Sen. Mark Warner: U.S. is 'on guard' for Russian cyberattacks

Senator Mark Warner (D-VA), Chair of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, sits down with Yahoo Finance Live to discuss the sanctions being weighed against Russia, the volatility in the economy, and the threat of cyberattacks from Russia.

Video Transcript

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EMILY MCCORMICK: Welcome back to Yahoo Finance Live. The US, EU, and UK have unleashed additional sanctions against Russia over the past several days ratcheting up the economic pressure to the Kremlin as Russia's invasion of Ukraine persists. Our next guest joins us for the latest on these and other developments out of Washington. Senator Mark Warner of Virginia is chair of the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and joins us now. Senator, thank you so much for joining us this afternoon.

MARK WARNER: Thank you, Emily.

EMILY MCCORMICK: And Senator, new sanctions were announced earlier today by the Treasury Department aimed at Russia's central bank. I'm wondering, do these and other penalties implemented to date go far enough to punish Russia for its actions in Ukraine?

MARK WARNER: Well, Emily, nine days ago, I was in Munich at the International Security Conference where we were meeting with all of our NATO allies, their defense ministers, their parliamentarians. And while they believe the American intelligence that Russia was going-- was potentially going to invade, they weren't all fully ready to pull all the triggers.

We're nine days later, five days into the invasion and we've seen crippling sanctions in terms of Nord Stream 2. We've seen Germany completely change its whole position in terms of sending assistance to Ukraine, and dramatically increase the defense budget. We've seen the Europeans take the lead on kicking some of the Swift-- using Swift to kick some of the Russian banks out of the system. We've seen the export controls not only from America, but a number of not only European, but Asian allies limit semi-conductors flow into Russia, which will cut back dramatically their ability on any advanced technologies, particularly around defense.

We've seen Vladimir Putin himself personally sanctioned. We've seen even the Swiss who have always been neutral weigh in against Ukraine. And now these central bank sanctions to really limit the ability of Russia to settle any of their accounts in dollar denominated transactions. This is going to create enormous pain and hurt to the Russian economy candidly much, much faster than I anticipated. You couple all that with the remarkable resistance of the Ukrainians on the ground.

I think Putin thought he could simply roll into Ukraine the way he did into Crimea. None of that's happened. Again, the Russians have got additional forces they can throw and we've not seen the level of cyber attacks that I anticipated. But in terms of United, European, American and candidly, other nations major democracies around the world weighing in, I think this is a much bigger economic hit than Putin anticipated.

EMILY MCCORMICK: And Senator, you mentioned that these sanctions are going to have a much quicker and more palpable impact on the Russian economy than you previously anticipated. When do you expect to see a tangible shift to Putin's course of action here in response, again, to some of these sanctions that we've been implementing-- we've seen been implemented over the past several days?

MARK WARNER: Emily, we saw the Russian markets literally close today. They were-- the ruble was in such freefall. They didn't even reopen their markets. But we never anticipated that sanctions alone and just as we've seen in prior sanctions against regimes like North Korea, Iran, they don't happen overnight. They don't create this cascading effect on the economy overnight. So will it take days or weeks? But I think it's a pretty good indication when you've got oligarchs who have basically become billionaires many times because of their friendships with Putin actually start to speak out and say, hey, we don't think this is necessarily a good thing for Russia to invade. They will feel the pain, first and foremost.

And when you've got somebody like Putin who has become so isolated from any outside input-- I don't know if your viewers have seen any of these images where Putin sits at one end of the table and whether economic ministers or military leaders, they sit at the total other end of the table. This is a man who's disconnected from his ability to kind of have, I think honest input.

So I think we will see results, hopefully, sooner than later. Although, at the same time, we have to acknowledge that Russia has still additional tools in the toolkit. The idea that Russia may launch some of their cyber capabilities against America or the West either in terms of their direct intelligence service cyber capabilities or the large, large numbers of cyber criminals that reside in Russia to kind of unleash their ransomware attacks against the West. We have to be ready for that in the coming days as well.

EMILY MCCORMICK: Where do you think the greatest risk for a cyber attack lies right now? Would it hit infrastructure, US government agencies, the private sector or be directed elsewhere?

MARK WARNER: Well, let me break that into two components. One of the things I've actually been pleasantly surprised at is that Russia has not launched their full cyber capabilities against Ukraine. I was very concerned because, unfortunately, Russia has penetrated a lot of the Ukrainian networks. And again, I think the fact they've not launched these capabilities as an indication, Putin thought he was going to be able to take over so quickly.

But if Russia launches a full on cyber attack on Ukraine and in a sense tries to turn off the power, turn off the water, turn off the internet, many of these networks are interconnected. You take Poland, which is right next door a NATO nation where there are American troops and other NATO troops. If somehow you turn off the power in Ukraine and it turns off the power in Eastern Poland as well and a truckload of NATO soldiers have a crash because the lights have gone out or Polish citizens start to die because the power has gone out in Polish hospitals, that gets very close to what would be considered an Article V violation of the NATO treaty, which says if you attack any nation in NATO, all 30 nations have to respond. That was my immediate concern. That hasn't come to pass so far.

I think many of us in the Intel and security community have been surprised. Russia has not gone down that path that far, but that is my immediate concern. The concern over the next coming days as these sanctions really start to cut into the Russian economy even further is that Putin has said, I'm going to strike back against NATO American whether it be ransomware or whether it be with direct cyber attacks. Literally, there are thousands of cyber weapons that the Russians have.

And we've never seen a time where they've launched multiple weapons at the same time against other nation states. We could see that hit America and the West in our financial sector. It could hit in some of our critical infrastructure such as our power. It could also appear in the form of ransomware attacks. We thought some of our viewers may remember when Colonial Pipeline was hit a year ago, it shut down that pipeline that caused long gas lines across the whole Southeast.

So we are on guard and we've got the-- the cybersecurity agency has basically got a program called shields up kind of like Star Trek terminology. We've got all our defenses out there. But it's just the truth in cyber if you bring a first tier nation state like Russia against generally most cyber defenses, chances are at some point, they will get through. So the question for American business industry and government will be even if the Russians are able to penetrate our cyber defenses, how quickly can we bring our systems back up in terms of resilience? So I think we'll be OK, but there could be some bumpy days ahead.

EMILY MCCORMICK: And Senator, what magnitude of a cyber attack would potentially warrant a militarized response from NATO outside of a cyber response?

MARK WARNER: Well, I think the kind of response that I laid out were you actually had a cyber attack that shut off the power in Poland, Eastern Poland that led to loss of life, whether it be NATO troops or Polish citizens would get pretty darn close to an Article V. This has always been in an area that's called strategic ambiguity because we've not been necessarily fully clear on that.

And there's also been a-- the doctrine in our country has always been that if a nation state Russia uses an attack against us in cyber, we reserve the right to respond in other domains militarily, economically. Because candidly, I think there's been a great deal of concern in America, in NATO. Hopefully, some responsible heads in Russia that if you start escalating tit for tat in cyber where you've got a whole series of malware, malware with worms that can go from one network to another, you don't know when you will unleash this much malware cyber attacks into the wild where it may lead.

So we are, again, unfortunately, because of Putin's unfounded necessity of trying to reestablish old Russia and take on and invade Ukraine where, unfortunately, fast approaching areas that have been hypothetical to date, but unfortunately, may become very real in terms of policymakers decisions.

EMILY MCCORMICK: Certainly something we'll be watching in the days and weeks ahead. Senator Mark Warner of Virginia is chair of the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and we thank you so much for your time this afternoon.