WASHINGTON, D.C. (WNAX) – South Dakota Senator Mike Rounds didn’t watch much of the Mueller hearings yesterday. The state’s junior Senator said he had 15 events on the Senate side, including 9 South Dakota groups that he met with. He said those were alongside two classified meetings he attended and two series of votes in the Senate.

The fact that Mueller didn’t exonerate the President isn’t concerning to Rounds.

Rounds agrees that Russia has and will continue to influence U.S. elections using their cyber security tools. He says that, most often, Russia comes into an American election and baits both sides as a way of seeding unrest to get agitation going. Most notable among the cyber crimes committed by the Russians was the breaking in of the Democratic headquarters during the 2016 elections. Rounds, who serves as chairman of the subcommittee on cyber security for the Armed Services Committee, says his group has been working to determine what needs to be done to address the problem.

He says a second piece of action taken was a memorandum issued by the President called Presidential Policy Directive 20.

He expects Russia to return in the 2020 elections and try even harder to manipulate and create discourse within the American public. Rounds says the difference this time is that we now know how Russia does it and that America’s cyber warriors are now prepared to strike back with what he called is a, “persistent engagement.”

He says the new directive will allow the United States to stop what he says are, “cyber missiles” coming into the country before they can destroy our infrastructure, political or otherwise.