WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism of the Senate Judiciary Committee, today made this opening statement at the hearing titled “Extremist Content and Russian Disinformation Online: Working with Tech to Find Solutions”.

Hearing witnesses include representatives from Facebook, Twitter and Google.

• GRAHAM: “…Millions of Americans use your technology to share the first step of a grandchild, to talk about good and bad things in their lives and I would like to say to all of you, you’ve enriched America. We have more information available to us because of what you do. We can find the answer to almost every question… We can share aspects of our lives with those who mean the most to us.” https://youtu.be/LzBP_Cz75Yk?t=1m02s

• GRAHAM: “But the bottom line is, these technologies also can be used to undermine our democracy and put our nation at risk. The platforms that I’ve just described that add value to individual American lives and to our country also can be used by terrorists to recruit in the cyber world… [It] can be used by foreign governments. We’ve seen an example of that in 2016 to create chaos within our democracy.” https://youtu.be/LzBP_Cz75Yk?t=1m35s

• GRAHAM: “The challenge of this hearing…is how do we keep the good [on social media] and deal with the bad? We’ll never be one hundred percent perfect, but the goal is to be better than we are today.” https://youtu.be/LzBP_Cz75Yk?t=4m19s