Obama’s tech chief predicted foreign hacking of U.S. elections back in 2013

Most of us were surprised to learn Russia had tampered with an American election, but one person predicted a foreign attack as far back as 2013.

Harper Reed, the chief technologist for President Obama’s 2012 campaign, spoke about the possibility during a 2013 TED conference talk, noting that foreign powers were beginning to attack presidential campaigns.

“We were safe because we invested in security,” Reed said in the previously unpublished talk, which TED uploaded to YouTube this weekend. “They could have disrupted the election. I don’t think we are going to be that safe in the future.”

And, of course, we weren’t. The FBI and CIA have both concluded that the Russian government interfered with the 2016 election to benefit Donald Trump.

Here’s Reed’s prediction from 2013:

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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