As Washington lawmakers investigate how Russia exploited social media to influence the 2016 presidential election, Apple CEO Tim Cook says the tech giants have something much greater to be concerned about.
And it effects everyone.
“I don’t believe that the big issue are ads from foreign government. I believe that’s like .1 percent of the issue,” Cook told NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt in an exclusive interview airing Wednesday night.
“The bigger issue is that some of these tools are used to divide people, to manipulate people, to get fake news to people in broad numbers, and so, to influence their thinking,” Cook said. “And this, to me, is the No. 1 through 10 issue.”
Tune in for more with Tim Cook on tonight’s Nightly News With Lester Holt
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Representatives for Facebook, Twitter and Google were hammered during a Capitol Hill hearing Tuesday for their inability to prevent Russia from exposing millions of Americans to ads meant to undermine last year’s election.
Senators slammed Facebook in particular, with Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., asking how the company could “not make the connection that electoral ads paid for in rubles were coming from Russia? How could you not connect those two dots.”
A Facebook rep said the ads bought by “bad actors” was a small percentage, but that “any amount was too much.”
An estimated 126 million Americans — about one-third of the country’s population — received Russian-backed content on Facebook during the 2016 campaign, according to the company.
Related: Google, Facebook, Twitter and Russia: A Timeline on the ’16 Election
The tech giants told lawmakers that steps were installed to prevent such meddling again, including the shutting down of suspect accounts.
Cook, in his interview with Holt from Apple’s Cupertino, California, headquarters, said his Silicon Valley colleagues have “learned along the way a lot” since the election.
Apple is gearing up for the release Friday of its iPhone X, the latest incarnation of the company’s flagship product first released 10 years ago.