FBI ‘Made Significant Strides’ in Collaboration With Private Sector Against Threats to America’s Infrastructure: Wray

FBI Director Christopher Wray listens at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 19, 2023. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

FBI director Christopher Wray spoke at a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in the Swiss town of Davos on Thursday, where he highlighted the agency’s close collaboration with private sector businesses to protect America’s critical infrastructure from threats.

Wray made the remarks during a panel discussion on technology and national security, with the FBI saying that his participation at the WEF meeting was part of the agency’s ongoing efforts to ensure government and private sector leaders are informed about global threats like economic espionage and cyberattacks.

At one point the discussion turned to the question of how infrastructure like the power grid has become more highly networked with computer control systems and whether that has made it more vulnerable to hackers and other cyber threats.

Asked to weigh in on whether the “attack surface” has broadened when it comes to potential infrastructure targets, Wray said that it has, along with an increase in various attack methods, which he said have grown “significantly” in both quantity and quality.

“At the same time, I think the sophistication of the private sector is improving and, particularly important, the level of collaboration between the private sector and the government, especially the FBI has, I think, made significant strides,” Wray said.

From left, editor of Wired Magazine Gideon Lichfield, Ukraine Vice-Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko, FBI Director Christopher Wray, CEO Cloudflare Matthew Prince, and CEO of Gecko Robotics Jake Loosararian, sit on a podium at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 19, 2023. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

While Wray’s remarks about close collaboration with the private sector came in the context of protecting critical infrastructure—after all, the FBI has a dedicated division called the Office of Private Sector (OPS) to liaise with industry to address threats—they were notable for another reason.

Namely, the FBI faces scrutiny over its seemingly cozy relationship with Twitter and other social media companies that the agency allegedly leveraged to make content moderation requests that some have characterized as censorship.

Republicans have vowed to investigate the FBI over allegations that the agency colluded with social media companies to suppress Americans’ free speech, and have established a subcommittee on the “weaponization of the federal government” that will look into that, and other allegations.

The Twitter Files

The proposal for the subcommittee and probe came after Republicans recently signaled that they want a top-to-bottom investigation of the FBI after the “Twitter Files,” internal company communications that were provided by Elon Musk to several journalists, suggested that the agency pressured Twitter to censor free speech.

The FBI has denied any wrongdoing, and in an emailed statement to The Epoch Times, a spokesperson said the agency regularly notifies private sector entities about “foreign malign influence,” but that any actions are taken independently by companies.

One of the Twitter Files releases included screenshots of FBI requests for Twitter to censor posts on the platform, while other messages showed Twitter complying in a dynamic independent journalist Matt Taibbi described as a “master-canine” relationship.

“The master-canine quality of the FBI’s relationship to Twitter comes through in this November 2022 email, in which ‘FBI San Francisco is notifying you’ it wants action on four accounts,” Taibbi wrote, sharing a screenshot of an email from the FBI asking for “any action or inaction deemed appropriate within Twitter policy” with respect to accounts that “may potentially constitute violations.”

Three of the four flagged accounts were suspended, with the one that was spared sometimes posting anti-Trump and left-leaning content.

Twitter did not return a request for comment from The Epoch Times.

Hunter Biden Laptop

In another episode of the Twitter Files, independent journalist and author Michael Shellenberger posted files related to an explosive story by the New York Post about a laptop linked to Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s son.

In the run-up to the 2020 election, the Post published a story about a laptop abandoned at a computer repair shop that purportedly belonged to Hunter Biden and contained emails suggesting that then-candidate Joe Biden had knowledge of, and was allegedly involved in, his son’s foreign business dealings.

The president has repeatedly insisted he had no knowledge of or involvement in his son’s business operations.

Shellenberger shared messages showing the FBI working to discredit the Hunter Biden laptop report and prevent it from being spread on Twitter in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election.

“What I quickly put together is a pattern where it appears that FBI agents, along with former FBI agents within the company, were engaged in a disinformation campaign aimed at top Twitter and Facebook executives, as well as at top news organization executives to basically prepare them, prime them, get them set up to dismiss Hunter Biden information when it would be released,” Shellenberger wrote.

Other documents show FBI agents communicated with Twitter staff in an apparent bid to discredit the Post’s report on the laptop.

Twitter’s former head of Trust & Safety Yoel Roth said in a signed declaration (pdf) that he was warned by the FBI in a series of meetings ahead of the 2020 election of the threat of hacked materials being distributed on social media platforms.

“I also learned in these meetings that there were rumors that a hack-and-leak operation would involve Hunter Biden,” Roth said in the declaration, which was attached to a Dec. 21, 2020, letter to the FEC’s Office of Complaints Examination and Legal Administration on behalf of Twitter.

In an emailed statement to The Epoch Times, the FBI denied it had made any specific warnings about Hunter Biden and insisted its notifications to social media companies were of a general nature.

Roth said in the declaration that, after reviewing the Post’s articles about the laptop, his team determined that they violated the platform’s policies against the distribution of hacked materials and took action on Oct. 14, 2020, to suppress their distribution.

Roth later acknowledged that it was a mistake for Twitter to suppress the laptop story.

“We didn’t know what to believe, we didn’t know what was true, there was smoke—and ultimately for me, it didn’t reach a place where I was comfortable removing this content from Twitter,” Roth said during a recent interview at the Knight Foundation conference.

“But it set off every single one of my finely tuned APT28 ‘hack and leak campaign’ alarm bells,” Roth added, referring to a Russian cybercrime operation.

Roth was then asked if he thinks that Twitter blocking the laptop story was a mistake, and he replied: “In my opinion, yes.”