Tamir Pardo, the former head of Israel's Mossad intelligence agency, said that Russia "ran" Donald Trump as their preferred candidate in the 2016 elections.
Pardo said at The Marker's digital conference that Russia examined American politics and decided that Trump was most aligned with their interests.
They "thought, which candidate would we like to have sitting in the White House?" he said, according to Haaretz. "Who will help us achieve our goals? And they chose him. From that moment, they deployed a system [of bots] for the length of the elections, and ran him for president."
But Pardo warned the same tactics used to support Trump could also be used to topple him.
"I don't see a president coming out of the White House after a year-and-a-half or two and telling the public 'I'm sitting here by mistake.' Politicians from all over the world think it serves them too," he remarked, according to Arutz Sheva.
"I think they're wrong. At one point Trump might have thought the Russian move served him. This move could destroy him."