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" The Russian Federation's practice of instant citizenship, whereby Russian passports are distributed willy-nilly to ethnic Russians abroad so they can be 'protected' in their current homeland, is unacceptable. Passports are travel documents, not a tool to justify aggression. "

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" 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. "

Toomas Hendrik Ilves

Law

Elections

Free

" 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

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

" Big data knows and can deduce more about you than Big Brother ever could. "

" George Bush and I share a love of steel brush cutters. It turns out we use the same professional brush cutter. He asked me what I did. I said I cut brush. He says, 'Oh, what do you use?' I said steel. He goes, 'Oh, me too.' "

" We Estonians will do what is necessary to join the European Union. "

" 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. "

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

" Where a country lies is a subjective decision and only in part a product of its own desire. Much, if not most, is determined by what others believe about it. "

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

Toomas Hendrik Ilves

Who

Had

" Social media has become a primary factor in political campaigns. "

" 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. "

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

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

" Diplomacy between a powerful, victorious army and a side that's losing doesn't really work well. "

" 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. "

" Can the wider West establish a global 'cyber NATO?' It would be difficult, but so, too, was the founding of NATO itself, which was called into being only after successive communist coups in Eastern Europe. "

" Nothing costs more than the loss of freedom. "

Toomas Hendrik Ilves

Nothing

Loss

" I was the child of refugees. "

Toomas Hendrik Ilves

Refugees

Child

" I remember starting to read about the Soviet Union when I was eight years old; I think I was reading my father's 'New York Times.' "

" I realised that if we were not in the E.U., there were people in the E.U. who were also members of NATO that would veto our joining NATO. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" In cyberwarfare, it is much harder to identify the attacker and, therefore, to know how to retaliate. "

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

Toomas Hendrik Ilves

War

Influence

" 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. "

" 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. "