to paper!

Former U.S. President Donald Trump leaves Trump Tower in Manhattan on March 09, 2021 in New York City. James Devaney/GC Images

Former President Donald Trump suggested on Monday that the solution to cyberattacks is to stop using computers.

During an interview on Fox Business, host Stuart Varney asked Trump about how the U.S. should respond to cyberattacks like the one that recently shut down the Colonial Pipeline.

"The way you stop it is you go back to a much more old-fashioned form of accounting and things," Trump said. "You know, I have a son who is so good with computers. He's a young person and he can make these things sing and when you put everything on internet and on all of these machines — you never see a piece of paper — I really think that you have to go back to a different form of accounting, a different form of compiling information."

According to the former president, "young people . . . can't walk without computers."

"As a young person, my 15-year-old son is, you know, he's just a genius with this stuff," he added. "And you have people that are going to break into systems. I think you have to go back and you have to be much more reliant, there has to be much better security."

Trump also admitted that he doesn't understand how hackers get paid for ransomware cyberattacks.

"I don't know how the hell they get paid, by the way, Stuart," he commented. "You're going to have to explain that to me."

"They get paid through Bitcoin," Varney laughed.

"That's another beauty," Trump complained. "The currency of this world should be the dollar. And I don't think we should have all of the Bitcoins of the world out there. I think they should regulate them very, very high."

You can watch the video below via YouTube:

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