About this transcript: This is a full AI-generated transcript of Pete Hegseth, Gen. Caine & Brooke Rollins Testify on Iran War — Trump's Budget Request — N18G from moneycontrol, published July 21, 2026. The transcript contains 16,691 words with timestamps and was generated using Whisper AI.
"weapons was not out of the question. The problem was a failure of imagination by policy makers, law enforcement, and in the IC. That is the core objective of today's hearing. We cannot afford another failure of imagination. The risks are simply too high. The threats that have emerged over the last..."
[0:00] weapons was not out of the question.
[0:02] The problem was a failure of imagination by policy makers, law enforcement, and in the IC.
[0:08] That is the core objective of today's hearing.
[0:11] We cannot afford another failure of imagination.
[0:14] The risks are simply too high.
[0:17] The threats that have emerged over the last 25 years are much broader and
[0:21] more complex than were present at the time of 9-11, fueled by an extraordinary technological revolution.
[0:28] Some of these threats include great power competition, artificial intelligence,
[0:33] foreign malign influence campaigns, drones, hostile use of emerging technologies,
[0:38] and vulnerabilities littered throughout our critical infrastructure.
[0:42] We need our IC and law enforcement agencies to think creatively, proactively,
[0:47] and seek innovative ways to get ahead of the new threats we are seeing today.
[0:52] We must go on offense.
[0:54] We need to take preemptive moves to thwart our adversaries.
[0:59] With all the challenges we are confronted with today,
[1:01] we cannot allow ourselves to become complacent.
[1:05] To be sure, this is an immense challenge that we must tackle head on.
[1:09] That is why this task force on the 9-11 Commission has held briefings, hearings,
[1:13] both classified and unclassified.
[1:16] With the IC and law enforcement officials, we visited the Pentagon 9-11 Memorial, and
[1:21] will visit the memorials in Shanksville in New York City.
[1:24] The American people are counting on us to forge a path forward in an uncertain future.
[1:29] I look forward to continuing this important discussion with our excellent panel of witnesses
[1:34] on confronting the next generation of threats facing our nation, and I want to thank all the
[1:38] witnesses for participating in today's hearing.
[1:40] Yield back.
[1:41] Gentleman Niels, thank her for her statement.
[1:43] I recognize the co-chair of the HIPSE 9-11 Commission Review Task Force, the gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. Gottheimer.
[1:50] Thank you, Chairman Crawford.
[1:52] Thank you to co-chair Stefanik for your leadership, as well as the ranking member, and to our witnesses for being here today.
[1:58] Twenty-five years ago, September 11th, was the darkest day in our nation's history, losing 3,000 souls.
[2:04] In New Jersey, where I live, we lost 750 that morning, and more than 8,000 who have perished since.
[2:12] They were friends, neighbors, and family.
[2:14] Thousands of Jersey and New York law enforcement, firefighters, EMTs, and other heroes answered
[2:19] the call and rushed toward the pile as others ran out.
[2:22] Many have continued to rush toward danger since, as the ranking member said, heroes in the intelligence
[2:27] community and our armed forces who have done just such a remarkable job chasing every lead
[2:32] to protect our country.
[2:34] Many of the committee have reminders in their district, pieces of steel and in their town squares, so we never forget.
[2:40] That's part of our challenge here on the 9-11 Commission, is to make sure we never forget,
[2:45] that we make sure that we stay on top of our current challenges and threats.
[2:50] If you ask how they were able to summon the courage then, they will tell you they were simply doing their job that day.
[2:54] In Congress, we have a solemn bipartisan duty to make sure it never happens again.
[2:59] Today's hearing is our second public session as part of the bipartisan review of the 9-11 Commission report.
[3:04] The Commission's findings were simple.
[3:06] We have the dots and we just didn't connect them.
[3:09] So today we're examining how its recommendations have actually been enacted, what's worked and what still needs to change,
[3:14] and whether our intelligence community is built to protect Americans and warn against the threats coming next.
[3:20] We're fortunate to hear today from some of the sharpest national security minds in the country
[3:23] about the threats we face today and the ones we haven't yet imagined.
[3:27] Terrorism hasn't gone away, but the threat picture has grown far more complex.
[3:31] Twenty-five years ago an attack took years of planning, training camps, and dozens of people.
[3:34] The government acted, changing the way we organized to ensure intel wouldn't get stovepiped.
[3:39] Today with new threats, we must make sure that's still the case.
[3:43] AI is collapsing all of that, letting a small cell or a hostile government move at machine speed.
[3:48] As ranking member of this committee's subcommittee on the National Security Agency and Cyber,
[3:52] I strive to best equip our intelligence community to combat these threats of tomorrow in cyberspace while understanding our adversaries' capabilities.
[4:00] And we must use our imaginations so that we don't fall into the traps that we did 25 years ago.
[4:06] And as co-chair of the House Commission on AI and the Innovation Economy, I've worked every day to position America to win the AI race against China
[4:12] while putting common-sense guardrails in place to protect America's national security and critical infrastructure.
[4:18] As we keep watch on terrorists and criminals, we must also defend our grid, water systems, and ports from cyber attacks,
[4:23] bio-attacks, counter foreign disinformation online, and make sure America, not Beijing, sets the rules for this critical technology.
[4:31] So today we look forward to hearing from you about what threats you see now and in the future, what's coming, what do we need to be prepared for,
[4:38] how do we need to reorganize to best position the intelligence community and the U.S. more broadly to defend against them.
[4:43] Thank you again for your service and for being here today, and I yield back.
[4:47] Thank you, gentlemen.
[4:49] Other members of the committee are reminded that opening statements may be submitted for the record.
[4:53] I'm pleased to have a distinguished panel of witnesses before us today on this very important topic.
[4:57] I ask now that our witnesses please rise and raise a right hand.
[5:00] Do you solemnly swear that the testimony you will give before the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
[5:09] of the United States House of Representatives will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?
[5:13] Let the record reflect that the witnesses have answered in the affirmative.
[5:17] Thank you, and please be seated.
[5:18] I want to thank all of you witnesses for joining us here today, and it's now my distinct privilege to recognize Mr. H.R. McMaster
[5:25] for five minutes to summarize his opening statement.
[5:27] Ranking Member Himes and distinguished members of the committee, thank you for the privilege of testifying before this committee.
[5:37] It is encouraging to see the committee invest in a bipartisan examination of emerging challenges
[5:43] to national security and to our prosperity.
[5:46] This hearing is occurring at a critical time because our nation and our intelligence community
[5:51] are struggling to adapt to four evolving threats to American security, prosperity, and influence in the world.
[5:59] First, an axis of hostile aggressor states centered on the revanchous powers of China and Russia that have coalesced in recent years
[6:08] and are collaborating in an effort to tear down the existing rules of international discourse
[6:13] and replace them with a new set of rules that favor their authoritarian forms of government
[6:19] and, in China's case in particular, its statist predatory economic model.
[6:27] Second, the development and proliferation of disruptive technologies such as those associated with artificial intelligence,
[6:35] quantum computing, bioengineering, hypersonics, offensive cyber, counter-satellite, and uncrewed and autonomous systems.
[6:46] Hostile states and non-state actors are striving to weaponize those technologies against the United States and other nations.
[6:55] Third, the People's Republic of China's economic aggression, including industrial espionage,
[7:03] the control of critical supply chains, and overcapacity, overproduction, and dumping on international markets.
[7:10] Fourth, political subversion and cognitive warfare that aims to erode Americans' common identity,
[7:20] exacerbate political polarization, and reduce confidence in democratic principles, institutions, and processes.
[7:28] The axis of aggressors care little about who wins our elections.
[7:32] What Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and other members of the axis want most is for large numbers of Americans
[7:40] to doubt the legitimacy of election results.
[7:44] The intelligence community is well aware of these threats, and I deeply appreciate this committee's call to action.
[7:52] In my statement for the record, I have identified some of the opportunities to understand and anticipate emerging threats
[8:00] so that policymakers and operators can integrate all elements of national power and efforts of like-minded partners
[8:08] to protect our nation and our way of life.
[8:11] Thank you again for the opportunity to be with you and to be with my distinguished colleagues.
[8:15] Thank you, Mr. General McMaster. I now recognize Dr. Seth G. Jones.
[8:23] Thank you, Chairman Crawford, Ranking Member Himes, and distinguished members of the committee
[8:30] for this opportunity to testify on this important topic.
[8:35] In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the 9-11 Commission was helpful in identifying
[8:42] the nature of the evolving terrorist threat to the nation, U.S. intelligence gaps, and policy recommendations.
[8:50] Yet 25 years later, I would argue the international landscape, the threats to the United States,
[8:56] and the intelligence challenges have dramatically involved in ways that we are not fully prepared to deal with.
[9:03] The U.S. and its allies face a serious and growing threat at home from an authoritarian axis, as my colleague mentioned,
[9:11] led by China that also includes countries such as Russia, Iran, and North Korea.
[9:17] In my view, China and the Chinese Communist Party presents the most serious state-based threat to the United States,
[9:25] including in the homeland. There are a number of other threats, including terrorist groups that I identify in my written testimony.
[9:34] I think what is important to also note is while the U.S.'s geographic position between two oceans was once a major source of security,
[9:44] I think the U.S. is now witnessing an end or largely an end to sanctuary, and U.S. intelligence agencies need to adapt.
[9:53] I'm going to focus most of my brief comments on gray zone and irregular threats.
[9:58] The U.S. faces a significant threat from a number of state and non-state actors in the irregular or gray zone area.
[10:09] These include information and influence operations, offensive cyber operations,
[10:14] with some of my colleagues that are going to speak more specifically about covert and clandestine action by intelligence forces from adversary states,
[10:24] including sabotage and subversion. We've seen the Russians, particularly the main intelligence director of the GRU, conduct sabotage and subversion across Europe,
[10:34] including targeting U.S. bases in countries like Germany, and then economic coercion.
[10:41] I just want to talk briefly about the Chinese, which present probably the most significant state-based threat to the U.S.
[10:49] China's intelligence services, the Ministry of State Security, but also the Ministry of Public Security,
[10:56] are engaged in extensive intelligence collection and activity in the United States.
[11:02] The 2026 conviction of John Rogers, a former senior advisor for the Federal Reserve Board of Governors who collaborated with Chinese intelligence,
[11:12] is only the most recent example of the Chinese intelligence threat to the United States.
[11:17] In addition, we see China expanding its intelligence collection overseas against the United States,
[11:24] including building signals intelligence or SIGINT platforms in Cuba,
[11:29] which can monitor recordings of U.S. cell phones and other activity in the southern part of the United States,
[11:37] as well as building space-based ground locations in countries like Argentina in the Western Hemisphere.
[11:45] Also see cyber operations information and disinformation operations.
[11:52] Beijing actively involved in pushing back against any company or organization that criticizes or potentially criticizes China.
[12:02] We've seen action taken against the National Basketball Association, or NBA.
[12:06] Hollywood Studios, where there is a deep reluctance to put out movies that criticize China.
[12:16] It's a major difference from what we saw during the Cold War with the Soviets.
[12:21] Significant united front work activity inside the United States, and a range of other actions by China.
[12:28] We can certainly talk about the Russians, Iranians, and terrorist activity.
[12:33] But I do want to just note we do see an end or are seeing an end of sanctuary in the United States.
[12:43] Russia, China, North Korea all have intercontinental ballistic missile capabilities capable of targeting the United States, including mobile launch.
[12:52] And there's also, as we saw with Operation Spider's Web, with the Ukrainian strikes in Russia, an advance in drone capabilities.
[13:02] So I just want to thank the committee for holding this hearing.
[13:05] I'm honored to be part of that and look forward to the questions.
[13:09] I yield back.
[13:11] Thank you, Dr. Jones.
[13:12] We'll now move to Mr. Frank Salufo.
[13:14] Chairman Crawford, Ranking Member Himes, distinguished members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today.
[13:23] Every opportunity to testify before Congress is an honor, but this hearing is different.
[13:28] It's personal.
[13:29] It's personal to me as it is to everyone in this room.
[13:32] Twenty-five years ago, I testified before Congress days before 9-11 on the counterterrorism threat,
[13:38] and again days after 9-11 on Homeland Security and critical infrastructure security.
[13:44] Then I had the privilege to go into the White House like Ms. Stefanik did.
[13:48] We worked in the Bush White House together and played a very, and had the honor of playing a very small role in shaping the response and where we go from there.
[14:01] And as we remember those lost and honor those who answered our nation's call,
[14:06] I want to spend most of my time looking ahead.
[14:08] Mr. Chairman, I believe this committee has it exactly right, and I applaud Reps Stefanik and Gottheimer for the work that they're doing with their report.
[14:17] The Homeland itself has become a contested operating environment.
[14:21] End stop.
[14:22] That's the thesis, and everything around that I think will then start to make some sense.
[14:28] The question before us then is what that reality demands us to do differently.
[14:34] Twenty-five years ago, terrorists weaponized commercial aviation.
[14:38] Today, America's principal adversaries increasingly seek to weaponize the systems upon which our modern society depends.
[14:46] Our energy systems, communications, transportation, financial systems, our space-based and undersea infrastructure,
[14:54] and increasingly the artificial intelligence systems that will accelerate each of them.
[15:00] Cyber is the connective tissue that links them all.
[15:03] Cyber is no longer simply about stealing information or disrupting networks.
[15:07] It has become one of the principal means through which strategic competition is increasingly conducted below the threshold of armed conflict.
[15:16] That fundamentally changes how we think about Homeland Security.
[15:20] The strategic warning lights are blinking red.
[15:23] History may not repeat itself, but it tends to rhyme.
[15:26] There's a whole lot of rhyming going on right now.
[15:30] Volt typhoon, flax typhoon, salt typhoon, Russian sabotage, Iranian proxies, the extraordinary lessons emerging from Ukraine about drones, autonomy, and precision strike.
[15:41] Viewed collectively, they reveal coordinated campaigns designed to shape the strategic environment long before the first shot was ever fired.
[15:50] Individually, they are storms.
[15:52] Collectively, they've become the perfect storm.
[15:54] Too often, we investigate incidents.
[15:56] Our adversaries conduct campaigns.
[15:59] Too often, we look at the world through our boxes and org charts.
[16:02] Cyber over here.
[16:04] Counterintelligence over there.
[16:05] Critical infrastructure somewhere else.
[16:07] Our adversaries don't organize around our bureaucracies.
[16:10] They organize around our vulnerabilities.
[16:13] Artificial intelligence will accelerate every one of these trends.
[16:17] It will compress decision timelines, increase the speed and scale of cyber operations, enhance autonomous systems, amplify influence campaigns, and generally lower the bar to sophisticated weaponry and capabilities.
[16:32] AI is not simply another policy issue.
[16:34] It's an accelerator of strategic competition itself, which raises an important question.
[16:40] Had Beijing developed the world's leading AI capability first, would there have been a public debate?
[16:47] Would there have been a press conference?
[16:49] Or would we have only discovered it after we were burnt?
[16:52] That difference matters because it reflects fundamentally different approaches to strategic competition.
[16:58] Recognizing that reality fundamentally changes how we define success.
[17:03] Strong defenses remain indispensable, but we cannot firewall our way out of this problem.
[17:09] Sophisticated adversaries will occasionally penetrate even the best-defended networks.
[17:14] Success is no longer measured simply by preventing every intrusion.
[17:18] It is measured by whether our adversaries can achieve their strategic objectives once they get in.
[17:24] Can America still govern?
[17:25] Can we communicate?
[17:26] Can we mobilize military forces?
[17:28] Can we keep the lights on?
[17:30] Can we project power?
[17:31] America must be able to operate through compromise.
[17:34] But resilience alone is not enough.
[17:36] For too long our adversaries have dictated the tempo of competition, while we measure success about how well we respond after the fact.
[17:45] That's a losing proposition.
[17:46] We must regain the initiative.
[17:49] We must shape the competitive environment before it shapes us.
[17:53] This is the strategic logic behind defending forward, persistent engagement, and the appropriate use of offensive cyber capabilities.
[18:02] Not because offense is an end unto itself, but because preserving freedom of action, imposing costs, and preventing adversaries from achieving strategic effects requires more than reacting after the fact.
[18:15] Twenty-five years ago, America confronted a fundamentally different threat.
[18:19] We responded by fundamentally changing how we defended the homeland.
[18:23] We challenged assumptions.
[18:25] We reorganized institutions.
[18:26] We forged new partnerships.
[18:28] Most importantly, we adapted.
[18:30] That is the enduring lesson of September 11.
[18:33] Not that we got everything right, but as a nation, we proved we could evolve when the threat evolved.
[18:39] Today's threat has changed again.
[18:42] The question before us is whether we will adapt before circumstances force us to.
[18:47] Because we can't afford to look into the future marching backwards through rearview mirrors.
[18:52] Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[18:53] Thank you.
[18:54] And finally, Dr. Buchanan.
[18:56] Thank you for having me.
[18:59] Chairman Crawford, Ranking Member Himes, Co-Chairs Stefanik and Gottheimer, and members of this committee.
[19:04] My name is Ben Buchanan.
[19:06] During the Biden administration, I served on the National Security Council and as the first-ever White House Special Advisor for AI.
[19:13] I'm now a professor at Johns Hopkins University, the author of four books, and an outside advisor to AI and cybersecurity companies, including Anthropoc.
[19:23] As many here have noted today, the 9-11 Commission famously concluded that the attacks revealed a failure of imagination,
[19:29] in which the government's inability to take seriously a threat that did not fit existing categories led to devastating strategic surprise.
[19:38] Twenty-five years later, AI presents, in its own way, a similar kind of challenge.
[19:44] The technology is advancing faster than our institutions are adapting, and the most important data points come from outside government in private companies.
[19:53] Let me make three points to ground our discussion.
[19:55] First, AI is unlike many of the other technologies that are relevant to national security, such as satellites, nuclear weapons, and hypersonic missiles.
[20:04] Those technologies typically developed over decades, largely through government direction and oversight.
[20:10] While AI certainly has its roots decades ago in government funding, the modern paradigm of large-scale neural networks backed by giant computing power comes almost exclusively from the private sector.
[20:22] This renders the government far less able to understand and to shape the technology, and it increases the risk of strategic surprise.
[20:29] Second, we should recognize how powerful AI is today, and how its capabilities today already bear significantly on intelligence operations and US national security.
[20:40] Some of the questions that were fiercely debated just a few years ago have now clearly resolved.
[20:45] Some of the ideas that were once hypotheses are now clearly conclusions.
[20:49] For example, the nation that can best invent AI and deploy it in offensive and defensive cyber operations will enjoy a distinct advantage over nations that do not.
[20:59] We must continue to take actions such as denying the sale of advanced chips and chip-making equipment to China that ensure the United States enjoys a decisive and proactive lead.
[21:09] Again, the threat here is not hypothetical.
[21:12] For example, in November 2025, Anthropic reported that a Chinese state-sponsored group had used its clawed model to run a largely automated cyber espionage campaign against roughly 30 companies and government agencies across several countries,
[21:26] with the AI carrying out an estimated 80 to 90% of the tactical operation on its own.
[21:32] Google has likewise reported that Russian military intelligence deployed malware in Ukraine that used AI to enable its operations against Ukrainian targets.
[21:42] And the barrier to entry is falling for criminals too.
[21:45] In 2025, Anthropic exposed a cyber criminal operation that used AI to hack into and extort a wide range of targets,
[21:53] with the AI automating reconnaissance, credential harvesting, and network penetration.
[21:57] Other criminals have used AI similarly to develop and distribute ransomware, including against American critical targets.
[22:04] Third, we should expect AI to rapidly get much better.
[22:07] This is one of the most important cruxes for this committee.
[22:10] The most important input to AI capability is computing power, and the largest US technology companies plan roughly $700 billion in capital spending this year, overwhelmingly on AI infrastructure.
[22:22] This is akin to a Manhattan project every two or three weeks.
[22:26] More powerful systems will follow this investment, especially if companies develop more efficient algorithms that use that computing power.
[22:34] In addition, AI systems are increasingly helping AI developers train their successors, a major step known as recursive self-improvement.
[22:43] For example, in early 2026, OpenAI released a model that it said was the company's first model that was, quote,
[22:50] instrumental in creating itself, end quote.
[22:53] Anthropic has reported similar progress.
[22:55] Independent analyses by the nonprofit meter find that the length of tasks that leading AI systems can complete on their own has been doubling every few months.
[23:04] The best models today can now handle tasks that take a skilled software engineer several hours to achieve.
[23:10] Putting these three things together, government unfamiliarity, proven national security relevance, and strong reasons to expect rapid future progress in AI systems,
[23:19] should yield a stark sense of urgency.
[23:22] AI will enable a lot of good, but it will also raise new and grave concerns in areas as diverse as cybersecurity, biosecurity, and accidental loss of control.
[23:31] The committee is right to focus on this technology, and I am honored to help you however I can in this endeavor. Thank you.
[23:37] Thank you, Dr. Buchanan.
[23:42] I now recognize myself for five minutes for questioning.
[23:51] I want to throw some things out here because, I mean, we're here to talk about, you know, kind of this retrospective on 9-11.
[23:58] What did we learn?
[23:59] Have we employed what we've learned?
[24:02] How are things better?
[24:05] Are they worse?
[24:06] So on and so forth.
[24:07] But I think that in the immediate aftermath of 9-11, there was, you know, obviously a desire to get after the counterterrorism fight.
[24:16] And in so doing, we put so much into that fight that I think we may have taken our eye off the ball as it applies to some of these nation state actors and counterintelligence as it applies to protecting the homeland and our assets here at home.
[24:33] So I want to get, if y'all want to weigh in on this, some distinction between counterterrorism and counterintelligence.
[24:42] And I know that the lanes merge occasionally.
[24:45] But I'll start with you, General McMaster.
[24:49] If you would comment on that where you see us, and I would ask all of you, do you think our counterintelligence posture as it is currently is adequate to meet the threat that you have laid out today?
[25:01] Mr. Chairman, thank you.
[25:03] The counterintelligence threat has lied way behind.
[25:06] And I think you have pointed to one of the causes, which is, I think, the understandable and appropriate priority in the area of counterterrorism after the attacks of 9-11.
[25:15] But this occurred at the same time when this axis of aggressors was coalescing and gaining confidence, gaining more confidence.
[25:22] Remember when Putin takes over in the year 2000, he gives that New Year's Day speech and he says, hey, we have to get our act together and then we go on the offensive.
[25:31] We have to go on the offensive line in his quest to restore Russia to national greatness.
[25:35] This is the same time as well that China is being allowed into the World Trade Organization and reaps the windfall from that and then applies those profits to vastly grow its military, I think 46-fold since the year 2001.
[25:51] but also invest quite heavily in the MSS and the United Front activities.
[25:58] And at the same time, we're opening our economy to them,
[26:02] and we're being infiltrated by PLA scientists and others
[26:05] who are there to extract intellectual property, to extract know-how,
[26:10] apply it to gain commercial advantage, but importantly, to gain military advantage.
[26:15] Also at the same time, what we were doing is actually underwriting our own demise
[26:19] by investing in Chinese companies.
[26:22] One of them is called Eversec. One of those is for Paradigm.
[26:25] There are many other examples where U.S. banks, U.S. private equity firms,
[26:30] invested in these companies, and now those two companies I mentioned
[26:33] do all the offensive cyber tools for the PLA
[26:37] and do all the battlefield artificial intelligence for the PLA.
[26:41] So we were not only so behind, I think we were extraordinarily negligent in this period of time,
[26:47] and I think we're racing to catch up, and we have a lot of work to do, Mr. Chairman.
[26:51] Thank you.
[26:52] Dr. Jones.
[26:53] Mr. Chairman, one of the big challenges leading up to 9-11
[26:57] was information sharing across federal, state, and local agencies,
[27:02] which was a problem leading up to the attacks on 9-11.
[27:05] So one of the solutions was the creation of organizations
[27:10] like the National Counterterrorism Center
[27:12] and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, ODNI itself,
[27:16] as well as the Joint Terrorism Task Forces
[27:19] and some of the fusion centers in states.
[27:23] Well, the unfortunate reality is that most of these organizations,
[27:27] none of them really are sufficiently equipped to deal with the threat from state-based actors.
[27:32] So we are not sharing information.
[27:34] In fact, I would argue that our fusion centers and our JTTFs
[27:38] and most of our state and local entities don't even know what to look for,
[27:42] aren't equipped to look for the activities of the MSS in our states,
[27:50] the United Front Workers Activity,
[27:53] and they're often the ones that are the sort of front-line organizations
[27:57] that may see it, ideally, on a regular basis.
[28:01] So I do not think we are prepared for this intelligence challenge inside of our own borders,
[28:08] and we don't have the infrastructure to effectively deal with it.
[28:11] Thank you.
[28:12] Mr. Silifo.
[28:13] Not much I can add to that because I agree 100%.
[28:16] One thing, though, I will add is we've got to move beyond information sharing
[28:21] toward operational collaboration in a cyber environment.
[28:24] So when you look at the cyber sets of issues, who's on the front lines of this war?
[28:30] Industry, private sector, SLTT, state, local, tribal, territorial.
[28:34] They don't have the resources.
[28:36] None of them went into business thinking they have to defend themselves against foreign intelligence services,
[28:40] but that's precisely what they're doing today.
[28:42] That's what's being asked of them today.
[28:44] So when I look at the broader counterintelligence challenge, it's not just spy versus spy.
[28:52] Of course our intelligence services and agencies are going to have secrets
[28:55] that are always going to be of top desire to our foreign intelligence adversaries.
[29:01] But if you're MSS today, you're looking at frontier model companies.
[29:05] You're not necessarily looking at what you can steal from CIA because it's a harder target,
[29:10] or NSA, or you name the alphabet soup agency.
[29:15] So I think we've got to actually rethink counterintelligence.
[29:19] It's not just the traditional spy versus spy information versus information.
[29:23] It's who holds the keys right now is not going to be in government alone.
[29:27] So how do we get our arms around that challenge?
[29:31] And then very briefly, pre-9-11, if you were to ask me when I had the privilege to work
[29:38] for the president after 9-11, I would tell you the biggest and greatest breakthrough
[29:43] after 9-11 was not the creation of new bureaucracy.
[29:47] It was the synchronization of authorities.
[29:49] It was the Title 10, Title 50 synchronization that culminated through JSOC,
[29:55] Joint Special Operations Command, that ultimately had massive impact
[30:00] in our ability to prosecute the war on terrorism.
[30:04] That said, a lot of our infrastructure was state-based before 9-11.
[30:09] It's sort of like this fulcrum.
[30:11] We keep going back and forth.
[30:12] Now we've got to recognize that we've got to walk and chew gum simultaneously.
[30:17] You're still going to have non-state threats, transnational criminal organizations.
[30:21] They're going to have access to much more sophisticated weaponry.
[30:24] But you're also going to have nation states that can bring all-source intelligence to the problem.
[30:28] Thank you.
[30:29] And Dr. Buchanan, final thoughts?
[30:31] Yeah, I think my colleagues have covered it well.
[30:33] I would emphasize what Mr. Solufo said about the range of counterintelligence targets
[30:37] being broader now, including private companies,
[30:39] in a way that is rooted in the private company's invention of this technology.
[30:44] And I would note as well that I think counterintelligence operations will change
[30:48] as a result of artificial intelligence.
[30:49] Of course, cyber operations have already changed.
[30:52] But even if you look at things like human intelligence
[30:53] and detecting human intelligence operations,
[30:56] it is a different technical paradigm that yields different kinds of analysis that AI alone can do.
[31:01] And America has to be prepared to adjust that changing technological landscape.
[31:05] Thank you.
[31:06] Ranking Member Hines.
[31:09] Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[31:12] Gentlemen, Master, I wasn't going to go here,
[31:14] but you brought up concerns about the election
[31:17] and the division that generates amongst Americans.
[31:21] And, of course, we all watched Thursday night
[31:23] as the President of the United States lied to the American people,
[31:27] told the American people that there was a massive Chinese interference effort,
[31:32] which never happened and for which there is no evidence.
[31:36] And he told the American people that there was a massive deep state cover-up of this effort,
[31:42] which never happened and for which there is no evidence at all in the record.
[31:47] The latter troubles me intensely because it serves the purpose of our adversaries
[31:54] who are working very hard, along with the President of the United States,
[31:58] to develop anxieties, concerns, and skepticisms about the core function of our democracy,
[32:03] not to mention the fact that it flies in the face of the thousands of analysts
[32:07] who go to work every single day
[32:09] so that the people who repeat those lies don't get turned into pink mist
[32:13] at the Pentagon or at the World Trade Center.
[32:17] Sir, you brought it up.
[32:19] On 9-11, even on that day, I thought about these terrorists,
[32:22] and I thought about their nihilistic, violent, disgusting ideology,
[32:26] and I had no doubt that they couldn't end the United States.
[32:28] And I sit here and look at the threats from Russia, Iran, China,
[32:31] and I actually think we win those battles, too, for all the right reasons.
[32:35] So I'm kind of with Lincoln.
[32:37] Lincoln said, if destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher.
[32:42] And I think we're headed down that road.
[32:44] General McMaster, I looked through your written testimony.
[32:47] I didn't find what you said about election doubt,
[32:50] but you said some pretty powerful things.
[32:52] Give me another minute or so.
[32:53] What's happening?
[32:54] Who's behind it?
[32:55] And should Americans trust in their electoral process?
[33:00] Yes.
[33:00] First of all, yes, Americans should trust in the electoral process.
[33:03] Certainly there are improvements that can be made,
[33:05] and I think in the face of these kind of attacks
[33:07] to reduce our confidence in the outcome of elections,
[33:11] we should do everything we can to make elections more transparent
[33:15] and more secure while guaranteeing access to all qualified voters.
[33:19] I think there has to be some movement forward to make it more transparent,
[33:23] whether it's IDs, whatever it is.
[33:25] I mean, I know that Congress is working on this.
[33:28] To your point, really, what our adversaries want is they want Americans to doubt the legitimacy
[33:34] of the result, and what happens too often, whether it's the president
[33:38] or whether it's certain members of Congress, of both political parties,
[33:43] when they raise doubts about elections, they're actually doing the bidding of our adversaries.
[33:48] This happened about the 2016 election.
[33:52] We know what happened on January 6th of 2021.
[33:58] We see these current statements by the president.
[34:00] But I think any time a political leader compromises confidence in our democratic processes
[34:08] to score partisan points, I think that they're actually aiding and abetting our adversaries
[34:14] who want to reduce that confidence.
[34:16] So I think it's incumbent, I think, on all of us to be more transparent
[34:21] and more secure with our elections, but also, you know, hold one another accountable
[34:26] if somebody is trying to, you know, raise doubts about the legitimacy of our elections
[34:31] to score partisan points or gain advantage.
[34:34] You served in the highest national security roles in the first Trump administration.
[34:39] The nation respects you.
[34:42] Do you believe that there is any systemic or organized effort on the part of the intelligence community
[34:49] to mislead the president of the United States?
[34:51] Is there a deep state plot to keep Chinese interference from the American people?
[34:56] Did you see any evidence of that?
[34:58] No, I did not.
[34:59] Okay.
[35:00] As I said, I don't think there are a lot of people that I respect more
[35:04] in the realm of national security, but I'm going through your statement here,
[35:07] and I just think your statement is wrong.
[35:10] The intelligence community is engaged in protecting U.S. citizens from cognitive warfare.
[35:13] The Federal Bureau of Investigation investigates foreign influence activities.
[35:17] No, it does not.
[35:19] The Foreign Influence Task Force was dismantled at the FBI.
[35:24] You say the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Act, CISA,
[35:27] helps ensure citizens' confidence in elections.
[35:29] No, it does not.
[35:30] They've lost 1,000 people, 30 percent of the staff.
[35:33] Morale is in the toilet at CISA.
[35:35] You say the Department of State tracks foreign propaganda
[35:37] and influence campaigns abroad.
[35:40] No, it does not.
[35:41] The Global Engagement Center was eliminated.
[35:43] These are odd things from an administration that is doing everything they can
[35:46] to generate the notion that there are attacks on election.
[35:50] None of these statements, ODNI, the Foreign Malign Influence Center, eliminated.
[35:57] So let me ask you as an expert and highly regarded,
[35:59] how are we doing with respect?
[36:01] Your statement here suggests that we're doing the right thing.
[36:04] How are we doing in identifying these attempts?
[36:06] There are obviously still people within the Intelligence Committee working on these portfolios.
[36:10] Those offices have been greatly reduced in terms of numbers, as you mentioned.
[36:14] Many of them have gone away.
[36:15] I remember when the Biden administration came in,
[36:18] they got rid of the China office within the Department of Justice,
[36:21] yet investigations still continued on the full range of Chinese espionage and influence activities.
[36:30] So, I mean, what these organizations are engaged in,
[36:32] I think that there has been, again, the self-destructive behavior in both political parties
[36:38] to compromise our confidence in our institutions.
[36:41] And, of course, you know, with this, these...
[36:43] Wait a minute.
[36:44] I'm sorry, General.
[36:45] Yeah.
[36:45] You said both political parties.
[36:47] Yeah.
[36:47] Tell me about what the Democratic Party has done to damage confidence in American elections.
[36:51] Well, I mean, there's a long list, I mean, going back to 2016.
[36:54] No, no, specifically.
[36:55] I mean, there were a lot of, I mean, election deniers,
[36:57] whether it was from the Speaker of the House or whether it was from other members of Congress,
[37:01] you know, who were raising doubts about the 2016 elections
[37:05] and the legitimacy of President Trump's election then.
[37:08] I mean, I just think, you know, I think we have to all get beyond this.
[37:12] I guess I think the real point is that Russia and China believe that we are weak, decadent, and divided.
[37:20] And it is that perception of weakness that emboldens them.
[37:24] It doesn't matter what our capability is if our will is zero.
[37:29] And that's what they're attacking.
[37:30] They're trying to drag us down.
[37:32] And so this is why I think it's really important at this moment for Americans in recognition of this threat,
[37:38] and this is why the work of this committee is so important,
[37:42] to transcend the partisan differences, recognize the nature of the threat,
[37:46] and don't aid and abet our adversaries in sort of intensifying this vitriolic discourse,
[37:52] which is part, I think, of the problem in terms of our lack of confidence
[37:57] and in our democratic principles, institutions, processes, and in our common identity as Americans.
[38:02] I appreciate that.
[38:04] I would note that this is not a question of partisan differences.
[38:09] Partisan differences are good.
[38:10] We're up here to have debates.
[38:12] Partisan differences, but there is a decision, and you're right,
[38:15] there were a number of Democrats who in 2016, you know, wondered whether Trump had,
[38:20] but let's not make the mistake of saying that that is in any way equivalent to a presidential prime time speech
[38:26] to the American people.
[38:28] But anyway, this is not fundamentally about partisanship.
[38:30] This is about whether you use doubt about our election to advance your personal goals,
[38:38] and no politician of any party should do that.
[38:41] I yield back.
[38:42] Thank you.
[38:42] Gentleman yields.
[38:43] Ms. Stefanik.
[38:47] Dr. Jones, you said in your opening statement, and I agree with you,
[38:50] China and the Chinese Communist Party present the most serious threat to the United States,
[38:55] including the U.S. homeland.
[38:56] I wanted to follow up on that.
[38:58] There is ample evidence to suggest our adversaries, including China,
[39:02] sponsor influence campaigns against our national interests.
[39:05] You see it with campaigns against the development of AI data centers
[39:09] and other American business interests.
[39:11] You see this with the pushing of anti-Semitic and anti-American propaganda on U.S. college campuses,
[39:17] and you see this in their attempt to shape our electoral process.
[39:20] This has been extremely apparent, if any American is reading the news,
[39:24] with the unrest we're seeing on college campuses,
[39:27] something we know that both China and Iran have actively participated in promoting.
[39:33] How prevalent are these foreign influence campaigns on campus, online, and in the media,
[39:38] and how effective have our adversaries been at injecting divisive and destructive topics into public discourse?
[39:47] That's a great question.
[39:48] I think the answer is pretty straightforward.
[39:52] The Chinese in particular, although we can certainly talk about the Russians and the Iranians,
[39:57] the Chinese threat is pervasive inside of the United States.
[40:01] And that runs from everything from Chinese intelligence operations by the MSS,
[40:06] the Ministry of State Security, including the recruitment of individuals on campuses
[40:12] to steal sensitive technology in companies to steal sensitive technology,
[40:17] the Ministry of Public Security to put pressure on dissidents in cities like New York City,
[40:23] which have led to the FBI arrests of individuals that have set up so-called Chinese police stations in American cities.
[40:32] We have seen very concerning activity on the cyber side, including Volt Typhoon,
[40:39] to set up the possibility to begin offensive cyber operations in the United States.
[40:48] We've seen intense pressure on American companies not to say things that are critical of the Chinese government.
[40:57] And then we see significant activity by the United Front Work Department inside of the United States.
[41:05] Thank you.
[41:06] Can I follow up?
[41:06] I want to follow up on the cyber with Mr. Salufo.
[41:10] Salufo.
[41:12] To follow up on Dr. Jones' testimony regarding cyber actors,
[41:15] we know that hostile cyber actors can remain inside American networks for months or even years before discovery.
[41:22] How concerned or confident should the American public be that the government knows the extent to which our adversaries
[41:29] have already penetrated critical infrastructure?
[41:31] And in your opinion, which critical infrastructure sectors are least prepared to withstand a coordinated cyber attack from an adversary?
[41:41] Mr. Stefanik, that's an excellent question.
[41:43] I'll try to unpack it quickly since I've never had an unspoken thought,
[41:48] but I'll just try to take a couple of top-line views on that.
[41:51] Firstly, Volt Typhoon should have been the wake-up call that everyone is paying attention to.
[41:59] Volt Typhoon was no longer simply computer network exploit or espionage.
[42:04] It was no longer intelligence preparation of the battlefield.
[42:07] It was operational preparation of the battlefield, i.e. there was no intent other than to compromise systems
[42:14] that could be, at the time of their choosing, exploited.
[42:18] One thing to recognize, when you look at cyber, if you can exploit, you can also attack.
[42:24] So the line is very thin, but in this case, there's no questioning what the intent was
[42:28] because there was no other value other than that.
[42:31] If you were to take Salt Typhoon, which I think we're still reeling in terms of recognizing the full implications of that,
[42:39] that was more of an espionage campaign.
[42:42] Really bad day, but I'm shocked there's gambling going on in the casino.
[42:46] I can expect some of that.
[42:48] But when you start seeing the transition from exploit to attack, that's a really bad day.
[42:54] The good news is dwell time is improving, but we're only finding out when it's too late.
[43:02] The whole game is seizing the initiative and shaping it in our favor.
[43:06] We are playing a defensive, reactive game.
[43:09] That's a fool's errand.
[43:11] And my follow-up, I want to turn to AI because they're all interrelated.
[43:15] So we talked about the cyber intrusions.
[43:18] Could AI, and we know it could, enable hostile actires to identify and exploit software vulnerabilities
[43:24] at a speed that overwhelms our existing defensive and software patching processes?
[43:30] How should the U.S. prepare for that possibility and vulnerability?
[43:34] The short answer is yes, Congresswoman.
[43:36] AI will enable much more powerful offensive and defensive cyber operations.
[43:40] That is one reason amongst many why I think it is imperative the United States has a lead
[43:45] in inventing and deploying AI systems and making sure we do everything in our power
[43:49] to deny China these capabilities.
[43:52] As Mr. Slufo said in his opening statement, we'd be in a very different world if it were Chinese companies
[43:56] that were inventing the most powerful offensive cyber AI-enabled tools.
[44:01] And I think it should be a bipartisan priority to say America must retain its lead here in AI, in part because of cyber.
[44:08] Thank you.
[44:08] Yield back.
[44:09] Thank you.
[44:10] Mr. Gottheimer.
[44:11] Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[44:12] I'm going to start by focusing on AI and adding to what Ms. Stefanik said.
[44:17] Since 2023, Iran, China, and Russia have run covert operations to divide our country.
[44:21] We know that.
[44:22] Funding front groups, flooding social media, and targeting our college campuses, especially with anti-American and divisive rhetoric.
[44:28] AI supercharges all of it.
[44:30] A single adversary can now generate fake voices and fake videos and millions of fake messages.
[44:34] Nearly impossible to tell the real thing.
[44:36] The 9-11 framework was built to track terrorist organizations with physical networks.
[44:41] Today, the lies and the radicalization spread online and instantly at a scale no human network could ever match.
[44:47] And I'm concerned we don't have the infrastructure for right now.
[44:51] I guess I'll start with you, Dr. McKinnon.
[44:54] How much more dangerous does AI make foreign disinformation campaigns targeted at Americans?
[44:59] And do we have any ways to detect them and fight back at the same speed our enemies are attacking?
[45:05] Yeah, I think similar to the congressman's question, the answer is yes here.
[45:08] AI does enable more powerful foreign influence operations and, in general, more persuasive campaigns.
[45:15] It does it through a number of mechanisms.
[45:18] The first is the message itself, whether that's a deep fake video in the way that you suggested or even a text-based message that is more persuasive.
[45:28] One of the things that is concerning is the possibilities of greater personalization in that messaging.
[45:33] But do you feel, sorry to interrupt you, but do you feel like we are, we're talking about threats, modern threats, and therefore have the capabilities to fight back.
[45:42] Do you feel like right now we have the capabilities to fight back or we structure to fight back?
[45:46] Is the IC built to be able to handle this new threat?
[45:50] No, I think across the board when it comes to managing threats from artificial intelligence, we need to posture much better.
[45:55] And what are some of the things you might do?
[45:58] The first, I think, is making sure our intelligence community can actually use these tools to track these threats.
[46:03] A lot of times they yield a very large data spray of, you can see the campaign unfolding across the digital network in the way that you suggest.
[46:12] AI tools can be useful in finding those campaigns.
[46:16] I think that's an important piece of this.
[46:18] Of course, enabling our own cyber operations against the perpetrators of these campaigns, our own collection against those campaigns, orchestras.
[46:25] That's another piece of this as well.
[46:28] Thank you.
[46:29] General McMaster, can I ask you a quick question?
[46:32] Do you feel, given the role you occupied when you were in the White House, in the administration,
[46:38] did you feel like we were structured currently in a way that you said sometimes,
[46:44] I wish we had, you know, it's been 20 years, I wish we were structured this way or that way, or it was built differently.
[46:51] You know, this doesn't make much sense.
[46:53] Like, Department of Homeland Security is too unwieldy, or whatever the issue is.
[46:57] What were a couple things that you found led to gaps in terms of coordination?
[47:01] Well, thank you for that question.
[47:04] I think the biggest gap is the integration of intelligence, and I would describe as operations broadly defined.
[47:10] That's bridging intelligence into actions and integrated actions.
[47:14] So, for example, if we're looking at the terrorist threat and how these terrorist threats have now combined with transnational organized crime networks,
[47:23] we have to be able to map those networks, understand nodes in those networks,
[47:27] see the international flows of people, money, weapons, narcotics, precursor chemicals,
[47:32] and also see the connections to states, because we know states are often using these networks,
[47:37] like Maduro was in Venezuela, or like the Iranians use the IRGC as a major narcotics trafficking organization,
[47:43] and that's a moneymaker for them.
[47:45] So you map the networks, and then what we have to be able to do better is break out of the law enforcement idea of following a case
[47:52] and getting kingpins and trying to take out the networks with economic tools, sanctions, financial actions,
[48:00] offensive cyber capabilities where those are relevant, applying extraterritorial jurisdictions,
[48:07] law enforcement across partner nations, and military operations where we have the authorizations.
[48:12] And to do so as near simultaneous as we can to cripple these networks, it was that bridge into operations.
[48:20] And so what we relied on there was to use the National Security Council staff, Homeland Security Council staff,
[48:26] and the NEC, bring people together and convene them at the White House.
[48:30] So did you not feel DNI, like, so DNI is supposed to play that role in some ways.
[48:35] Are they playing that role?
[48:36] Like, is that happening?
[48:37] I don't think sufficiently.
[48:38] I think what we need is something like an effective version of the National Counterterrorism Center
[48:45] to take on some of these other activities against hostile states because these hostile states also, as we know,
[48:51] they use criminal organizations.
[48:53] Look at Russia's use of organized crime networks or Iran's use of criminal networks, for example.
[48:59] So it's less of a stove-piping issue and more just what's not structured to coordinate properly.
[49:05] Yes, and I think what it is is you need teammates to come together who have two things, knowledge of the problem set,
[49:12] and second, knowledge of the resources that can be brought to bear from the departments and agencies
[49:17] and from international partners.
[49:19] And to put together, you know, like a strategy on how to cripple these networks oriented on clearly defined objectives
[49:27] and the integration of all these elements of national power.
[49:29] I think if we did this, if we could, you know, it doesn't have to be like a new agency, a new organization or anything.
[49:35] It just has to be, as Frank was mentioning here, a lot of it has to do with info flow and authorities
[49:41] rather than big, really big organizational changes.
[49:46] Thank you.
[49:46] Thank you, sir.
[49:47] Thank you.
[49:47] Mr. Kelly.
[49:51] Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[49:54] I want to start, Mr. Salufa, you talked about the Title 10, Title 50, the JSOC and all those things.
[50:04] I think that's one.
[50:05] But before we get to that, I really want to talk about they're using strategy.
[50:10] They're playing chess.
[50:10] We're playing checkers.
[50:11] I mean, if you look at October 7th, on October 8th, riots broke out on college campuses in protest, okay,
[50:20] saying stop the genocide before any strikes had even been made.
[50:24] The only strikes that had been made were the Palestinians against Jews.
[50:29] An actual stop the genocide was the genocide of the other side.
[50:32] But before any strikes even happened, you already had the protests.
[50:36] Recently, AI, just speakers who say AI get booed on college campuses because China knows that AI is the nuclear weapon of the 21st century.
[50:49] So, we have to stop that, we have to get ahead.
[50:53] So, they are playing strategy.
[50:54] They are trying to plant seeds, especially among our college youth.
[50:57] How do we stop that, and how do we integrate Title 10, Title 50 to make sure that there aren't seams?
[51:04] And then, finally, I know, Mr. Salufo, you have a personal story that started after 9-11, and I think it ties in to why you are so committed now.
[51:15] If you will start with that, and what happened immediately after 9-11, and how that ties in to how we can address some of these issues I talked about.
[51:22] With that, Mr. Salufo.
[51:25] Well, thank you, Congressman, and thank you for the overly nice question.
[51:29] So, yes, it is personal, it's personal for all of us, but I had the opportunity to look at these issues, counter-terrorism, Al-Qaeda, that was a backwater set of issues pre-9-11.
[51:41] CSIS afforded me that opportunity, where Seth is now, to look at some of these issues.
[51:46] I led a significant effort on homeland defense.
[51:49] We weren't calling it homeland security because we were looking more from a defensive perspective,
[51:55] and I had family, friends, and others.
[51:59] I'm from New York, so it's personal on so many levels, and I'd prefer not to go there because it's still hard to get my arms around it.
[52:09] So I get to focus on what we do about it, and that is sort of looking at synchronizing some of our authorities.
[52:15] When you look at, and the reason I brought up the counter-terrorism example is because it does have application in cyber.
[52:21] And I think you're starting to see some of that culminate if you were to look at absolute resolve in Venezuela.
[52:31] Cyber played an integral role.
[52:33] Was it the shiny object?
[52:35] No, but it was cyber.
[52:37] The real question to ask is not winning the cyber war.
[52:39] It's winning the war and how cyber can enable that, how it can help our offensive capabilities.
[52:45] If you look at Midnight Hammer, cyber also played a significant role in achieving the operational effects we're looking for.
[52:56] Absolute resolve, epic fury as well.
[52:59] But bottom line is I think we're finally recognizing that cyber isn't a little black magic.
[53:05] It's not a separate box that sits over here.
[53:07] It has to be integrated in our doctrine and our warfighting strategy and capabilities.
[53:13] You're starting to see that.
[53:14] Is it enough?
[53:15] In my eyes, no.
[53:16] Because ultimately we shouldn't be reacting.
[53:19] We should be shaping the environment.
[53:21] We should be, if deterrence is failing, we ought to be compelling.
[53:25] Because here's the thing, every one of these incidents that we're seeing, it's not only the perpetrator.
[53:30] Everyone else is watching how we respond.
[53:33] And if we respond by building more firewalls and more defenses, which is essential, don't get me wrong,
[53:40] but in itself, that's never going to change the equation.
[53:44] Let's address this.
[53:45] I think the cyber rules in a lot of realm that's in the gray zone, I think that the rules have to change,
[53:51] that there are things that are above the level of conflict that we should classify below.
[53:55] And if they're not above the level of conflict, then we need to be offensive below the level of conflict.
[54:01] We can't have it both ways.
[54:03] We can't say this, when you attack us, it's below the level of conflict, but we won't do it because it's above.
[54:08] So comment on that, please.
[54:10] No, that's well said.
[54:11] Maybe you should be sitting in the, I mean, here's the truth.
[54:14] The national cyber strategy, for the first time, a principal pillar is to impose cost and consequence on bad cyber behavior.
[54:22] We needed to have it in strategy, but as we all know, strategy itself is insufficient.
[54:29] Now it's, as General McMaster mentioned, it's operationalizing that.
[54:33] It's taking from theory into practice.
[54:36] I think we're starting to see some of that play out, but we do it very well when we have a defined mission set and a defined outcome.
[54:44] What we don't do as well is this is happening every day.
[54:47] So how do we not only bring the best and the brightest when something bad is happening, but how do we do this on an everyday environment?
[54:56] And one point, and I just want to pick on, and I know I'm on the other side of the dais here, so I apologize, but Mr. Gottheimer, one of the questions I think that the intelligence community uniquely plays,
[55:08] industry is going to have more data than the government in many of these campaigns.
[55:12] What the government can bring is context.
[55:15] It can enrich that data, and let's not forget, you don't always have to fight cyber on cyber.
[55:21] You've got other collection means that can enrich our visibility.
[55:25] So that's, to me, where that marriage has to be.
[55:29] Right now, we're not even at the dating session, and I'd like to see that accelerate.
[55:37] Mr. Castro.
[55:38] Thank you, Chairman.
[55:39] Thank you, gentlemen, for your testimony and for being here today.
[55:42] I want to start by asking you a question about the war in Iran.
[55:45] There has been reporting over the months about the United States being surprised about Iran's capabilities and what it's been able to do.
[55:54] I wanted you all to reflect.
[55:55] I know that each of you is testifying in slightly different areas, but give you an opportunity to reflect on any of your surprises on Iran capabilities or U.S. capabilities that you thought would be greater.
[56:06] I know that Israel is also included in this, and please.
[56:14] Just quickly, I don't think we were surprised on Iran's capabilities.
[56:17] I think what precipitated the president's decision to act directly against the missile drone strike complex was our knowledge of how they were racing to deepen those arsenals and to really hold the region at risk and the global economy at risk,
[56:31] but also to build a conventional shield behind which they would develop the most destructive weapons on earth.
[56:37] So I think that we knew that.
[56:39] I think what we didn't really understand, maybe, is the degree to which they had perfected that missile drone strike complex, what they've been experimenting with for a long time, using the Houthis and others.
[56:48] But then also, we didn't have the drone, in particular, defenses necessary, I think, to prevent a lot of the damage that they've been able to inflict.
[56:59] But I think a lot of the—
[57:00] General, let me ask you, because you've been at this a long time, very accomplished in your field, but how would we not have anticipated that a year ago or two years ago?
[57:10] I think we did anticipate it.
[57:12] I think a lot of the remedies for drone defense are being fielded now.
[57:18] You know, I mean, a little bit too late.
[57:19] I think we should—maybe we had a degree of complacency within the environment of war for some period of time in terms of fielding these.
[57:26] But if we anticipated, if we knew it, and you say that we were unprepared, then why would we go do it?
[57:31] Well, I think what we've seen is the ex post facto justification for acting.
[57:37] I think, over time, that the cost of not acting, as we did, would have exceeded the cost of acting, because Iran was deepening that arsenal even further, and was restarting its nuclear capabilities.
[57:50] So, it's a program.
[57:53] Sure.
[57:53] So, I think—you know, I don't think any of this was a surprise.
[57:57] I'd like to hear anybody else's thoughts here, too.
[57:58] Yeah, I've got one more question.
[58:00] So, if you guys, other gentlemen, do you have any other quick comment?
[58:03] Yeah.
[58:28] So, you think we didn't learn or take a lesson from the Ukraine-Russia war that we should have?
[58:34] That's correct.
[58:35] And also, that also applies to the United States.
[58:39] Well, I do not think our stadiums are sufficiently protected from drone attacks in the United States.
[58:45] Sure.
[58:46] Let me ask a question, Mr. Buchanan, on AI.
[58:49] I guess about a year ago, you know, maybe a little bit off on the timing, but about a year ago, I guess, China surprised the world with DeepSeq.
[58:57] And now, I think about two days ago, it came out with Kimi, which is a very capable model.
[59:05] So, you know, we keep—there's a lot of discussion on the committee about AI, about quantum computing, about the race with China, the competition with China, and all these things.
[59:18] Where do you assess now their capabilities with this new information about what they've developed, even though we've limited their access to the most sophisticated chips?
[59:27] Thank you, Congressman.
[59:29] I'm not sure we've successfully eliminated their access to the most advanced chips.
[59:33] And I think the evidence, at least in public reporting, seems to suggest that both the models you mentioned were trained on U.S.-designed chips,
[59:42] and that China still struggles greatly due to bipartisan efforts from both the first Trump administration and the Biden administration to produce its own chips.
[59:50] You don't need to take my word for it.
[59:52] Secretary Lutnik testified that China would make 200,000 chips, all of which were much worse than the U.S. chips in 2025.
[1:00:00] The democratic ecosystem produces millions.
[1:00:02] So, to my mind—
[1:00:03] So, I mean, your testimony is that we did this to ourself?
[1:00:07] My testimony is that America has a large structural advantage in AI due to the democratic ecosystem of producing chips,
[1:00:15] and we should exploit that structural advantage to the fullest.
[1:00:17] I think we have done some of it, but we have not done enough, and we should be much more aggressive on enforcement and smuggling to stop China from trying to catch up.
[1:00:26] All right.
[1:00:27] I'm almost out of time, so I'm going to yield back.
[1:00:29] Thank you, gentlemen.
[1:00:29] Human yields.
[1:00:30] Ms. Tinney.
[1:00:33] Well, thank you so much for being here.
[1:00:35] Excellent testimony.
[1:00:36] I just want to say a couple things.
[1:00:39] Not sure—just—I'm going to get this out of the way because I don't think we should get into election integrity.
[1:00:42] I want to talk about 9-11 because I, too, am a New Yorker, but when Mr. Himes spoke, I have to say about all the partisanship and what did the Democrats do.
[1:00:52] I think of George Bush's election being stolen.
[1:00:55] He wasn't a rightful president.
[1:00:57] Hillary Clinton said her election was stolen.
[1:00:59] Stacey Abrams said her election was stolen.
[1:01:01] Katie Porter said her election was stolen.
[1:01:03] Hakeem Jeffries said President Trump wasn't a legitimate president.
[1:01:07] Kamala Harris all said the same thing over and over, raising this rhetoric to another level.
[1:01:11] And as president, President Joe Biden signed Executive Order 14019, which tasks our federal agencies who should be helping people to do—engage in voter registration and voter turnout.
[1:01:24] And those are things that they should stay on their mission, not on those.
[1:01:27] But I felt like there were just so many things that have happened, unfortunately, on the election integrity issue, and I think it's a really important issue.
[1:01:34] But I want to ask Mr. Chalufo.
[1:01:37] Did I get that right?
[1:01:37] You're correct.
[1:01:38] Yes, I'm from Utica, so I know a lot of Italians.
[1:01:41] I think I'm better at pronunciation than some others on that issue.
[1:01:46] I wanted to ask you, because I come from New York, as you know, and after having the worst terrorist attack in our nation's history, we're talking about 9-11.
[1:01:53] You know, how could we be where we are 25 years ago?
[1:01:56] I have friends—I don't think I know anyone that didn't have friends who died on 9-11.
[1:01:59] In the Towers, a childhood friend died in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
[1:02:04] I mean, these are really—this hits home to so many.
[1:02:09] In New York, in 2019, they passed a law that prohibited interaction and use of, for example, DMV records, Department of Motor Vehicle records, when there was a stop by local police.
[1:02:24] And this meant if somebody was, you know, a would-be terrorist in our state coming across the border, there was no way to check or to confer with federal and state agencies.
[1:02:36] How would you rate that type of, you know, the so-called green light law?
[1:02:40] How would you rate that as part of the problem that we have after the 9-11 Commission famously said, we need our federal agencies to work together?
[1:02:49] You're talking about synchronization.
[1:02:51] And now here we are telling them they can't work together.
[1:02:56] Kathy Hochul also just came out with an order.
[1:02:58] Our governor is saying that we can't have our local agencies working with ICE to determine if they're dangerous illegal immigrants in our communities.
[1:03:07] They're prohibiting them from using the 287G program.
[1:03:10] These are all things that are tools for our police to keep our communities safe, the primary role of our government.
[1:03:15] Could you address those issues?
[1:03:16] Because I think they're really important to a state like New York, still the fourth largest state, with a northern border, which I and Representative Stefanik represent.
[1:03:25] Congresswoman, thank you for the question.
[1:03:27] I'm not exceedingly well-versed on all of the developments here.
[1:03:33] But I can tell you NYPD is almost an intelligence service in and of itself.
[1:03:42] And have some of the best women and men in service.
[1:03:47] So when I look back to 9-11, basically it was NYPD, LAPD, and everyone else.
[1:03:53] And it's not taking away from the everyone else because everyone else matters.
[1:03:57] But all things said and done, yes, we need to do more to be able to get information into the hands of the front-line officers who can stop something before it becomes an issue.
[1:04:08] This is really just a common sense issue.
[1:04:11] I mean, the 9-11 Commission said we need to work together.
[1:04:13] That's why we had lapses.
[1:04:15] That's why something like this occurred.
[1:04:16] And now we have this situation where we can't even have our local police and our county police working with our federal agencies that are providing us with the data and a lot of the intelligence that may be from this committee.
[1:04:28] That's what worries me is that the intelligence sharing, the ability to know what's happening, and really just cutting off the data.
[1:04:35] And I think this is an open door for countries and adversaries and enemies like China, Russia, to come in and actually take advantage of us.
[1:04:43] And I would just add not to sort of move to another top, but at the end of the day, our fusion centers and some of the capabilities that we have, they need to do exponentially more in the cyber environment as well,
[1:04:57] which is where I spend most of my time focused these days because you're right.
[1:05:02] I mean, at the end of the day, I'm not even sure it's about collecting.
[1:05:06] It's all about the connecting and being able to see the rich picture in terms of what that threat environment is about.
[1:05:12] I think we have a lot of collection.
[1:05:15] Thank you.
[1:05:15] I appreciate it.
[1:05:15] Just one last for General McMaster.
[1:05:18] Great book, by the way.
[1:05:20] You have a concept in your book called Strategic Narcissism, and I just wondered if you could maybe comment on that in the intelligence realm of how we should approach,
[1:05:28] I only have a couple seconds left, approach our foreign policy from that perspective using intelligence
[1:05:33] and being more strategic as opposed to more political.
[1:05:38] Thank you so much.
[1:05:39] I think what's most important is to recognize that our adversaries, enemies, rivals, they have aspirations that go far beyond anything that's in reaction to us.
[1:05:47] Oftentimes, we kind of get at each other because we tend to see our engagement, our intervention, or disengagement as being decisive toward achieving a favorable outcome.
[1:05:59] And so I think what's really important is to pay particular attention to the emotions, the ideology, and the aspirations that drive and constrain our adversaries.
[1:06:08] For example, in this case, the theocratic military dictatorship in Iran, or the Chinese Communist Party with Xi Jinping on it, or Putin as Russia.
[1:06:20] We tend to think that, well, maybe we, you know, that we caused this problem.
[1:06:25] You know, with like the Putin's argument about the enlargement of NATO.
[1:06:28] No, actually, Putin has these aspirations to reestablish the Russian Empire, for example.
[1:06:33] So I think it's important to have this term, strategic empathy, to pay particular attention to what drives and constrains the other, rivals, adversaries, and enemies.
[1:06:44] Thank you. I appreciate it.
[1:06:45] Thank you.
[1:06:45] Joel McNeil, it's Mr. Krishnamoorthy.
[1:06:48] Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to our witnesses for coming in.
[1:06:50] Really appreciate your testimony.
[1:06:52] Dr. Buchanan, you noted that you were the first ever White House Special Advisor for Artificial Intelligence, right?
[1:06:59] You have to answer.
[1:07:01] Yes, I was.
[1:07:03] So let's, starting out easy here.
[1:07:05] Okay, let's talk about deep fakes.
[1:07:07] Anyone can make convincing AI-generated images, audio, and videos nowadays.
[1:07:14] I was actually able to make a few images of us just by plugging in pictures that are available online.
[1:07:21] And within seconds, I had a picture of us playing basketball, Dr. Buchanan.
[1:07:26] Now, just to be clear, you and I have never played pickup basketball, right?
[1:07:31] No, we've not.
[1:07:32] AI can also make audio recordings, like when someone pretended to be Secretary of State Rubio using an AI-generated voice to contact several officials and videos,
[1:07:45] like when a deep fake of Ukrainian President Zelensky being used to try to convince Ukrainian soldiers to surrender.
[1:07:54] And this year, according to President Trump himself, he was even fooled by a viral AI-generated video of Iran striking the USS Abraham Lincoln.
[1:08:06] He even called one of his generals to say it, quote, looks like it's burning down.
[1:08:11] Ms. Dr. Buchanan, as you note in your testimony, the 9-11 Commission concluded that the attacks revealed a failure of imagination.
[1:08:20] With such convincing deep fakes as the ones showing me and you playing basketball, which is kind of rather odd,
[1:08:27] we need to have an even larger imagination about how deep fakes are going to be used to confuse and mislead people going forward.
[1:08:35] Would you agree with that?
[1:08:36] I would, yes.
[1:08:37] Let me turn to a slightly different topic.
[1:08:40] General McMaster, one of the key recommendations from the 9-11 Commission report was that we needed to improve intelligence sharing between federal, state, and local authorities.
[1:08:50] Isn't that right?
[1:08:53] Yes, Congressman.
[1:08:53] And I believe we can agree that intelligence sharing among these different levels of government actually improved after 9-11.
[1:09:02] Wouldn't you agree?
[1:09:03] Absolutely.
[1:09:04] One of the reasons was, you know, joint terrorism task forces came into being.
[1:09:10] Fusion centers.
[1:09:11] There are 80 fusion centers across the country.
[1:09:14] But as I've mentioned before in this committee, unfortunately the Trump administration has diverted our JTTF efforts to support the president's immigration agenda.
[1:09:23] And the president is now putting the funding of fusion centers at risk.
[1:09:28] General McMaster, this month, the New York Times reported that the administration is demanding that states change voting rules or lose their anti-terrorism funds.
[1:09:38] That's what this headline says, right?
[1:09:41] Yes, it does.
[1:09:43] And according to DHS, states must comply with the president's election agenda, including running voter rolls through DHS's controversial citizenship verification database,
[1:09:54] or DHS will withhold 20% of their anti-terrorism funds.
[1:10:00] So, General McMaster, in this time of heightened threats, we should not be attaching strings to any anti-terrorism funding, right?
[1:10:08] Not unless it's related, I think, to securing the nation.
[1:10:11] Right.
[1:10:11] And this isn't necessarily that.
[1:10:14] And so, in my humble opinion, we certainly shouldn't be requiring the citizenship verification database that 30 states, including Republican and Democratic-led states,
[1:10:25] refuse to use because, as ABC News has reported, the very system that DHS is urging states to use has unfortunately been found to be faulty itself.
[1:10:35] Let me turn to my final topic.
[1:10:37] General McMaster, in September 2020, before the November 2020 election, President Trump refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power,
[1:10:47] suggesting he could invoke the Insurrection Act to involve the military.
[1:10:51] And in response, you told Meet the Press that it was, quote,
[1:10:55] irresponsible to discuss the military's role in the 2020 election.
[1:11:00] You said that, right?
[1:11:01] Yes, I did.
[1:11:01] And now, as we approach the 2026 elections, President Trump, again, is not ruling out sending the National Guard or ICE to polling,
[1:11:12] including in this headline, it says President Trump says he's willing to send those elements to the election polls this year.
[1:11:20] General, I assume it's, again, irresponsible to discuss the military's role in the upcoming 2026 election, right?
[1:11:27] Yeah, I think it's really important to recognize that our founders, you know, 250 years ago were most concerned about the military becoming involved in politics.
[1:11:39] And George Washington set the example with the Continental Congress during our revolution.
[1:11:45] Lately, I think, again, you know, and not to say equivalence between what the president's saying and what others are saying,
[1:11:50] there has been a tendency to lay out an expectation that the military should be a check on executive authority
[1:11:57] or should be an arm of executive authority in activities such as this, which threaten to politicize the military.
[1:12:05] I think it's extremely dangerous and damaging to that bold line that has to remain in place between our military and partisan politics.
[1:12:14] And so whether it's some of your colleagues who made a video about not following, you know, illegal orders with the subtext of which, from my view,
[1:12:24] was that the military should be a check on executive power, I think any of this kind of activity is profoundly damaging.
[1:12:31] And we ought to all, you know, pledge to avoid it.
[1:12:36] Thank you, sir.
[1:12:37] The gentleman's time is expired.
[1:12:37] Mr. Hill.
[1:12:38] Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[1:12:42] I thank the panel for your expertise.
[1:12:44] We're grateful to have you back before the committee.
[1:12:46] And I'm glad we're paying attention 25 years later to what we learned from 9-11.
[1:12:51] And like everyone here, I share the loss of that day, know where I was,
[1:12:56] and know my dear friend from working on the Senate Banking Committee, Neil Levin,
[1:13:01] who ran the Port Authority in New York, was lost at breakfast that morning.
[1:13:05] So I'm glad we're doing this.
[1:13:07] I thank the chairman for it.
[1:13:09] Mr. Cephalo, I want to focus on you, though, because there are two issues that I'm most concerned about.
[1:13:14] One, I think we are so far behind from a homeland security point of view on cyber risk and that we keep naming all these suspected and actual Chinese operations after various typhoons.
[1:13:28] I think with AI, we're going to have a tsunami that comes across the entire lower 48 and beyond.
[1:13:35] So that's a big concern.
[1:13:37] Secondly, I'm not convinced that the 9-11 report's been implemented as it relates to removing silos.
[1:13:44] I think everywhere we take testimony about remaining in silos, no matter who the ODNI is or what good efforts we make through fusion centers.
[1:13:52] And so when it comes to data about the homeland, we've worked for three years in a classified and unclassified setting
[1:14:00] that TSA data, CSIS data, border CBP data is not fused with DOJ and FBI.
[1:14:12] So I want to leave that out, ask you to comment on that.
[1:14:15] But I want to also talk about something that is very important and a lot of questions for you about integrating cybersecurity
[1:14:23] into the counterterrorism-type fusion centers that members have talked about.
[1:14:28] I just came back from Cyber Shield at Camp Robinson in Arkansas, proud to represent the 19th Air Wing at Little Rock Air Force Base
[1:14:36] and Camp Robinson for the National Guard.
[1:14:38] We had 1,100 people, 44 states and territories, and 23 countries.
[1:14:45] They're working on a tabletop exercise on critical infrastructure.
[1:14:50] But with AI, would you agree that all infrastructure in the United States is now critical infrastructure?
[1:14:55] It's not just water and power grids?
[1:14:58] Firstly, Congressman, I love the it's moving from typhoons to tsunamis.
[1:15:02] That's absolutely correct.
[1:15:04] And I think that is going to be the outcome.
[1:15:06] And I do think that AI will enable all of our critical infrastructures to be critical.
[1:15:15] And not just to cyber attack, but to kinetic attacks as well.
[1:15:20] One of the earlier conversation around some of the Iranian activity, they're targeting data centers through precision-guided munitions,
[1:15:27] through kinetic means.
[1:15:29] So I do buy your philosophy.
[1:15:33] But let me just say one thing.
[1:15:35] When we look at critical infrastructure, it is not just an economic set of issues anymore.
[1:15:41] It is our national defense.
[1:15:43] We will not be able to project power or deploy forces.
[1:15:47] Once you get outside of the wire of any military base, they're dependent upon civilian entities to be able to ensure that the power's on,
[1:15:57] that the transportation's working, and that logistics, which is ultimately what wins wars, can work.
[1:16:02] So I think we are a little slow to recognize that.
[1:16:08] But you cannot have a modern military without a secure critical infrastructure.
[1:16:13] And to me, they're inextricably interwoven.
[1:16:16] And the reason why I think the AI issue is critical is because, let's say JPMorgan Chase is fully compliant with METHOS
[1:16:22] and is part of the tabletop exercise to review their own data.
[1:16:27] Good for them.
[1:16:28] What about their entire supply chain?
[1:16:30] Well said.
[1:16:30] What about every customer?
[1:16:32] And so I view this as a national information.
[1:16:33] Do we even know what's in our supply chains?
[1:16:35] Correct.
[1:16:36] We don't have visibility.
[1:16:37] And this is where I think that we, Trent Kelly, talked about integrating Title X and Title 50.
[1:16:43] I think our tabletop exercises are too rudimentary, too infrequent, and they don't engage our air guard, air reserves,
[1:16:52] and cyber squadrons around the country that should be able to be called out for a civil defense threat of a volt tsunami.
[1:17:02] And there's no integration between our offices of director, as of emergency management,
[1:17:06] our tags across the country, and civilian leadership on this point.
[1:17:10] So would you support broadening our fusion centers to bring in not only the usual suspects,
[1:17:19] but for the air guard, for example, our adjutant generals in the states that could be working in a more direct way?
[1:17:27] You know, I do.
[1:17:28] I think pre-9-11, the civil support teams of the National Guard played a key role in enabling our ability to respond to the horrific attacks.
[1:17:37] Clearly, when you look at cyber, you have the adjunct set of issues that I think ought to be considered.
[1:17:45] Because, yes, our tags, ultimately, our adjutant generals are going to play critical roles here,
[1:17:50] and not just the National Guard Bureau, but down at the Title 32 role.
[1:17:57] So I do support that.
[1:17:59] I thank you.
[1:17:59] Thanks for the panel.
[1:18:00] I yield back.
[1:18:01] Gentleman yields.
[1:18:02] Mr. Quigley.
[1:18:03] Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[1:18:04] Gentleman, I take from your testimony two intermixed questions.
[1:18:12] Are we fighting and preparing for this war or the last war, and can we govern?
[1:18:17] And intertwined in that is the fact that we have large, cumbersome, bureaucratic military intel services
[1:18:26] trying to intertwine with the state and private sector,
[1:18:29] and we make slow decisions, often political, based on all of those.
[1:18:38] And can we govern while we try to do all this?
[1:18:42] General, you just referenced a little bit about lessons learned from the Ukraine war.
[1:18:49] Can we adapt?
[1:18:50] Can we be nimble?
[1:18:51] And can we do so without being overtly political and get out of our own way?
[1:18:59] Well, these are great questions.
[1:19:00] You know, war is the great auditor of military institutions, Congressman.
[1:19:04] And I think we didn't act fast enough, based on the lessons that Seth pointed out on Ukraine.
[1:19:11] He mentioned hardening infrastructure, but also the counter drone capabilities.
[1:19:15] We're doing that now.
[1:19:16] I think we are racing.
[1:19:17] There are a lot of new capabilities that are being fielded, and I'm encouraged by the Department of War's changes
[1:19:24] to a lot of the contracting and procurement procedures.
[1:19:27] I think that's going extremely well, and then I'm hoping that Congress does pass the emergency appropriations bill
[1:19:36] for the Department of War.
[1:19:38] I think what we're seeing in our military, to a large extent, is there's a huge bow wave of deferred modernization
[1:19:44] and, I think, a failure to procure weapons and capabilities at scale.
[1:19:49] And so that's where I think that we have a lot of catch-up to do there.
[1:19:56] In terms of the broader questions on our civilian infrastructure that's at risk,
[1:20:03] I think what is encouraging is there have been free market incentives that have led to the creation
[1:20:10] of some very significant civilian capabilities for defense and for intelligence in a lot of areas
[1:20:18] in terms of insider threat and espionage, but then being able to harden with the many great cyber security companies
[1:20:25] that we have with tiered and layered defense capabilities, and I think now recovery capabilities,
[1:20:32] which are really important.
[1:20:32] If it is going to be the tsunami of AI, maybe we have to assume you're going to get attacked.
[1:20:38] Something may get through, but once it gets through, what have you built in terms of resilience
[1:20:43] and the ability to recover and restore operations?
[1:20:46] So I think that encouraging those kind of private sector solutions, because the government,
[1:20:51] there's no way the government can do it all, and I defer to some of our real cyber experts here,
[1:20:55] but I feel good about the private sector initiatives.
[1:20:57] I think from a defense capability and the threats associated with that, there is a bow wave of deferred modernization.
[1:21:04] There are mature technologies that we can apply to these emerging threats,
[1:21:10] but they have not been fielded at scale yet.
[1:21:13] So firstly, not to throw a bumper sticker here, but technology changes warfare.
[1:21:21] It doesn't replace strategy.
[1:21:23] So there are a number of things that I think we still have to get our arms around.
[1:21:26] There is a ruling right now, 2209, from a counter-UAS perspective, a counter-unmanned aerial vehicle.
[1:21:34] All the comments are coming in from hobbyists, who obviously don't want to restrict any airspace,
[1:21:41] including some of our most critical infrastructure, including nuclear, chemical, and others.
[1:21:47] This is, there's a, I think the window's only open for another week,
[1:21:52] so if anyone's listening and you're a critical infrastructure owner-operator, this is the time to step in,
[1:21:57] because ultimately that's what these companies are being asked to do, not just in cyber, but from a UAS perspective.
[1:22:03] And to Seth's good points and General McMaster, these are all movies coming to a theater near you.
[1:22:09] We shouldn't be surprised.
[1:22:11] We've seen what can happen.
[1:22:13] This is coming.
[1:22:15] Mr. Jones.
[1:22:16] Yeah, just on the AI front, you know, one of the things that's been interesting is,
[1:22:20] I was out in Europe last week looking at some of the advances in technology used in the Ukraine war.
[1:22:26] There are now AI-enabled drones that are launched and then able to hit targets with AI guiding,
[1:22:35] able to identify potential targets night and day.
[1:22:40] I do not think we, and we had hosted a couple weeks ago, Kathy Lanier,
[1:22:45] the vice president for the NFL, NFL security, former police chief of Washington, D.C.
[1:22:50] She is not confident that our NFL stadiums, other than the, you know, Super Bowl, that level of tier,
[1:23:00] can confidently have both the authority and the ability to conduct counter-drone operations.
[1:23:07] It's a challenge, let alone critical infrastructure and private industry.
[1:23:13] We have a huge challenge in the advances of technology, including from drones and AI-enabled drones,
[1:23:19] a huge threat and an inability right now to find a practical solution.
[1:23:24] Gentleman Yields, Mr. Carson.
[1:23:32] General McMaster, one of the biggest failures before 9-11 was that the government had pieces of info
[1:23:40] but did not understand what they meant when brought together.
[1:23:44] What emerging threat is our current intelligence system least prepared to recognize,
[1:23:49] and what would change the way we receive warnings, particularly from fusion centers.
[1:24:00] I served as a watch officer in a fusion center, and I know how critical it is for state and local agencies
[1:24:07] to have access to federal databases, as well as those federal agencies to have access to local law enforcement
[1:24:14] and state law enforcement, who are actually on the ground getting intel about white supremacist threats,
[1:24:21] about so-called Islamic threats.
[1:24:25] How can we better prepare to avoid and avert the next 9-11?
[1:24:31] God forbid.
[1:24:33] Well, Carson, I put this in my statement for the record.
[1:24:35] I'm very concerned about how AI is sort of creating this situation, what you might call the democratization of destruction,
[1:24:44] where you have non-state actors who can quite easily now gain capabilities previously associated only with nation states.
[1:24:51] I think this may be most severe in the area of bioengineering combined with AI,
[1:24:56] and so we don't have really the biological surveillance capabilities at this time internationally to get early warning of any kind of a biological agent
[1:25:06] and then be able to, of course, rapidly develop and prototype vaccines and countermeasures and that sort of thing.
[1:25:13] Obviously, we had the searing experience of COVID-19.
[1:25:17] I believe that came from the lab at Wuhan.
[1:25:20] We know that our adversaries are developing these kinds of capabilities,
[1:25:25] but now, you know, with AI, that could easily be transferred to an ISIS-type organization, for example,
[1:25:32] or any of the range of terrorist organizations that's supported by Iran.
[1:25:37] So I think that's the area that I would be most concerned about,
[1:25:40] and so surveillance and, you know, wastewater, the rapid blood tests that you can take and so forth,
[1:25:46] as well as working forward in our intelligence community to rapidly identify
[1:25:52] and then preempt, if we can, those threats, as we did, for example, in the Euphrates River Valley
[1:25:58] against ISIS when they were trying to develop this kind of capability.
[1:26:05] Might now be the time, General, or anyone on the panel, to really lean in into AI
[1:26:09] as it relates to protecting our supply chain integrity and security.
[1:26:13] Yeah, this is a great opportunity here as well, and Frank already mentioned this.
[1:26:20] I do think that gaining visibility of that supply chain hardware, software, OT, IT,
[1:26:25] and then also understanding the kind of vulnerabilities associated with China's control of critical parts
[1:26:31] of that supply chain where they can put in capabilities that can commit to cripple our infrastructure later,
[1:26:37] like we saw, for example, in solar panels or cranes at our port facilities.
[1:26:45] And so I think that we now have the capability, thanks to AI,
[1:26:49] to gain a much greater degree of visibility on those supply chains,
[1:26:53] understand where the vulnerabilities are, and work to reduce those vulnerabilities.
[1:26:57] Yes, sir.
[1:26:58] Thank you.
[1:26:59] Yield back, Chairman.
[1:27:01] The gentleman yields.
[1:27:01] Mr. Cohen.
[1:27:04] Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[1:27:05] I guess I'm the last one, so I get extra time.
[1:27:08] Yeah, keep thinking that.
[1:27:09] There's so many questions I'd like to ask.
[1:27:13] I appreciate your being here.
[1:27:16] Do any of y'all have any worries about the threat being in the United States?
[1:27:21] My concern, Trump went to Pennsylvania during the election, and all of a sudden,
[1:27:26] about a week, two weeks before the election, he kind of up there and says,
[1:27:28] oh, we're okay, we're going to win, you know, we don't need any more votes.
[1:27:32] Musk knows all about these computers.
[1:27:35] He's just a genius, especially these connected to getting the vote counts.
[1:27:38] Mr. General McMaster, you dealt with Mr. Trump a lot.
[1:27:43] Do you think he was kind of signaling to us that Musk has the ability to interfere with some of the elections?
[1:27:48] Well, I don't have any knowledge about that statement or anything,
[1:27:52] but I know that, you know, with our election machines, the way I see it,
[1:27:56] and I looked at this pretty hard when I was a national security advisor,
[1:27:59] and I'm a bit dated because there's been even a lot more work done since then.
[1:28:03] You know, these machines are disconnected, you know, from the Internet.
[1:28:05] There are paper backups, there are audit capabilities.
[1:28:09] I really think what's most important at this moment,
[1:28:11] and I kind of appeal to all of you, really, you know,
[1:28:15] there is a way, I think, to make our elections more transparent,
[1:28:19] to make sure that only eligible voters vote without restricting access to those who are eligible voters.
[1:28:24] But you don't have a concern about anybody in America interfering with the election?
[1:28:27] No, I don't. I don't. Not to my knowledge.
[1:28:29] You've got a lot of experience.
[1:28:31] I'd like to ask another question about Iran.
[1:28:32] Have we had, excuse me, about Ukraine, I'm just amazed they've got these robots or whatever
[1:28:38] that do the even military, infantry work.
[1:28:40] Yeah.
[1:28:41] Is our military anywhere near that capability?
[1:28:44] And I think Ukraine's offered us some of their defensive drone capabilities,
[1:28:48] and we've rejected it.
[1:28:49] Yeah.
[1:28:50] We need them.
[1:28:51] They have cards to play, so to speak.
[1:28:54] Yeah, absolutely.
[1:28:55] If you saw the operation that was conducted maybe two months ago,
[1:29:00] where Ukraine used exclusively aerial and ground drones and actually defeated
[1:29:05] and accepted the surrender of Russian soldiers with an all-autonomous organization,
[1:29:10] what Dr. Jones mentioned is the next frontier.
[1:29:14] What's happening here is computing power at the edge, self-healing communications networks,
[1:29:19] such that you'll go from one soldier controlling one drone to one soldier controlling many
[1:29:25] and to be able to give missions to formations of drones, you know,
[1:29:30] and they'll be able to learn.
[1:29:33] Take out the air defense system, for example.
[1:29:35] One will get shot down, the others will learn, communicate with each other.
[1:29:38] And so I think that's what we have to stay on top of there.
[1:29:42] And then also we have these capabilities.
[1:29:44] We have the technology.
[1:29:45] We have not demonstrated the ability to produce and field them at scale
[1:29:50] and to have the innovation cycle that you see in Ukraine, which is weeks.
[1:29:55] So the Russians will develop a countermeasure.
[1:29:57] The Ukrainians will see that countermeasure.
[1:29:59] They'll bring it back for reengineering, and they'll have this open architecture
[1:30:02] where they can make changes to the software, sometimes the hardware,
[1:30:06] and improve their own capabilities relative to the Russians.
[1:30:09] So that innovation cycle and the ability to field at scale,
[1:30:11] but I know that other members of the panel have followed this closely as well.
[1:30:16] So Dr. Buchanan, you mentioned something about the training with my notes here.
[1:30:24] I wrote it down.
[1:30:26] You mentioned something about chips and the need to have chips.
[1:30:28] What did we give up when Trump gave some chips to China?
[1:30:32] Were there any of those essential chips that you said we should not give to China?
[1:30:35] That's right.
[1:30:36] Computing power, computer chips, are the lifeblood of AI systems.
[1:30:40] And we have something called the scaling law in AI,
[1:30:42] which is the more computing power is used to train or develop the AI system,
[1:30:46] the more powerful the AI system is as a result.
[1:30:49] That's why computing chips are one of the most sought-after commodities in the world right now.
[1:30:54] President Trump said he was willing to sell a particular generation of computing chips
[1:30:58] called the Hopper chip to China.
[1:31:01] I disagree with that decision.
[1:31:02] I think President Trump in his first administration took some very important actions
[1:31:07] denying China chip-making equipment that was built on the Biden administration.
[1:31:12] And my policy, my world view is that given how important AI is to national security,
[1:31:18] to the threats we have talked about here today,
[1:31:20] we need to have a very clear lead for the United States in AI,
[1:31:23] and therefore we need to have a very clear lead for the United States
[1:31:25] in computing power and chip-making equipment.
[1:31:27] So he gave away chips that were essential and could give China an advantage?
[1:31:32] He lifted the export controls on a certain class of chips, that's right.
[1:31:36] And my concern is that chips like that would enable Chinese military operations
[1:31:41] and would enable some of the models, DeepSeek and otherwise,
[1:31:45] that your colleague was asking about earlier.
[1:31:47] Taiwan. Taiwan has got great chips development.
[1:31:54] Do they have the chips that you're talking about?
[1:32:08] As far as the questions about the role of computing power in Taiwan, yes.
[1:32:12] Essentially, all of the advanced computer chips in the world are made in Taiwan.
[1:32:16] The Bipartisan Chips Act aims to bring some of that to the United States,
[1:32:20] which is a terrific thing.
[1:32:21] But all of the chips we are talking about here, with very narrow exceptions,
[1:32:25] are made in Taiwan, yes.
[1:32:27] Jimman's time has expired.
[1:32:33] Yeah, we're not doing stoppage time.
[1:32:36] No, he's answered your question, so we're going to move on.
[1:32:40] Okay, all right.
[1:32:45] Mr. Perry.
[1:32:48] Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
[1:32:49] Dr. Jones looked into and kind of an expert on unrestricted and irregular warfare,
[1:32:56] especially as it pertains to the Communist Party of China.
[1:33:01] Has our government taken a whole-of-government approach to combating unrestricted or irregular warfare?
[1:33:12] And do we have a comprehensive strategy, agency by agency?
[1:33:17] I don't believe we do have a comprehensive strategy, either at the federal level
[1:33:23] or just talking last week to members of some of our joint terrorism task forces and fusion centers
[1:33:30] where there is little activity at the state and local level to understand
[1:33:37] and operationalize the threat from unrestricted warfare happening,
[1:33:43] particularly by the Chinese but also the Russians and Iranians inside of our borders.
[1:33:47] So just out of curiosity, some of the top-level stuff, because maybe some people aren't familiar,
[1:33:52] can you kind of just name half a dozen of maybe the top unrestricted, irregular warfare,
[1:34:00] whole-of-government approaches that the Communist Party of China uses against the United States of America?
[1:34:06] There are far too many to go through in detail for this testimony unless we added another four hours,
[1:34:14] but they range from everything from influence operations.
[1:34:19] Most recently, the influence operations inside the United States about AI data centers
[1:34:27] to discourage the building of AI centers across the United States.
[1:34:32] We've seen the Chinese Communist Party involved in activity in cities in the United States
[1:34:40] to pressure, in some cases, to try to seize individuals from China that are conducting actions
[1:34:49] on social media platforms that the Chinese Communist Party does not like.
[1:34:55] There's espionage on university campuses.
[1:34:59] There's offensive cyber operations, the Volt Typhoons and the Salt Typhoons that we've talked about.
[1:35:05] Those are just examples, just a couple of examples.
[1:35:08] So it's almost quite literally anything you can think of.
[1:35:11] Almost anything you can think of that can be used as a weapon against this country
[1:35:15] that the Chinese Communist Party either considers or actually uses.
[1:35:20] I think that's a fair characterization as legislators.
[1:35:24] We're here in Congress, right? We're not the executive branch.
[1:35:26] Can you recommend legislative solutions, legislative efforts in that regard to combat this unrestricted, irregular warfare?
[1:35:39] The point is, is what can we be doing to assist the administration?
[1:35:44] What can we be doing to put ourselves in the window of success?
[1:35:50] I think there are a few things.
[1:35:51] In my written testimony, I go through some of the details.
[1:35:53] I think there should be an effort to broaden the mandate for the JTTFs and the fusion centers
[1:35:58] to focus on some of these state-sponsored threats,
[1:36:02] particularly the Chinese Communist Party in the United States.
[1:36:06] I think there could also be strengthening of legislation against foreign agents operating in the United States.
[1:36:11] There has been some stronger legislation that criminalizes foreign agents that harass, surveil,
[1:36:18] or conduct other types of actions, but I think that could be strengthened.
[1:36:21] This gets into the FARA issues.
[1:36:23] There are a few others.
[1:36:25] I think Section 702, the reauthorization would actually be quite helpful as well.
[1:36:31] So those are a couple of things.
[1:36:32] How about China's involvement in our financial markets
[1:36:35] and the deference that we give to them that we don't give to American companies and individuals?
[1:36:40] Yeah, I think that's a huge problem.
[1:36:42] Yes.
[1:36:43] And legislatively, what we should?
[1:36:45] I have not thought, and maybe others on the panel have thought about what legislation might look like.
[1:36:50] I have not thought and put anything down on paper along those lines.
[1:36:54] So I could certainly come back to you on that.
[1:36:55] I think that people on this panel, certainly people in Congress are looking for, you know,
[1:37:01] everybody's busy, but we're looking for your expertise in this regard to point in the right direction
[1:37:07] so that we can hit the target, so to speak.
[1:37:10] And so those things, if you could, would be welcome additions.
[1:37:18] And I would just finally say this.
[1:37:20] Irregular unrestricted warfare also regards election meddling or what have you.
[1:37:26] It was the Democrats that first brought it up, but once the president brought it up, this president,
[1:37:31] now you're actually playing into the hands of China.
[1:37:34] Having questions about elections that are fraught with problems like counting on somebody's affidavit
[1:37:41] to prove their citizenship or their validity to vote, having questions about that is not playing
[1:37:48] into the Communist Party of China's hands.
[1:37:50] It is asking legitimate questions that are righteous.
[1:37:54] I yield.
[1:37:55] Gentleman yields.
[1:37:55] We had a miscue on the clock, so that was the reason for, yeah.
[1:37:59] We were watching, believe me, we were watching.
[1:38:02] Appreciate it.
[1:38:03] Gentleman yields.
[1:38:04] Ms. Stefani.
[1:38:05] Thank you so much.
[1:38:07] For my second round of questions, I want to delve more into the specifics of AI.
[1:38:11] Mr. McMaster will remember this.
[1:38:13] General McMaster will remember.
[1:38:14] In 2018, I was chair of the Emerging Threats for the House Armed Services Committee,
[1:38:19] and I wrote legislation called the AI Commission that was signed into law as part of the NDAA.
[1:38:24] This is when AI was just a buzzword that many members of Congress didn't know about.
[1:38:29] Now it is, you can see how much it is taking up these questions.
[1:38:33] So to delve into AI, this attack on data centers, can you discuss, maybe I'll start with Dr. Buchanan,
[1:38:42] the importance of data centers and that the U.S. be the leader when it comes to data,
[1:38:48] compute power, as data is the fuel for AI?
[1:38:53] Thank you, Congresswoman.
[1:38:54] Thank you for your leadership in creating that commission.
[1:38:56] Yeah, as I said before, computing power is the fulcrum of AI progress,
[1:39:01] and computing power is very scarce right now in the world.
[1:39:04] So my position, and I believe it's a bipartisan one,
[1:39:08] is that the United States needs to retain access to this computing power alongside democratic nations,
[1:39:14] and that it should be denied to China,
[1:39:18] given the ways in which China will use the computing power to advance its military,
[1:39:21] to propagate some of the threats we're talking about here today.
[1:39:24] So I think it's unmistakable, it's one of the core tenets of AI policy,
[1:39:28] that the United States should lead, in the democratic world,
[1:39:32] should lead in the development and use of computing power for AI.
[1:39:36] Yes, and last week, my home state of New York,
[1:39:39] in a policy that I vehemently disagreed with, set a moratorium on data centers.
[1:39:44] Can you talk about the national security risks when you have a moratorium on data centers?
[1:39:49] My viewpoint is that allows China to win.
[1:39:53] We cannot afford to lose this race.
[1:39:55] Failure is not an option.
[1:39:56] We need to lead in AI and win this.
[1:39:59] How does the moratorium on data centers impact our ability to win this race?
[1:40:03] Certainly, I think if we were to stop constructing data centers,
[1:40:05] that would impede America's AI development.
[1:40:08] There are legitimate community concerns and so forth that companies should address, in my view.
[1:40:13] One of the postures that we had in the Biden administration,
[1:40:16] an executive order the president signed, was to make federal lands available.
[1:40:20] Companies would pay for everything, including the power and so forth,
[1:40:23] but to make federal lands available for rapid data center construction,
[1:40:28] for national security purposes as well,
[1:40:31] to try to address some of the community concerns.
[1:40:34] But yeah, my view here is computing power is central to AI.
[1:40:38] AI is central to national security, and America must lead.
[1:40:41] And Dr. Jones, you referenced China's attempt to foment this opposition to data centers.
[1:40:48] Can you add on that?
[1:40:50] Yes, there is evidence.
[1:40:52] It's been published in multiple media outlets of both Chinese and Russian attempts
[1:40:56] to foment concern in American communities about data centers.
[1:41:01] It's not unlike the service, say, of the KGB doing in the United States for parts of the Cold War,
[1:41:08] but along these very lines to foment concerns in American communities about data centers.
[1:41:14] And General McMaster, I want to get your thoughts on this topic.
[1:41:18] Yes, and the other analogy I would make is how Russians financed anti-fracking groups as well
[1:41:23] to prevent America from achieving energy independence
[1:41:26] and challenging Russia's ability to apply coercive power through control of energy supplies.
[1:41:32] And so I think this is really important to understand.
[1:41:35] They're trying to hold us back and to do so with disinformation,
[1:41:38] supporting these groups that oppose the development of data centers
[1:41:41] and the energy capabilities that are so critical to it as well.
[1:41:44] Yes, unfortunately, in New York State, we also have a moratorium on fracking,
[1:41:47] a policy which I also oppose.
[1:41:49] But going back to AI, generative AI, this is separate from data centers, but related,
[1:41:56] generative AI can produce realistic text, audio, images, and video at enormous scale.
[1:42:02] What is the greater national security threat from your assessment,
[1:42:05] a highly convincing individual deepfake or the mass production of tailored content
[1:42:10] designed to manipulate different audiences and deepen social divisions?
[1:42:14] Is that for me, Congresswoman?
[1:42:18] Yes.
[1:42:18] Yes, I'm worried about the scale that AI can enable in terms of especially personalization
[1:42:24] and the like.
[1:42:24] And when Gerald McMaster was talking about some of the AI-enabled threats earlier,
[1:42:30] the word that I kept thinking of was scale and breadth.
[1:42:32] And I think that is a risk in the information space.
[1:42:35] It's also, to his point from before, I think a very significant risk in the biology space
[1:42:39] in which it is enabling, AI is enabling a diffusion of biological capabilities as well.
[1:42:46] So I think it shows up in a number of different categories of AI-enabled threat
[1:42:50] we've been discussing today.
[1:42:52] And Mr. Chalufo, thoughts on this in the last 15 seconds?
[1:42:56] So, firstly, to your first question, you cannot be AI-dominant unless you're energy-dominant.
[1:43:01] They're both in our national interest to be able to achieve those objectives.
[1:43:06] The challenge with the scale is you don't need – so if you think about ransomware and
[1:43:13] if you think about some of these scams, all you need is one person clicking and it's
[1:43:17] a good day for the bad guy.
[1:43:19] If they send 1,000 and you get two people hitting, that's success on their side.
[1:43:24] So I think you've got to deal with both.
[1:43:25] You've got to deal with our grandparents are going to think that their kids or grandkids
[1:43:30] were kidnapped and it's going to look pretty darn real with our actual voices.
[1:43:35] That's a scary thought.
[1:43:37] But the flip side is you're going to see this at scale where it is going to be targeted very
[1:43:41] specifically to different audiences to achieve very specific outcomes.
[1:43:46] Yelbeck.
[1:43:47] General Moneals, I want to thank our witnesses for your testimony today.
[1:43:51] It is greatly appreciated, very enlightening, and we hope to work with you on this subject
[1:43:56] matter in the future.
[1:43:57] Thank you all very much.
[1:43:58] This hearing is adjourned.