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" I was surprised by some of my French colleagues who immediately assumed that because I spoke English with an American accent, that, therefore, you must be a supporter of whoever is the current president of the United States. There seems to be this widespread feeling that, 'Oh, American accent - therefore, you like cowboy boots.' "

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" When Estonia reestablished its sovereignty after a half century of successive thuggish, totalitarian, foreign occupations by the Soviets, the Nazis, and then again the Soviets, we knew we wanted to create a democratic country characterized by rule of law and respect for human rights. "

Toomas Hendrik Ilves

Law

Respect

Country

" I've been in and out of academia ever since I was young. "

" When hackers have access to powerful computers that use brute force hacking, they can crack almost any password; even one user with insecure access being successfully hacked can result in a major breach. "

" Russia has had very aggressive military exercises. They've practiced mock nuclear attacks on Warsaw. Russian bombers practiced attacking strategic military targets in Sweden. The military aggression gets everybody nervous. "

" My American undergraduate education probably gave me a better idea of the fundamentals of what European civilization is about, better than the undergraduate education you get at most European universities. "

" In both Russia and the U.S., there are a very small number of very, very rich people, and then there are a lot of people who don't have anything. The less inequality you have in a society, the more social peace you have. It's kind of a no-brainer. "

" When your country is in dire straits, it doesn't matter whether you're a social democrat or not. "

" Little by little, we're becoming a boring Nordic country. "

" In Russia, tweeting or sharing real news that's embarrassing to the regime can land you in prison. Imagine, then, the response of the regime to 'fake news' that's damaging to the Kremlin. "

" People who come out of the liberal arts don't have an understanding of science and technology, and the people in science and technology have very little experience with liberal arts and the traditions of a liberal democracy. "

" The Soviet Union collapsed without a lot of people thinking it should or would, whereas for Estonia, it was something we'd been praying for for 60 years. "

" That was something that shaped my thinking regarding Estonia: the idea that we should be getting our young people to work with computers. "

" The whole information and communication technologies (ICT) infrastructure must be regarded as an 'ecosystem' in which everything is interconnected. It functions as a whole; it must be defended as a whole. "

" Sanctions work over time. They do work, but it takes years for them to have an effect. "

" Digital warfare, in the Clausewitz definition as 'the continuation of policy by other means,' reached Western public consciousness via my own country, Estonia, in 2007 when our governmental, banking, and news media servers were hit with 'distributed denial-of-service attacks,' which is when hackers overload servers until they shut down. "

" Democracy is messy, clearly, but it has one key factor, which is an orderly transfer of power. "

" I knew who Bruce Springsteen was before he had his first record. "

Toomas Hendrik Ilves

Who

Had

" Since I've been writing about things my entire life, I thought, 'Well, that's what I would do as a president is to read and then write and talk about things that are interesting to me.' "

" Democracies stand on several key pillars: Free and fair elections, human rights, the rule of law, and a free untrammeled media. Until 2016, an open media was seen as a resilient democratic pillar that supported the others. "

" The minute a collective alliance fails to live up to its agreement to collective defence, then from that moment on, everybody is on the run. "

Toomas Hendrik Ilves

Agreement

Run

" I'm not afraid of code. I mean, I understand how these things work. I thought that that was the one area where Estonia was playing on a level playing field. "

" The fake news is - I mean, as a tool of warfare - has been there for decades and decades and decades. It was never very well done until, really, the Ukraine, though I would say that the Russians used to complain about fake things to say the State Department. "

" Fake news is cheap to produce. Genuine journalism is expensive. "

" When our diplomats go abroad, they are surprised that they can't do the things that they can do here. "

" Everything can be known and, in some cases, everything is known. "

" The domestic policy of any president, U.S. or otherwise, is his or her own concern, as long as democratic norms are followed. "

" Until defense of democracy in the digital era is taken up by governments collectively, both in NATO and outside the alliance, liberal democracies will remain vulnerable to the cyberthreats of the 21st century. "

Toomas Hendrik Ilves

Digital

Will

" It's much cheaper to influence elections than it is to go to war. "

Toomas Hendrik Ilves

War

Influence

" People have actually figured out that Estonia is one of the few post-Communist countries that has a genuine image in people's minds as being something. "

" In a modern digitalized world, it is possible to paralyze a country without attacking its defense forces: The country can be ruined by simply bringing its SCADA systems to a halt. To impoverish a country, one can erase its banking records. The most sophisticated military technology can be rendered irrelevant. In cyberspace, no country is an island. "