‘Our government has become paranoid and insane’ – US Cyber Party presidential hopeful

Jason Reed 

24 Sep, 2015 

Our government was founded on the principle of service, but now it is based on power. That has to stop, John McAfee, a computer security pioneer and US presidential hopeful told RT. Government should serve the people, he added.

Legendary computer wizard John McAfee wants to run for the White House in 2016 with his newly created Cyber Party.

RT: What's the main reason you want to run for the US Presidency?

John McAfee: I think the American government is dysfunctional, corrupt and ineffective. It has created far more problems than it has solved in the past 50 years and it continues to spiral downward. We are almost last in the field of education and cyber security as is evidenced by the fact that the Chinese walked away with over 14 million records of our government employees – all of our government employees for the past 30 years – including all of our embedded agents in foreign countries. This is a coup of warfare the likes of which have never been seen before. If something is not done and done soon, I’m afraid that America will just spiral out of existence. And what’s needed more than anything else, I think, is competent leadership in the area of technology. Our congressmen, senators and president can barely spell the word ‘cyber science’, let alone, know how to program a computer. In China, try to find any leader that is not cyber aware. 

RT: You want to focus your campaign on cyber security and government surveillance issues so important to you. Do you expect the American people to support these issues?

JM: Well, absolutely. Forty percent of the American workforce is technical. It is only within our government that we have the ‘non-techies’, the people who are incompetent in technology. But 40 percent of the workforce – right there are 19 million people. It is not just the technologists; I think it is a wide band of Americans that are dissatisfied with the incompetence, disfunctionality and corruption that exists in America. And I am one of the few people who will actually say that we are a corrupt country. And we are. We interfere with the internal affairs of other nations thinking we would get off with the impunity. Terrorism. There is nothing in life that is not connected in some way to something else. We are trying to solve the problem of terrorism, the previous gentleman was talking about ISIL - we call it ISIS here in the US - and how do we deal with it. We deal with it by stopping the interference of other countries. America has deemed itself to be the policemen of the world for over 50 years. We can no longer do that. I mean, we are a bankrupt nation. And we’re considering lending money to other nations. In real life we don’t get to do that - if I don’t have money in the bank I can’t lend my friends money. But our government does by merely printing more, and by doing so, it is cheating the American public because every time you print money it devalues everything that we, the workers, have worked for. So, this has to stop else we will disappear.

John McAfee: “We are in a cyber-war. It was declared on America by China two years ago but nobody noticed…They have attacked Homeland Security, the FBI and the CIA…They can push a button any moment and shut off our electricity, bring down our planes, take control of our automobiles and we’ll be back in the Stone Age.” 

RT: There are plenty of other candidates running for the US top job. Who's the hardest person to beat?

JM: I don’t think I have any real competition. We have two parties here in America – the Republicans and Democrats. They are machines, machines without heart and soul. And no matter who you are, if you are part of those parties, you become part of the machine. And nothing will change. We have a government today that is based on power. But our government was founded on the principle of service - the government of the people, by the people and for the people. That was why our government was formed by some very smart men a few hundred years ago. We don’t have that anymore. Now it is the government of the powerful, for the powerful and by the powerful. That has to stop. Government should serve the people, else why do we need government. I don’t need a mother or a father telling me what to do. I am 70 years old. But the government wants to tell us what to do, it wants to protect us. But how can it do that? We have to take security on as our own problem. We are responsible adults, we can’t expect the government to take care of us and protect us. Life is full of risk. We have to accept that as adults and just live with it.

RT: The US government has been accused of cyber-attacks and mass surveillance all around the globe. Should the US be pointing fingers at, for example, China?

JM: I have to admit that America does a great deal of cyber espionage, but most of that is done against the American people. Our government has become paranoid and insane. Homeland Security which is the organization that was established to protect us from foreign people, governments and enemies, instead has turned inward. It now asks me and every other American citizen to remove the kimono and let them dig into the most private parts of our lives so that they can protect me from the enemy by saying “we need to look at you, to make sure that you are not the enemy we are trying to protect you from.” Do you see how insane this is? I do; many people do. And I think any American citizen who does see that insanity will see the truth in my words and hopefully get behind me.

© Jim Urquhart / Reuters

RT: Another businessman Donald Trump is running for the White House. What's your take on business people going to politics? Is the American public tired of politicians or should one keep business out of politics as much as possible?

JM: First of all, look at the word ‘politics’. ‘Politics’ is defined as the principles and practices necessary to gain and hold power within the government. Inherently, that is an ugly definition. Do we want to elect people who want power? I don’t. I want to elect someone who is willing to sacrifice himself to serve the American public. So, Donald Trump is an excellent businessman, I cannot compete with him in business; although I have created multi-billion dollar companies but not as great as him. He ought to be going back into private business and creating jobs for the American people like he has been doing. I think he is ill-prepared for the problems of this government. He is technologically incompetent, I’m sorry to say that Mr. Trump, but you are.

You have already stated that you have never written an email even. How can you then run a country that is already in a cyber-war? And you’ve mentioned China - China has declared war on us. Not openly, they didn’t say ‘we are now at war with you’, but they have committed acts of war to take 14 million files of our government employees, including tens of thousands of embedded agents whose lives are now at risk, who may have families and children here in America. How are you going to find them, Mr. Trump, if you do not understand the technology that the Chinese are using to do this with? This is the problem, and there are no other candidates, I’m afraid, that do have any knowledge whatsoever about the fundamental glue that is holding the world together now: the technology of cyber science, communication and cyber security. I‘ve lived that my whole life; that’s all I know. And I know how to run businesses.