Mike Waltz says Trump will impose 'higher costs and consequences' on foreign hackers

Rep. Mike Waltz, R-Fla., the incoming White House national security adviser, said on Sunday that the incoming Trump administration will pursue stronger penalties against hackers who target entities in the United States.

“We have been over the years trying to play better and better defense when it comes to cyber,” he said during an interview on the CBS News program "Face The Nation."

"We need to start going on offense and start imposing, I think, higher costs and consequences to private actors and nation-state actors that continue to steal our data, that continue to spy on us, and that, even worse, with the [Chinese hack], they are literally putting cyber time bombs on our infrastructure, our water systems, our grids, even our ports," he also said.

Waltz continued, saying, "That is wholly unacceptable, and I think we need to take a much stronger stance."

Waltz said the U.S. must "start changing behaviors on the other side, rather than just constantly having this kind of escalation of their offense and our defense."