    [Senate Hearing 115-347]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

                                                            S. Hrg. 115-347

                        OPEN HEARING: ELECTION SECURITY

    =======================================================================

                                    HEARING

                                   BEFORE THE

                        SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE

                                     OF THE

                              UNITED STATES SENATE

                         ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS

                                 SECOND SESSION

                                   __________

                           WEDNESDAY, MARCH 21, 2018

                                   __________

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                        SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE

               [Established by S. Res. 400, 94th Cong., 2d Sess.]

                     RICHARD BURR, North Carolina, Chairman
                    MARK R. WARNER, Virginia, Vice Chairman

    JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho                DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California
    MARCO RUBIO, Florida                 RON WYDEN, Oregon
    SUSAN COLLINS, Maine                 MARTIN HEINRICH, New Mexico
    ROY BLUNT, Missouri                  ANGUS KING, Maine
    JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma             JOE MANCHIN, West Virginia
    TOM COTTON, Arkansas                 KAMALA HARRIS, California
    JOHN CORNYN, Texas
                     MITCH McCONNELL, Kentucky, Ex Officio
                      CHUCK SCHUMER, New York, Ex Officio
                        JOHN McCAIN, Arizona, Ex Officio
                      JACK REED, Rhode Island, Ex Officio
                                  ----------
                          Chris Joyner, Staff Director
                     Michael Casey, Minority Staff Director
                       Kelsey Stroud Bailey, Chief Clerk

                                   CONTENTS

                                  ----------

                                 MARCH 21, 2018

                               OPENING STATEMENTS

    Burr, Hon. Richard, Chairman, a U.S. Senator from North Carolina.     1
    Warner, Mark R., Vice Chairman, a U.S. Senator from Virginia.....     2

                                   WITNESSES
                                    Panel 1

    Nielsen, Kirstjen, Secretary, Department of Homeland Security....     4
        Prepared statement...........................................     7
    Johnson, Jeh Charles, former Secretary, Department of Homeland
      Security.......................................................    14
        Prepared statement...........................................    15

                                    Panel 2

    Manfra, Jeanette, Assistant Secretary, National Protection and
      Programs Directorate, Office of Cyber Security and
      Communications, Department of Homeland Security................    48
    Condos, Jim, Secretary of State, State of Vermont................    50
        Prepared statement...........................................    52
    Cohen, Amy, Executive Director, National Association of State
      Election Directors.............................................    57
        Prepared statement...........................................    61
    Rosenbach, Eric, Co-Director, Belfer Center for Science and
      International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School..................    66
        Prepared statement...........................................    69

                             SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

    Prepared Statement of Thomas Hicks, Chairman, U.S. Election
      Assistance Commission..........................................    98

                        OPEN HEARING: ELECTION SECURITY

                                  ----------

                           WEDNESDAY, MARCH 21, 2018

                                           U.S. Senate,
                              Select Committee on Intelligence,
                                                        Washington, DC.
        The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:34 a.m. in Room
    SH-216, Hart Senate Office Building, Hon. Richard Burr
    (Chairman of the Committee) presiding.
        Present: Burr, Warner, Risch, Rubio, Collins, Blunt,
    Lankford, Cotton, Cornyn, Feinstein, Wyden, Heinrich, King,
    Manchin, Harris, and Reed.

       OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. RICHARD BURR, CHAIRMAN, A U.S.
                      SENATOR FROM NORTH CAROLINA

        Chairman Burr. I'd like to call this hearing to order, and
    at the beginning of this hearing I would like to thank all the
    members, the witnesses, the press, and those visitors that we
    have today, with the inclement weather that was predicted and
    some has fallen. We thought it was important to continue this
    hearing, so I'm grateful to each of our witnesses. And to those
    that couldn't make it because of flights today, we have tried
    to adjust so we've got the appropriate witnesses for the second
    panel as well.
        Today the committee convenes the first open hearing to
    reflect the progress and preliminary recommendations and
    findings of our investigation into Russia's attempt to
    interfere in the 2016 U.S. elections. I'd like to welcome our
    two distinguished witnesses: Secretary of Homeland Security
    Kirstjen Nielsen; and former Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh
    Johnson. Jeh, I am grateful for the service that you provided
    to your country in a number of places. And, Secretary Nielsen,
    I have enjoyed very much the time that you have been there and
    look forward to what we can accomplish between this committee
    and the Department of Homeland Security in the future.
        I want to thank both of you for being here--for being here
    together, which I think is unprecedented, and I am grateful to
    the Administration for agreeing. It speaks to the importance of
    the issue and sends a message that transcends partisanship.
        The Vice Chairman and I asked the two of you to appear
    together to tell the story of what happened in 2016, how the
    Department reacted then and how it has evolved and what it is
    doing today. I think your collective remarks will show the
    remarkable evolution of an agency that is playing an
    increasingly important role to support the states.
        When this cyber threat surfaced in 2016, many struggled to
    understand the attack, the intentions behind it, and how to
    respond. By the beginning of 2018, however, DHS has made great
    strides towards better understanding elections, better
    understanding the states, and providing assistance that makes a
    difference to the security of our elections.
        But there's more to do. There's a long wait time for DHS
    premier services. States are still not getting all the
    information they feel they need to secure their systems. The
    Department's ability to collect all the information needed to
    fully understand the problem is an open question, and
    attributing cyber attacks quickly and authoritatively is a
    continuing challenge.
        Secretary Nielsen, as you appropriately note in your
    statement, the administration of elections is the
    responsibility of the State and local officials. And the
    support your agency provides is on a voluntary basis. What
    we've learned is that states will only engage with the
    Department if they feel there's value. And I'm confident that
    the customer service, if you can call it that, and the value
    you're providing to your State partners is improving every
    single day.
        Securing our elections requires immediate action and the
    urgency is reflected in the committee's recommendations
    released yesterday. We've convened today's hearing, in the
    midst of a snowstorm of sorts, to speak to the American people
    publicly about the threat posed by Russia and the efforts by
    our Federal, State, and local governments to protect against
    it.
        This issue is urgent. If we start to fix these problems
    tomorrow, we still might not be in time to save the system for
    2016 and 2020.
        I understand, Secretary Nielsen, you have a hard stop,
    something about a Cabinet meeting, and we respect those Cabinet
    meetings when the President calls it. So in the interest of
    time, I will end there and I will turn to the Vice Chairman for
    any remarks he might have.

    OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. MARK R. WARNER, VICE CHAIRMAN, A U.S.
                         SENATOR FROM VIRGINIA

        Vice Chairman Warner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'd like to
    welcome the witnesses as well.
        Today's hearing comes at a critical time. The committee
    remains in the midst of our bipartisan investigation into the
    Russian attacks during the 2016 election, and we still have
    more work to do. However, we as a committee felt it was
    important to move out our initial findings and recommendations
    on securing our election infrastructure, given the upcoming
    elections in November.
        Our main question today is, how do we protect 2018
    elections? And the threat is real and growing. During the 2016
    campaign, we saw unprecedented targeting of election
    infrastructure by Russian actors. Russian hackers were able to
    penetrate Illinois' voter registration database and access
    90,000 voter registration records. They also attempted to
    target the election systems of at least 20 other states. The
    intelligence community's assessment last January concluded that
    Russia secured and maintained access to multiple elements of
    U.S. State and local election boards.
        The truth is clear that 2016 will not be the last of their
    attempts. Just weeks ago, we heard from all our top
    intelligence officials testifying before this committee that
    the Russians will continue to attack our elections.
    Unfortunately, there are signs that the Kremlin is becoming
    more brazen. As we saw recently, the Putin regime was behind an
    assassination attempt on European soil with a prohibited
    military-grade nerve agent. This is obviously not the action of
    a regime that will be easily deterred.
        So how are we prepared to come against this threat that we
    know is coming again? Elections at all levels are central to
    our democracy, to our institutions, and to our government's
    legitimacy, and I remain concerned that we're still not fully
    prepared.
        Candidly--and I've shared this with both of you--I was
    disappointed on how the Department of Homeland Security, the
    primary U.S. government agency responsible for election
    security, approached this issue early on. During the 2016
    election, officials at both the Federal and State level were
    caught flat-footed, and the follow-up from the new
    Administration was not much better.
        Last June we heard from DHS, FBI, and State election
    officials about the threat to our election systems, which,
    based upon Secretary Johnson's earlier actions, DHS considers
    part of our Nation's critical infrastructure. Despite evidence
    of interference, the Federal Government and the states had
    barely communicated about strengthening our defenses. It was
    not until the fall of 2017 that DHS even fully notified the
    states that they had been potential targets. And unfortunately,
    that was an issue that members of this committee, bipartisan,
    stressed in our hearing last June. Candidly, we have to improve
    those communications.
        But clearly, more must be done, from hardening our election
    registration and voting systems, to ensuring that voting
    machines have backup paper ballots, to instituting audits and
    providing additional Federal assistance to those states that
    request it. One area I know that we're not going to talk about
    today, but I think does need additional investigation, is how
    we make sure that the ultimate startups, campaigns, have to
    practice basic cyber security.
        The threat is real and the need to act is urgent. We need
    the Administration to accelerate its efforts. Perhaps most of
    all, we need a President who will acknowledge the gravity of
    this threat and lead a whole-of-society effort to harden our
    defenses and inoculate our society against Russia's malicious
    interference. The fact that the President did not even bring up
    the topic of our election security when he called Vladimir
    Putin to congratulate him on his victory in a precooked
    election I believe is extremely troubling.
        The good news is this problem is not a Democratic or
    Republican one, and I personally want to thank all the members
    of the committee on both sides of the aisle for the good work
    that they've done. We're going to hear from some of them who've
    been working on a set of recommendations, and Senator Rubio has
    also been working on a set of recommendations. We all have to
    get this done and we have to act quickly.
        Again, I am pleased to have both of the secretaries here. I
    know it's a little bit unprecedented. I thank them both for
    being here and thank them for getting through the storm.
        With that, Mr. Chairman, I look forward to our hearing.
        Chairman Burr. I thank the Vice Chairman.
        This morning we'll hear from Secretary Nielsen and
    Secretary Johnson. Their testimony will be followed up by
    questions of up to five minutes from members, recognizing first
    Senator Collins, followed by Heinrich, Lankford, Harris, the
    Chair, the Vice Chair, and then members based upon seniority
    after that.
        Having covered that, Secretary Nielsen, the floor is yours.

        STATEMENT OF KIRSTJEN NIELSEN, SECRETARY, DEPARTMENT OF
                           HOMELAND SECURITY

        Secretary Nielsen. Well, good morning. Thank you for having
    me here. I want to thank Chairman Burr, Vice Chairman Warner,
    and all the members of the committee for not only the
    opportunity to testify, but I really do want to thank you for
    your leadership. Your bipartisan efforts here to assess what we
    did, what we didn't do, what we can do better, what we can do
    better in partnership, really can't be overstated in terms of
    its importance, so I thank you for that.
        Before we begin, I just wanted to extend my thanks to the
    first responders who've been working around the clock in Texas
    on the package bombing case. At DHS we've been in close contact
    with those on the ground and, although the situation appears to
    be over, we urge the public to remain alert and report any
    suspicious activity or packages or devices.
        Over the course of nearly three weeks, at least seven
    explosive devices were encountered in and around the Austin
    area, with five of them unfortunately detonating. Our thoughts
    go out to the victims and their families, and our gratitude is
    extended to the front-line defenders who helped locate the
    alleged perpetrator.
        The suspect is now deceased, but the case is yet another
    stark reminder of the importance of both public vigilance and
    also how important it is for close Federal, State, and local
    coordination. That coordination is also relevant, clearly, to
    the issue we have before us today.
        In a democracy, citizens must have faith that their vote
    counts and is counted correctly. Recently, in the United States
    and around the globe, we have seen malicious foreign actors
    attempt to subvert democracy by taking action to influence
    voters and by exploiting vulnerabilities in cyber space to
    attack election systems.
        In 2016, we know that Russian actors targeted State
    election systems. We have no evidence that votes were changed
    as a result of their efforts. However, the threat of
    interference remains and we recognize that the 2018 midterm and
    future elections are clearly potential targets for Russian
    hacking attempts.
        Today we have a whole-of-government effort to improve the
    resilience and security of those systems, which is led by DHS
    with assistance from the Departments of Justice, the FBI, and
    the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. We are
    working with the vendor community and, most importantly, we are
    working in voluntary partnership with our State and local
    election partners.
        There is also a separate initiative to address efforts by
    foreign nationals to influence our elections through messaging,
    propaganda, and manipulation. I think this is also a very
    important topic. That effort is being led by the Department of
    Justice, the FBI, and the Department of State.
        While DHS will, of course, support this effort, I will let
    my colleagues discuss their work in that area, and instead
    today I look forward to discussing the work that the Department
    is doing to assist State and local officials to harden our
    election systems.
        Under our Constitution and laws, as has been mentioned by
    the Chairman and the Vice, the administration of elections is
    the responsibility of State and local officials. The
    Department's mission is to provide assistance and support to
    those officials in the form of advice, intelligence, technical
    support, incident response planning, with the ultimate goal of
    building a more resilient, redundant, and secure election
    enterprise.
        Our services are voluntary and not all election officials
    accept our offer of support. We continue to offer it; we
    continue to demonstrate its value. But in many cases, State and
    local officials have their own resources and simply don't
    require the assistance that we're offering.
        DHS typically offers a range of technical services. We'll
    go into some detail today about those. More than half of the
    states have signed up for our cyber hygiene scanning service,
    which is an automated remote scan that gives State and local
    officials a report identifying vulnerabilities and offering
    recommendations to mitigate them.
        We also provide, as I believe you all have noted, on-risk
    site--excuse me--on-site risk and vulnerability assessments.
    The assessments are more thorough. We do pen testing. It's a
    full report of vulnerability and recommendations, and over the
    past year we've increased the availability of these assessments
    and prioritized them.
        Information sharing is also critical. We share information
    directly with election officials through trusted third parties
    such as the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis
    Center, or MS-ISAC, and we look forward to the creation of the
    Election ISAC. The National Cybersecurity and Communications
    Integration Center, or the NCCIC, is the Department's hub for
    information-sharing activity.
        Actionable and timely information empowers election
    officials to make more risk-informed decisions. We must rapidly
    share information about potential compromises with the broader
    community so that everyone can defend their systems. This
    collective defense approach makes all election systems more
    secure.
        We're also working with State election officials to share
    classified information on specific threats, including
    sponsoring up to three officials per State with security
    clearances and providing one-day read-ins as needed when
    needed, as we did in mid-February for the secretaries of state
    and election directors. We are also working with the
    intelligence community to rapidly declassify information to
    share with our stakeholders.
        To be clear, there has been a learning curve on the sharing
    of information. The election systems in states are often owned
    and operated by different systems: the secretary of state, the
    State CIO, in some cases the State CSO, the governor's office,
    or even counties. While appropriate technical information and
    notifications were shared with system owners, we have taken
    steps to share information much more broadly and rapidly.
        Beyond sharing information, we also share best practices
    for risk management, such as paper ballot backups and risk-
    limiting audits. The ultimate goal, of course, is enhancing
    network protection, but we must be prepared for any
    eventuality, including unauthorized access to systems.
        The NCCIC is, again, the center of these efforts. Every day
    our protective security advisors and cyber security advisors
    located nationwide are working with election officials on
    incident response planning and crisis communications. Just
    yesterday, we had both our head of NPPD as well as our cyber
    security advisor in Cook County, real-time helping in case
    there was any issue with the election.
        DHS is committed to working collaboratively with those
    administrating our elections. We have formalized and better
    coordinated these efforts through the establishment of
    government and sector coordinating councils. And today I can
    say with confidence that we know whom to contact in every State
    to share threat information. That capability did not exist in
    2016.
        DHS is leading Federal efforts to support and enhance the
    security of election systems across the country. Yet, we do
    face a technology deficit that exists not just in election
    infrastructure, but across State and local government systems.
    It will require a significant investment over time and will
    require a whole-of-government solution to ensure continued
    confidence in our elections.
        Personally, I'm looking across my existing authorities as
    Secretary of the Department and looking at our available grant
    programs for opportunities to help State and locals in this
    area. I look forward to working with Congress. I read with
    great interest the recommendations that were released yesterday
    from your study and certainly look forward to working with you
    on implementing them.
        Thank you for the opportunity to appear and I look forward
    to your questions.
        [The prepared statement of Secretary Nielsen follows:]
        [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Chairman Burr. Secretary Nielsen, thank you very much.
        Secretary Johnson, you are recognized. The floor is yours.

    STATEMENT OF JEH CHARLES JOHNSON, FORMER SECRETARY, DEPARTMENT
                          OF HOMELAND SECURITY

        Mr. Johnson. Chairman Burr, Vice Chairman Warner, other
    members of this committee: I am pleased to be here alongside
    the Secretary of Homeland Security as a witness and a concerned
    private citizen. I had the privilege of testifying before
    Congress 26 times in 37 months as Secretary, and if I'm not
    called back once in a while I begin to feel left out.
        I'm also pleased that this committee has undertaken this
    hearing on this important topic of election cyber security. You
    have my prepared statement; I won't read it in detail. It sets
    forth the efforts we made in the Department of Homeland
    Security in 2016 to assist states in securing their election
    infrastructure prior to the election and the five written
    public statements I made warning the public and the states
    about the cyber threat to the election.
        Beyond that, I'd like to say this: As each member of this
    committee knows, in 2016 the Russian government, at the
    direction of Vladimir Putin himself, orchestrated cyber attacks
    on our Nation for the purpose of influencing the election that
    year, plain and simple. The experience was a wakeup call for
    our Nation as it highlighted cyber vulnerabilities in our
    political process and in our election infrastructure itself.
        Now, with the experience fresh in our minds and clear in
    our rearview mirror, the key question for our leaders at the
    national and State level is, what are we going to do about it?
    The matter is all the more urgent given the public testimony
    our Nation's intelligence chiefs gave before this very
    committee last month that the Russian effort to interfere in
    our democracy has not ended.
        I have seen this committee's draft recommendations for the
    future and I agree with them. The reality is that, given our
    Electoral College and our current politics, national elections
    are decided in this country in a few precincts in a few key
    swing states. The outcome therefore may dance on the head of a
    pin. The writers of the TV show ``House of Cards'' have figured
    that out. So can others.
        I am pleased by reports that State election officials to
    various degrees are now taking serious steps to fortify cyber
    security of their election infrastructure and that the
    Department of Homeland Security is currently taking serious
    steps to work with them in that effort. As a Nation we must
    resolve to strengthen our cyber security generally and the
    cyber security around election infrastructure specifically.
    Nothing less than the health and strength of our democracy
    depends on this.
        I look forward to your questions.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Johnson follows:]
        [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Chairman Burr. Thank you, Secretary Johnson.
        It seems more than normal issues recently coming before
    this committee are not the jurisdiction of the committee. And
    were it not for the investigation, elections would not be the
    jurisdiction of this committee. But given the nature of our
    investigation, we have developed a committee of somewhat
    experts now on elections and election relationships between the
    Federal Government and the State. And that's why we asked
    Senator Collins, Senator Lankford, Senator Harris, and Senator
    Heinrich to take the lead as it related to election security.
        At this time, I would like to recognize Senator Collins for
    questions, followed by Heinrich, Lankford, and Harris.
        Senator Collins.
        Senator Collins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and again, let me
    thank you and the Vice Chairman for your strong bipartisan
    leadership of this investigation.
        Secretary Johnson, let me begin by thanking you for your
    extensive public service, and I very much appreciate your being
    here.
        In the summer and fall of 2016, DHS and the FBI issued
    several technical warnings about possible activities against
    State election systems. These warnings took the form of a flash
    report or a similarly technical bulletin, and generally, the
    warnings went to the IT staff of states and not to the chief
    election officials. I've read one of the FBI flash bulletins.
    It is extremely complex and it just refers to unknown actors
    scanning systems.
        In retrospect, do you think that it would have been better
    had the FBI and DHS issued a more comprehensive warning that a
    nation-state was attempting hostile action against State
    election systems?
        Mr. Johnson. Senator, let me respectfully disagree somewhat
    with your premise. I, in the fall, in August, September,
    October, issued five written statements to the public
    encouraging State election officials to come in and seek our
    cyber security assistance, over and above the technical
    messages that you cited, in mid-August, mid-September, October
    1, October 7, October 10.
        On October 1st specifically, I said: ``In recent months
    malicious cyber actors have been scanning a large number of
    State systems, which could be a preamble to attempted
    intrusions. In a few cases we have determined that malicious
    actors gained access to State voting-related systems.''
        That's a pretty blunt statement, in my view. We weren't
    then in a position in our intelligence community to attribute
    it to the Russian government, nor were we on October 7th. We
    said it was coming from a Russian business, but we weren't then
    in a position to say it was the Russian government. We later
    said that, however.
        But I can tell you that, in addition to these public
    statements, and in addition to the work of our people, we were
    beating the drum pretty hard, beginning with a conference call
    I had with every State secretary of state on August 15th. The
    good news is that by Election Day 33 states actually came in
    and sought our cyber security assistance, and 36 cities and
    counties came in and sought our cyber security assistance in
    the time permitted.
        Very definitely, Senator, as we look back on the experience
    two years later and we have a much clearer picture of the full
    extent of what the Russian government was doing, there could
    have been additional efforts made. But I'm satisfied that at
    the time this was a front-burner item for me and I was
    repeatedly making public statements warning State election
    officials about the threat we were facing as it was evolving.
        Senator Collins. Secretary Nielsen, at this point, we know
    for certain that the Russians were relentless in their efforts
    and also that those efforts are ongoing. And yet, when I listen
    to your testimony I hear no sense of urgency to really get on
    top of this issue.
        When we held our last hearing in June, I was dismayed to
    learn that not a single chief State election official had
    received a security clearance nearly eight months after the
    2016 election. We already are in an election year. We've had
    the by-elections in Virginia and New Jersey; we've had special
    elections in Pennsylvania and Alabama; our Maine primary is in
    June.
        What specifically is DHS doing to accommodate what you said
    was sponsoring three officials per State for clearances? That's
    150 officials. How many have actually received the clearances,
    and what specific actions did you take in the elections that
    have already occurred?
        Secretary Nielsen. Yes, ma'am. Thank you for the question.
    Let me just first start by saying not only is this of extreme
    urgency to the Department, but, as you know, we're expending
    not only extraordinary resources to provide any support at the
    request of states, but we are prioritizing election efforts and
    risk and vulnerability assessments for our partners in State
    and locals over all other critical infrastructure sectors.
        With respect to the security clearances, we've done two
    things. We've worked out a process with the inter-agency such
    that if we have intel we will read in the appropriate State
    election officials that day, so we're not waiting for
    clearances. If we have something to share, we will read them in
    and share it that day.
        With respect to the clearances, we are doing our best to
    speed up the process. We've prioritized them, as I said, over
    other clearances for other sectors. We have about 20 that have
    received the full clearance. We're granting interim secret
    clearances as quickly as we can.
        Senator Collins. Twenty out of 150?
        Secretary Nielsen. Yes, ma'am. And so we look--I've spoken
    with the Chairman and the Vice Chair just before. We certainly
    look forward to working with this committee government-wide on
    how we can speed up the security clearances.
        But the good news, again, is if we have something to share
    we will share that day. With or without a clearance, we'll read
    them in and share it. So it won't limit our ability to get the
    information to them any longer.
        Chairman Burr. Senator Heinrich.
        Senator Heinrich. Thank you, Chairman.
        Secretary Nielsen, Secretary Johnson said in his testimony
    just now that he agreed with the committee's recommendations.
    Do you share that view?
        Secretary Nielsen. I do, yes. And as I said in my opening
    remarks, I look forward to working with you on implementing
    them. As you know, some of them aren't DHS, so I will be happy
    to advocate and support efforts throughout government.
        Senator Heinrich. Thank you.
        Secretary Johnson, I know hindsight is obviously 20/20, but
    looking back, knowing what you know now, what might have you
    done different or advocated differently in the run-up to the
    2016 election?
        Mr. Johnson. Well, the thing that I advocated for most
    strongly and that others, obviously including the President,
    agreed with was prior to the election we needed to inform the
    American people about what we saw. Some people say we should
    have done so sooner, but it was not an easy decision.
        With the benefit of two years' hindsight, it does seem
    plain, given the testimony in this room last month, that the
    Russian effort has not been contained; it has not been
    deterred. In my experience, superpowers respond to sufficient
    deterrence and will not engage in behavior that is cost
    prohibitive. Plainly, that has not occurred and more needs to
    be done.
        With the benefit of hindsight, the sanctions we issued in
    late December have not worked as an effective deterrent and
    it's now on the current Administration to add to those and
    follow through on those.
        Senator Heinrich. So do you think, for example, having a
    very clear, articulated cyber doctrine would be an important
    part of sending that message of deterrence?
        Mr. Johnson. Yes, I agree with that. Yes.
        Senator Heinrich. Secretary Nielsen, are you concerned that
    over a year into this Administration and despite the urging of
    people on both sides of the aisle on multiple committees, that
    we still don't have a clear administrative doctrine that draws
    some--that says to the Russians or others that there will be
    consequences if you cross this line into our elections?
        Secretary Nielsen. I agree with your comments yesterday at
    the press conference, sir. As you know, we have an Executive
    Order 13800 that requires us to develop just that. Working with
    the intel community, I look forward to supporting their
    efforts.
        It does need to be whole-of-government. As the Secretary is
    saying, we have sanctions, but we need to continue to look at
    diplomats, we need to look at indictments, we need to look at
    what we can do under OFAC. It needs to be very clear that there
    are consequences when countries meddle in our affairs.
        Senator Heinrich. I don't disagree that it needs to be
    whole-of-government, but one of my concerns is that no one's
    saying, ``The buck stops here.'' We keep hearing ``whole-of-
    government''; we heard it in our worldwide threats hearing
    recently. But, someone has to take the responsibility to make
    this happen.
        How many Cabinet meetings have been focused on the whole-
    of-government strategy to make sure that in 2018 this doesn't
    happen again?
        Secretary Nielsen. We have had a number of them. We
    actually have a number coming up. But I take your point. I am a
    very strong advocate of making it very clear who has the lead
    within the Federal Government for this particular issue.
        Senator Heinrich. How important is it--you know, one of my
    concerns is that we won't be able to get State and local
    officials to take the Russian cyber threat or other cyber
    threats seriously unless they consistently hear from the
    highest levels of government that this is real, that their
    systems are truly at risk, that they need to prepare.
        Director Nielsen, do you have the support you need from the
    White House to persuade those officials to take this seriously?
        Secretary Nielsen. I do, yes. And I think one of the
    lessons we've learned is to make sure that those messages go
    far and wide. So I've briefed the homeland security advisors;
    I've briefed governors, in addition to the State election
    officials and secretaries of state.
        But to your point, within the states, because of our
    decentralized system, it's very important that everyone at
    senior levels understands the threat and is briefed in.
        Senator Heinrich. Would it help if the President were to
    simply acknowledge that this happened in 2016?
        Secretary Nielsen. Yes, sir. I think he has said that it's
    happened. What he's--the line that he's drawing is that no
    votes were changed. That doesn't mean there's not a threat. It
    doesn't mean we need to do more to prepare.
        Senator Heinrich. Secretary Johnson, in your view, how
    important is it for the President to articulate and acknowledge
    that this happened so that people take it seriously?
        Mr. Johnson. Very. The President of the United States is
    the most visible American, maybe the most visible person on the
    planet, and the things he says and does are watched very, very
    closely, so I would agree with that.
        Senator Heinrich. Thank you, Chairman.
        Chairman Burr. Senator Lankford.
        Senator Lankford. Thank you both for the work that you have
    done to be able to support the Nation. I appreciate you both
    being here and both being on this panel together. I appreciate
    that very much.
        The decentralization of our election systems is
    exceptionally important, and one of the key aspects that we've
    tried to work through on recommendations is maintaining the
    states' control of elections. Both of you have affirmed that.
        Both of you have also affirmed the recommendations that we
    have put in place. I appreciate that.
        We've worked with DHS; we've worked with secretaries of
    state around the country, to try to be able to pull these
    recommendations together to be able to do it, including
    streamlining the communications between DHS and each of the
    states, updating to voting equipment that can be, and voting
    systems that can be, audited after the fact to just get
    verifiable information in that system. So, we think that's
    exceptionally important.
        Secretary Nielsen, can you affirm to me that there is no
    effort from the Federal Government right now to be able to
    federalize our elections, and that the focus is still on
    working with states to be able to support them and the work
    that they're doing to be able to run their elections?
        Secretary Nielsen. Absolutely.
        Senator Lankford. Talk to me a little bit about, Secretary
    Nielsen, about the classifications and getting classified
    information to individual secretaries of state. This was a
    struggle in previous times, during that election time period,
    getting information out. What would make a difference now,
    having clearances for individuals in the states and being able
    to communicate with them? What can you give to them with
    clearance that you couldn't give to them without?
        Secretary Nielsen. It's a good question. We've done a lot
    of work on three related processes over the last year. One is
    to work with the intel community to declassify information. As
    you know, some of the information does not originate within
    DHS, so we need to work with our partners to be able to share
    it.
        The second one is on victim notification. We have a role
    there, but so does FBI and so does MS-ISAC, which in this case
    the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center was in
    some cases the first organization to identify some of the
    targeting. So, we have to work with whomever originates the
    information. We all have different roles. So we've worked to
    pull it all together so that we can quickly notify victims of
    what has occurred.
        With respect to your specific question, as I mentioned to
    Senator Collins, what we've done is we're widely using day
    read-ins now, so we're not going to let security clearances
    hold us up. If we have information State and locals need, we
    will provide it.
        Senator Lankford. So, Secretary Johnson, you had some
    states give you push-back when you talked about things like
    making states critical infrastructure in their election systems
    and trying to be able to get that communication. You talked
    about an August 15th phone call that you had with secretaries
    of state to be able to talk to them.
        Talk me through what happened in that August 15th phone
    call? Is that a normally scheduled phone call? Was there
    consistent communication? And the things that Secretary
    Nielsen's dealing with now and that two-way communication
    that's much needed and that trust relationship, some of the
    things that you faced as well trying to be able to maintain
    trust with State election officials?
        Mr. Johnson. Incidentally, Senator, last year, last summer,
    I had the occasion to drive across country and return to
    Oklahoma City, to the memorial there.
        Senator Lankford. And thanks for being there, again.
        Mr. Johnson. So August 15th I was considering designating
    election infrastructure critical infrastructure, which the
    Secretary of Homeland Security has the authority to do. But I
    wanted to talk to State election officials about it first. I
    was, frankly, surprised and disappointed that there seemed to
    be a lot of misapprehension about what that would mean. I said
    to them a number of times that what it means is that we
    prioritize providing assistance to you if you ask. This is
    voluntary. It's not a Federal takeover; it's not a binding
    operational directive of any sort.
        And the reaction I got was largely neutral to negative; and
    so the priority had to be getting the states to come to us to
    seek our cyber security assistance. So rather than just simply
    make that designation, which I saw was going to be
    controversial at the time, we put it aside and encouraged them
    to come in. And most states actually did by Election Day.
        After the election, I came back to this issue. A lot of
    them were still opposed, but I did it anyway so that DHS would
    prioritize providing cyber security assistance to the states.
        And when we talk about cyber doctrine, one international
    cyber norm is that nation-states will not attack critical
    infrastructure, and so by making election infrastructure part
    of critical infrastructure they get the protection of the
    international cyber norm.
        Senator Lankford. Thank you.
        Chairman Burr. Senator Harris.
        Senator Harris. Thank you.
        Secretary Nielsen, at a roundtable 42 days ago at the
    Homeland Security Committee meeting I asked Deputy Secretary
    Duke and Undersecretary Krebs whether DHS is prioritizing risk
    and vulnerability assessments for the states. I didn't get a
    clear commitment that you are.
        I'd also like to know, have you received the request that
    we made for a timetable for those assessments? Because we've
    not received a response to that request.
        Secretary Nielsen. Yes, ma'am. We are prioritizing. We have
    19 that are State and localities that have either been
    completed or are in process. We continue to offer the
    assistance, but we have made the commitment and prioritized the
    resources that any State or locality that requests that, we
    will have it completed before the midterm election.
        Senator Harris. Do you have a date for completion?
        Secretary Nielsen. Well, of the 19 I can get back to you,
    but those are the only ones who have requested so far.
        Senator Harris. Can you commit to completing all these
    assessments by June 1st, which would be five months before the
    election?
        Secretary Nielsen. Depending on who requests. But I'm happy
    to work with you on timelines as soon as we get a request.
        Senator Harris. And of the number you mentioned you said
    have been completed or in the process.
        Secretary Nielsen. Yes, that's correct.
        Senator Harris. How many have been completed?
        Secretary Nielsen. To my knowledge, 15. If that's not
    correct, I'll ask Jeanette Manfra to correct me when she
    speaks.
        Senator Harris. Okay, because you earlier said in the
    process of or have been completed.
        Secretary Nielsen. That's right. So I believe 15 have been
    completed. But again, she'll verify if I have that number
    wrong.
        Senator Harris. Okay. Well, we heard from her yesterday and
    she said that 14 are in the process.
        Secretary Nielsen. Okay. That's 19 total.
        Senator Harris. Can you follow up with how many have
    actually been completed?
        Secretary Nielsen. Sure. Sure.
        It's also a little confusing because, of course, they're
    states and localities. So 19 is states and localities.
        Senator Harris. Okay. My question concerns states. Thank
    you.
        Secretary Nielsen. Perfect.
        Senator Harris. Is there a protocol for following up to
    ensure that the reforms that you recommend have actually been
    completed?
        Secretary Nielsen. We do continue to work with them through
    hygiene scanning and others.
        Senator Harris. Is there a protocol to do that?
        Secretary Nielsen. That is the protocol that we offer. But
    again, it's all voluntary, so it's not a mandatory check.
        Senator Harris. Okay. In the intelligence community there
    is a concept called ``duty to warn.'' And, Secretary Johnson,
    I'd like to ask you--and essentially the concept is that, if a
    Federal agency learns that a person is at a risk of imminent
    harm or an entity is at risk, that they should be informed, and
    obviously without giving up critical information that we have
    in terms of sources and methods.
        Do you believe in the future that the Department should
    have a duty to warn states if the Department of Homeland
    Security is informed that there are imminent cyber security
    threats to their election systems?
        Mr. Johnson. Yes, absolutely.
        Senator Harris. Secretary Nielsen, do you agree with that?
        Secretary Nielsen. Yes.
        Senator Harris. Will you commit, then, to this committee
    that you will in fact warn those states when you become aware
    of imminent threat to their cyber security systems for
    elections?
        Secretary Nielsen. With the inter-agency, yes, ma'am.
        Senator Harris. Okay. And when you learn of these threats,
    will you also commit to informing immediately congressional
    committees, and particularly the Intelligence Committee?
        Secretary Nielsen. As you know, we--we will work with you
    on that. As you know, the entire process is voluntary. What we
    find is when we notify others of who the victims are,
    unfortunately it has a chilling effect and we no longer get the
    information from those who have been attacked. So we'll
    continue to work with you on how to do that.
        Senator Harris. So my question is will you commit to
    specifically informing the Senate Intelligence Committee when
    you become aware of those threats?
        Secretary Nielsen. We'll continue to work with you on the
    best protocols for that, yes.
        Senator Harris. So the answer is yes?
        Secretary Nielsen. The answer is it's very difficult if a
    State does not want to be identified because it's a voluntary
    relationship. I don't want to do anything that would limit our
    ability to understand who is being attacked. So we'd have to
    work with the victim, just like we do in any other sector, and
    work with you to make sure that we do it in the right way.
        Senator Harris. Would you commit to informing your
    oversight committee, which is the Homeland Security Committee
    of the United States Senate?
        Secretary Nielsen. I understand your question, and again
    we'll have to work with the victims. It's a voluntary system.
        Senator Harris. You sit on the Principals Committee of the
    National Security Council, is that correct?
        Secretary Nielsen. I'm a member, yes.
        Senator Harris. Okay. And that committee is comprised of
    Cabinet officials and is responsible for advising the President
    and coordinating policy on America's most serious national
    security challenges. Has the Principals Committee held a
    meeting focused on the security of the 2018 election?
        Secretary Nielsen. I myself hosted it, yes.
        Senator Harris. And when did that meeting take place?
        Secretary Nielsen. A few weeks ago.
        Senator Harris. And what decisions were made regarding
    election security?
        Secretary Nielsen. That State and locals remain in charge;
    that DHS needs to continue to expand our tool kit of what we
    can provide in support; that we need to work on tear lines, we
    need to work on victim notification, we need to work on
    clearances, and we need to work on communications to make sure
    that the public is aware of the threat.
        Senator Harris. And did you indicate timelines and due
    dates for what should happen before the 2018 election?
        Secretary Nielsen. Well, clearly everything should be done
    before that, but yes, for each one of those we have an
    agreement on a path forward with a timeline.
        Senator Harris. Will you provide that to this committee?
        Secretary Nielsen. Happy to.
        Senator Harris. Thank you.
        Chairman Burr. Thank you, Senator Harris.
        The Chair would recognize himself, and then the Vice
    Chairman, and then members based upon seniority.
        Secretary Johnson, I remember very clearly when you called
    a Gang of Eight meeting for the notification. And if I remember
    my timing right, I think Senator Reid actually might have had a
    brief the end of July because he happened to be in town. And
    when everybody got back, the 1st of September, you sat down
    with us and sort of presented us the scenario, and at that time
    talked about the critical infrastructure designation. It was
    followed some weeks after that by an all-members brief in the
    Senate; I'm sure it was in the House, as well.
        And I think you alluded to the fact that that was not
    received by the states or election officials, the critical
    infrastructure designation.
        In hindsight, for us knowing going forward, was that a
    mistake to even mention that? Did that taint the pool of their
    trust with us, with government, and maybe what the intent was
    on their part?
        Mr. Johnson. Well, we put it aside; and I was very pleased
    with the level of participation that we got. I thought it was
    important--I thought that the critical infrastructure
    designation, frankly, is something we should have done years
    before. It made so much sense.
        I think that the disadvantage we had with the timing was
    that it was in the midst of an election year and a rather
    heated election year. So I did put it aside, but then I, just
    before leaving office, came back to it because I thought it was
    something important to do.
        But in answer to your question, Senator, I think that we
    were able to build, in the time permitted, a pretty
    constructive relationship with a lot of states, red states and
    blue states, that all came to DHS to seek our assistance in the
    election season.
        Chairman Burr. I appreciate that. Even Secretary Nielsen's
    reluctance to be able to say, ``I would definitely do it this
    way''--let me just say, in our hearings we've found that states
    do not want a critical infrastructure designation, that there's
    a red line there. And I think we've learned as this has gone
    on. We've seen it. It's visceral.
        It's something that can be overcome with trust, and I think
    that's why as we produce benefits to the customer, which is any
    official or locality that has an election, then we gain a
    little bit more trust, we gain a little bit more ability to
    play a bigger role in the partnership, but not in taking over.
    I want to make it clear: Our recommendations do not intend or
    suggest that the government take over elections. It's not the
    Secretary or the Department's view of that, and it wasn't from
    the last Administration.
        But that designation did affect their willingness to come
    in and ask for help and suggest where problems were that they
    saw.
        Let me ask both of you. We'll start with you, Secretary
    Johnson. In 2016, were there any votes that were affected by
    this intrusion into any system in America?
        Mr. Johnson. Not to my knowledge, sir.
        Chairman Burr. Secretary Nielsen.
        Secretary Nielsen. We have no evidence that any votes were
    changed.
        Chairman Burr. Secretary Nielsen, looking forward ahead to
    2018, what is DHS's current estimation of the threat to our
    elections from Russia or any other hostile actor?
        Secretary Nielsen. Thank you for the question. I think, as
    you've noted, many of you in the press conference yesterday,
    unfortunately, once these vulnerabilities have been made clear,
    it's not just Russia that we have to worry about. These are
    vulnerabilities and attack vectors that any adversary could
    pursue. So we think the threat remains high. We think vigilance
    is important, and we think there is a lot that we all need to
    do at all levels of government before we have the midterm
    elections.
        I will say our decentralized nature both makes it difficult
    to have a nationwide effect, but also makes it perhaps a
    greater threat at a local level. And of course, if it's a swing
    State or swing area that can in turn have a national effect.
        So what we're looking at is everything from registration
    and validation of voters, so those are the databases, through
    to the casting and the tabulation of votes, through to the
    transmission, the election night reporting, and then, of
    course, the certification and auditing on the back end. All of
    those are potential vulnerabilities. All of those require
    different tools and different attention by State and locals.
        The last thing I would just quickly mention is we all
    continue to work with State and locals to also help them look
    at physical security. They need to make sure that the locations
    where the voting machines are kept, as well as the tabulation
    areas; they need access control and very traditional security
    like we would in other critical infrastructure areas.
        Chairman Burr. I thank both of you.
        Let me just say for the public's education, there's a clear
    distinction between what we're here to talk about today, which
    is the election process and how an outside actor could impact
    or influence that, versus, say, Russia's distinct campaign at
    societal chaos and their use of social media platforms. That's
    another area of investigation by this committee.
        But this particular area is focused on the elections and
    the process of one vote and it counts and that there's accuracy
    in that count.
        Vice Chairman.
        Vice Chairman Warner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        I want to follow up on some of the line of Senator Harris'
    question. And I'm sympathetic to the notion that you've got to
    have this collaborative relationship with the states, and I
    think the recommendations put forward by our members don't want
    to take over the Federal elections.
        But for both of you, because we know this is such a serious
    problem, because we know the Russians are and potentially
    others are coming at this, I think it is critical that, even if
    you don't want to highlight this, someone needs to highlight
    those states or localities that perhaps choose not to
    participate or not to move to a paper trail.
        You know, I have empathy for Secretary Johnson's notion of
    calling elections critical infrastructure. I think they are,
    but I get the notion of the pushback.
        So how do we work through that? And I believe the public
    does have a right to know if their State or if their community
    basically is ignoring this problem. Briefly, from both, if you
    could?
        Mr. Johnson. Senator, there's actually a role for the
    United States Senate to play in this.
        Vice Chairman Warner. We're trying.
        Mr. Johnson. During 2016, if I had resistance from a State
    I would call one of you and say: ``Would you please call your
    governor? Would you please call your secretary of state and
    tell them that they really need to come to us for assistance?''
    I did have that conversation with at least one Senator, I
    recall very distinctly, and I thought it was effective.
        Vice Chairman Warner. Secretary Nielsen.
        Secretary Nielsen. I agree. I would say that there are 33
    states right now who have their voting systems certified by
    EAC. I think that's important. We should seek for all states to
    do that. There's 35 states that require it by law, so we'll
    continue to work with EAC on those voluntary voting system
    guidelines.
        But DHS is also working on our own baseline that would be a
    much more comprehensive look at all of the cyber security
    aspects within the election process. We intend to provide that
    to you and we intend to ask states to meet it.
        We have two states who aren't working with us as much as we
    would like right now. We're working through that. But yes, our
    intent would be to go to those congressional delegations and
    get some help from you.
        Vice Chairman Warner. I think it's very important, because
    I understand you've got to have a cooperative relationship, but
    I do think our constituents, our voters, need to know if a
    State or a jurisdiction is not stepping up.
        Secretary Nielsen. I agree.
        Vice Chairman Warner. We've talked a lot about the actual
    voting machines, and Senator Wyden may come to this issue when
    his time is up, but when you look at an overall State or
    locality's voter file, oftentimes those voter files are
    maintained by an outside vendor. Many of those outside vendors
    then collect all the information at a single point. So you may
    not have to go through simply the State system, but you could
    actually attack the vendors.
        Could you address what we're doing to try to upgrade
    security at the vendor level?
        Secretary Nielsen. Sure. We're working with vendors on
    supply chain, so we have launched a voluntary supply chain
    initiative within DHS across all sectors, but also to help the
    vendors understand the part and parcel that comprises the
    machines that they sell, that they offer.
        We also have a system or a program called Enhanced Cyber
    Security Services. It's a version of our EINSTEIN program,
    where we take classified indicators and we offer that through
    the private sector to vendors and states alike. We have six
    states taking us up on that and multiple vendors within the
    vendor community.
        Vice Chairman Warner. Well, I would make a request that,
    again similar to the states and localities, if there are
    vendors who are unwilling to cooperate or upgrade their
    security, I think it's critically important that this committee
    and other committees know so that perhaps we can bring
    pressure, as well.
        I think that is an enormous vulnerability. We've looked at
    the systems, but I think the vendors who service those systems.
    And I hope, Secretary Johnson, you would agree with that.
        Let me get to one other area. Our committee's investigation
    has been about election systems and security and how we can
    protect ourselves going forward. One area that we know where
    the Russians penetrated in 2016 was actually the campaigns,
    their ability to hack into the----
        Secretary Nielsen. Right.
        Vice Chairman Warner [continuing]. The DNC and release that
    information on a selective basis. Campaigns in many ways are
    the ultimate startups. They have very little security built in.
    This does not fit neatly into any governmental oversight, but
    do you have recommendations for us? The policy recommendations
    so far have been around systems, but should there be basic
    cyber hygiene guidelines for campaigns? And I'd like to hear
    from both of you on that topic.
        Mr. Johnson. Yes, Senator, and the answer is yes. Campaigns
    are not immune from nation-state surveillance, nation-state
    hacking. I was very specific in not including political
    campaigns in the critical infrastructure designation because I
    didn't think it was appropriate. But, you know, you could go on
    with a long list of infrastructure that needs certain basic
    best practices, whether it's a political campaign, a utility,
    an academic institution. So I would agree with that, yes.
        We've seen a number of instances where political campaigns,
    the e-mail systems of campaigns, have been hacked and data
    information has been stolen, going back years, as you know.
        Vice Chairman Warner. And recognizing it's voluntary.
        Secretary Nielsen.
        Secretary Nielsen. I completely agree. We are offering a
    variety of services there, as well: the hygiene scanning, as
    you mentioned, as well as just basic redundancy planning.
        Again, the issue here is that the information in the voter
    rolls, the databases, might be changed in some way, so having
    some way to audit that, to have redundancy, resiliency. We're
    working on planning with them and helping them understand best
    practices for just basic continuity of operations. But yes,
    you're hitting on another vulnerability that should be
    considered.
        Chairman Burr. Senator Rubio.
        Senator Rubio. Thank you both, thank you both for being
    here. This is an important topic that I think is misunderstood.
    A lot of people focus on it as far as did they change the
    results of the election.
        So I sat down last night and I thought to myself, you know,
    if you were to write, what's a hypothetical that could point to
    people how serious a problem this can become in the future? So
    here's a hypothetical scenario and I want you both to kind of
    opine whether that's something that could happen and whether
    I'm right in my assumptions, all right?
        So let's assume for a moment that the year is 2020 or 2024
    and there's a foreign leader who's tired of being lectured
    about democracy in their own country and they decide they want
    to create chaos in the United States and create doubts about
    our legitimacy. So he or she orders an operation against our
    presidential election. And now for the last five or six years
    this foreign power has identified ways to penetrate election
    officials at the State and the county level across America.
    There are so many of these that there's just this target-rich
    environment.
        One of the things they've perfected over the years, for
    example, in this hypothetical, is the ability to inject
    misinformation into the bloodstream of the internet, and they
    watch as this misinformation spreads like a virus until a
    significant number of people believe it. They've also
    perfected, by the way, strategic leaking of altered or factual
    information, which the mainstream media picks up on and it fits
    perfectly into the red-versus-blue dynamic that plays out on
    cable news, making them unwitting agents.
        So the plan of this foreign power in 2020 or 2024 in this
    hypothetical would not be to change the election results; it
    would be to create doubts about the validity of the election.
    And then spread those doubts using social media and media
    driven by red-versus-blue conflict, and ultimately call into
    question the legitimacy of a new President and potentially even
    trigger a constitutional crisis.
        So what they do, is they penetrate the voter database of
    local election officials in strategically located counties or
    states. And then they use analytic information they may have
    gotten from who knows where to identify specific voters, or
    maybe just party registration, maybe the stolen data of a
    campaign with identified supporters. And they use that
    information to go into the database and they change the
    addresses of individuals; thereby their precincts move around.
    Maybe they even delete some people from the rolls.
        The result is that on Election Day we start getting reports
    about thousands of voters in different parts of the country who
    can't vote because when they show up they're not registered,
    they're not in the system. Or they show up and they're told
    that their voting place is halfway across town somewhere else.
        Interestingly, a significant number of these voters who
    start complaining about this happen to be either of the same
    party or at least self-identified partisans of let's just call
    it Candidate A, and they live in a county or in a State that
    miraculously happens to be controlled by government officials
    of the opposite party.
        So these reports start getting out there and suddenly,
    magically, a bunch of these names on social media start
    spreading all these reports about what's going on on Election
    Day.
        Here's the other thing this foreign government's been able
    to figure out. This is all hypothetical. They've ultimately
    been able to mess with the system that kind of posts the
    results early, not the ultimate results, but just like
    unofficial results. And so that evening these results start
    coming up and, surprisingly, Candidate A is doing better than
    Candidate B, and people are surprised by it. But then the
    official results come back and it's a total reversal.
        So what happens, as you can imagine, at that point is
    Candidate A refuses to concede. There's this all-out fight
    going on in American society. In the months to come millions of
    people march on Washington to try to force the Electoral
    College not to certify. The reverse millions come out the other
    side.
        Come January, we don't even know if we can swear in a
    President. The military doesn't know who the commander-in-chief
    is. We're in an all-out constitutional crisis, total chaos. For
    the first time in 200-and-something years, the American
    republic is under duress from the inside out.
        That sounds like something from a novel or a drama, a
    dramatic presentation in the movies. How far-fetched is this,
    given the capability of foreign adversaries? Is this not the
    central threat that faces us when it comes to elections and the
    integrity of our election systems? And the reason why I ask is
    not because anyone on this committee doubts it, but because we
    also have local, State officials across the country who do not
    have this perspective, this broader perspective. To them it's
    just about whether or not they could change the tallies. You
    don't have to change the tallies to create all-out chaos. Is
    that not the central threat here?
        Mr. Johnson. Yes, Senator. I actually believe that the
    first half of your hypothetical was not a hypothetical. The
    second half of your hypothetical, insofar as votes, was my
    biggest concern in the fall of 2016 when we saw the scanning
    and probing around voter registration data, and that's a very
    real threat in my judgment.
        The other point I'd like to make about your hypothetical:
    In the fall of 2016, prior to the election, I thought long and
    hard about where the single points of failure are that could
    create that scenario. And the thing that occurred to me was
    Associated Press. Associated Press for years has been the
    entity on which we rely to report State election results to the
    rest of the media.
        So I actually picked up the phone and called the CEO of the
    Associated Press to go over with him to ensure that he had
    enough redundancies in their system if there was a failure on
    election night, and I was satisfied that they did. But it's
    something to also focus on.
        But I think your hypothetical is a very good one and I
    think all Americans should be concerned about it.
        Secretary Nielsen. I agree. I think what you have
    highlighted are all the various parts at which we need to make
    sure that we are securing the system, because any one of those,
    as you say, can create that doubt, which in and of itself is
    perhaps what the adversary is trying to accomplish.
        So from a DHS perspective moving forward, we're looking
    very carefully at how we can help entities at all of the places
    that you described protect their databases, as we saw in the
    summer of 2016 with the Structured Query Language, the SQL
    injections and attempts to manipulate the databases. We'll be
    scanning for that should someone take us up on our offer.
        Provisional ballots become very important for the reasons
    you've described. States should plan for what happens on
    Election Day if a variety of voters appear and suddenly they're
    not on the rolls but believe that they should be.
        We will have people in SOCs throughout the country. We will
    be stood-up 24/7 on any Election Day to provide immediate
    instant response should anything come up.
        And then, as the secretary mentioned, on election night
    it's very important to work with AP and others before the
    election results are formally certified and audited, to ensure
    that there's not information that's put out.
        So what I would suggest is that we all look at what you
    would call a hypothetical, but as the secretary rightly points
    out, is probably closer to a very good possibility, and walk
    through each of those and make sure that we are providing the
    tools and resources we need to State and locals so that they
    can prevent, identify, track, and then respond to any such
    issues.
        Chairman Burr. Senator Rubio said ``hypothetical,'' but if
    I hear he's doing a book tour we're going to all claim royalty
    off of it.
        [Laughter.]
        Chairman Burr. Senator Feinstein.
        Senator Feinstein. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
        I think Senator Rubio hit the nail on the head, and I'll
    tell you what surprises me. First of all, Secretary Johnson,
    it's great to have you back again. I enjoyed working with you,
    and so welcome.
        Let me ask you this first question. I don't understand. You
    learned about this in August. You did a number of specific
    things. You spoke about the dates that you did these things.
    And yet the American people were never told. Why?
        Mr. Johnson. Well, Senator, the American people were told.
        Senator Feinstein. Not sufficiently in any way, shape, or
    form to know that there was a major active measure going on,
    perhaps by a foreign power.
        Mr. Johnson. On October 7, 2016, the Director of National
    Intelligence and I issued a pretty blunt statement saying that
    the Russian government was interfering in our political
    process, directed by the highest levels of the Russian
    government. That was a pretty blunt statement. Some people
    believe we should have done that sooner.
        Frankly, it did not get the attention that I thought it
    should have received. It was below-the-fold news the next day
    because of the release of the Access Hollywood video the same
    day and a number of other events. I was expecting follow-up
    from a lot of journalists and we never got that because
    everyone was focused on the campaign and that video and the
    debate that Sunday.
        Senator Feinstein. As I recall, I was Ranking and, as I
    also recall, Senator Burr and I and a couple of others had Mr.
    Brennan in--not Coats--well, it was Brennan, it was the head of
    the--it was Comey, and it was Clapper who laid it out to us.
    Now, this was highly secret.
        Subsequently, it became known that there were 21 states
    that in fact had been pierced. But that information as to what
    states has not been released.
        So when we first heard, it was highly secret, in a SCIF. We
    could say nothing about it. And even now, where I see no reason
    that 21 states can't be released as having been even possibly
    pierced by an active measure of a foreign country at this time,
    so those states would at least know that maybe they should take
    a look and do something about it.
        If either of you can answer that--it's not in a question
    form, but I think you know where I'm going, because if we're
    told and it's all classified we can say nothing. If this is
    being done by the Administration to prevent it from being
    released, nobody can protect themselves.
        Mr. Johnson. Senator, two things. First, as Secretary
    Nielsen pointed out, very often the victims of a cyber attack
    are extremely sensitive to the fact of a disclosure that they
    were the victims of a cyber attack, and that was true in this
    circumstance.
        I also know and recall that in 2016, when we were working
    with the states, every State or every State owner of a system
    that had been targeted, was informed either by DHS or the FBI
    or through the MS-ISAC, the information-sharing organization.
        Senator Feinstein. But it was never made public, Mr.
    Johnson.
        Ms. Nielsen, I don't understand why the same thing
    persists. I mean, this ``victim'' sort of appellation--
    America's the victim and America has to know what's wrong. And
    if there are states that have been attacked, America should
    know that. So this ``victim'' answer with me has no credibility
    at all.
        Secretary Nielsen. As you know, the 21 states themselves
    have been notified. But I take your point.
        Senator Feinstein. But the people have to know. If my State
    is notified, I better see that they do something about it.
    Everybody thinks, oh, it's some other State.
        Secretary Nielsen. Right, I understand. I look forward to
    reading your report and finding out what you heard from the
    states.
        I think what I was trying to explain earlier is,
    unfortunately what we've seen in other sectors----
        Senator Feinstein. There was no report.
        Secretary Nielsen. The one that you're working on, I'm
    sorry, the report. I just look forward to reading it to see
    what you've--because I know you've talked to many of the states
    yourselves.
        But what we've seen, unfortunately, throughout the last 15
    years at DHS is, when it comes to this situation the victims
    stop reporting. When they stop reporting, we're just not aware
    of the attacks. Not only can we not help them, but we can't
    help other victims that are likely to be victimized in the near
    future based on the same vulnerabilities.
        So we have to balance that. I really look forward to
    working with you on this. I take your point. We've got to find
    a way to encourage reporting and encourage cooperation while
    also making it transparent.
        Senator Feinstein. But I think states have to know that
    it's going to be known by the public if they don't. And if it's
    never made public, I'll bet you you have a bunch of states:
    Well, we've invested in this and we're not going to do anything
    about it now, and we'll see what happens in the future. I'll
    bet that happens in some places, and you're enabling it.
        Secretary Nielsen. Well, I think what we're doing at DHS is
    we'll come out with this. As I mentioned before, EAC has
    guidelines, but we're working on a baseline that's much more
    comprehensive. What we will do is not only tell states that
    that's our best recommendation at what they need to meet, but
    we'll be very transparent as to the states that don't meet it.
    So we will do that. From a preparedness side and a prevention
    standpoint, we will make clear what states need to do more.
        But in terms of moving forward, yes, we need to work on
    this issue of the notification.
        Chairman Burr. Senator Feinstein and I were faced with a
    similar task as it related to cyber security legislation. Do
    you make it mandatory reporting? Do you make it voluntary? If
    you make it voluntary, what latitude do you have to make public
    disclosures of who has turned in information?
        And we decided with that legislation that voluntary was the
    best approach for cyber reporting and it was up to the
    companies then whether they wanted to make public
    acknowledgements. I think all of us know that the banking
    system is riddled with intrusions, but no financial institution
    in America wants to go out and that to be public. So we do have
    a predicament.
        Senator Feinstein. And that may change.
        Chairman Burr. That may change.
        The committee is committed to work with the Department of
    Homeland Security to continue to make our system better.
        Senator Blunt.
        Senator Blunt. Thank you, Chairman.
        Well, you know, we do know that the fabric of democracy is
    people's belief that what happened on Election Day was what
    actually happened, so securing those systems, important;
    securing the systems of registration, important.
        Secretary Johnson, you mentioned, following Senator Rubio's
    great hypothetical of what clearly could happen, you said it's
    not hypothetical. Now, you didn't mean by that that this is
    what happened, did you?
        Mr. Johnson. I thought that the first half of Senator
    Rubio's hypothetical, as I heard it, was real----
        Senator Blunt. You think that----
        Mr. Johnson [continuing]. Insofar as the misinformation
    campaign that he described.
        Senator Blunt. I thought what you were talking about was
    the infiltration of the registration systems.
        Mr. Johnson. No, no. That was my--that is hypothetical, but
    it was my biggest concern in 2016.
        Senator Blunt. Well, it is a concern. There's no doubt
    about that.
        At the same time, we've never had an election where--let me
    see if I can find your quote, Secretary Nielsen--where a number
    of voters didn't appear on Election Day who were not on the
    voting rolls but thought they were. I was a State election
    official; I was a local election official. There is never an
    election where lots of people don't show up, particularly a
    presidential election, and they're sure they should be on the
    rolls----
        Secretary Nielsen. Right.
        Senator Blunt [continuing]. But often there are reasons
    that they're not on the rolls.
        Most states that didn't have a provisional opportunity to
    cast a ballot before 2000 I think added one after 2000. So that
    voter almost always is allowed to cast their ballot. If this
    needs to be judged in some way, it's done after the election.
    Sometimes it's easily figured out. Sometimes it turns out that
    the voter has already voted somewhere else, or the voter lives
    in another county, or the voter lives in another State. But
    they get a chance in most states to cast that ballot even if
    they have--if there's a question about whether they're on the
    voter rolls.
        I'm much more--I'm concerned about the voter rolls,
    concerned about the infiltration of the voter rolls. I'm much
    more concerned that we secure the counting systems. We're going
    to have another panel to talk about that, that the counting
    systems themselves be secure. I think it really is critical
    infrastructure.
        Secretary Johnson, your August outreach to election
    officials, did you provide much information as to what it meant
    to become critical infrastructure? Or did they have any reason
    to really understand why you were making this suggestion of a
    great change of responsibility 90 days before the election?
        Mr. Johnson. I went through with them in August in detail
    what a critical infrastructure designation would mean. And I
    explained essentially three things: that it prioritizes the
    assistance that we provide if they ask; it means for a certain
    greater level of confidential communications between DHS and
    the states; and it means that they would have the protection of
    the international cyber security norm. And I stressed at the
    time that this is all voluntary and it prioritizes assistance
    if they seek it.
        Senator Blunt. You know, we're going to have a secretary of
    state on the next panel who I think was on that call, and I
    don't believe that's their view of how that conversation went.
    But we'll see what their view is.
        The other question when you brought this up before, what
    would the protection of the international norm be? We've had
    our Federal personnel records have been--somebody has those. We
    have all kinds of financial information that's been out there.
    What good--what is the international norm supposed to provide
    here that it doesn't appear to provide anywhere else in terms
    of real protection?
        Mr. Johnson. The international norm is that nation-states
    will not attack critical infrastructure. Now, obviously it's
    incumbent upon the victim State to then do something about it
    if their critical infrastructure is attacked. But the
    designation makes clear that we consider election
    infrastructure to be critical infrastructure like government,
    like our defense industry, like our financial services
    industry.
        Senator Blunt. Well, I don't disagree that it's critical
    infrastructure. I'm not sure I agree that calling it ``critical
    infrastructure'' provides much of a level of security right
    now.
        My last question for this panel. Secretary Nielsen, you
    mentioned the Election Assistance Commission a couple of times.
    Do you have concerns that we're moving into an area here where
    that commission and your agency will not quite know where the--
    how do we define this in a way that creates the lines of
    responsibility so that somebody knows who is responsible and
    what they're responsible for?
        Secretary Nielsen. Yes. As you know, DHS is working very
    closely with EAC. We've created a Government Coordinating
    Council. EAC and DHS sit on that along with a variety of State
    and local election officials.
        EAC certifies the systems. EAC has the voluntary voting
    system guidelines. We're working with them and NIST to update
    those. They need to be updated. We hope that the final draft
    will come out next month. We need to continue to work with them
    to expedite that so that we have a guideline that reflects the
    current threat.
        But I would say I think the role between DHS and EAC is
    clear right now. It's just making sure that we're doing it in
    lockstep so that we're together providing the assistance that
    the states need.
        Senator Blunt. I may have some questions for the record on
    that topic.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Chairman Burr. Senator Wyden.
        Senator Wyden. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Secretary Nielsen, Secretary Johnson, good to have both of
    you here.
        I want to start by talking about the fact, 43 percent of
    American voters use voting machines that researchers have found
    have serious security flaws, including backdoors. These
    companies are accountable to no one. They won't answer basic
    questions about their cyber security practices, and the biggest
    companies won't answer any questions at all.
        Five states have no paper trail, and that means there is no
    way to prove the numbers the voting machines put out are
    legitimate. So much for cyber security 101.
        My question to you, for Secretary Nielsen, is: Does your
    agency have the authority to mandate basic cyber security in
    the electronic voting machines used in this country?
        Secretary Nielsen. No, sir.
        Senator Wyden. Does any agency?
        Secretary Nielsen. Not to my knowledge, not at the Federal
    level.
        Senator Wyden. Okay.
        Now, Americans don't expect states, much less county
    officials, to fight America's wars. The Russians have attacked
    our election infrastructure. Leaving our defenses to states and
    local entities, in my view, is not an adequate response.
        Our country needs baseline mandatory Federal election
    security standards, and what I'm talking about here are paper
    ballots and post-election risk-limiting audits. You and I have
    talked about this before, and I'd like to get your views for
    the record of whether you believe the continued use of
    paperless voting machines in this country threatens our
    national security and the Department is now prepared to
    recommend paper ballots.
        Secretary Nielsen. So yes, sir. If there is no way to audit
    the election, that is absolutely a national security concern.
        So we're working with states. There's a variety of ways to
    do that. As you know, one is paper ballots. One is having a
    system itself that has a voter-verified paper audit. So in
    other words, you vote electronically, but the machine spits out
    almost like a ticker tape, what you voted and you have that for
    your record, and then we can also have it for a record. So it's
    a different way of doing it from paper ballots.
        But yes, sir, we absolutely have to have a way to audit and
    be able to verify the integrity of the information of the
    votes.
        Senator Wyden. I think that sounds like a step in the right
    direction, because I was just stunned at the brazenness of
    these voting machine companies. I mean, the biggest one won't
    answer anything at all. And you've now told us that the status
    quo is a national security threat.
        I just want to, before we wrap up, see if we can drill a
    little bit further into the question of whether you all are
    prepared to recommend that our country have paper ballots. I
    think you're almost there.
        Secretary Nielsen. We have said it's a best practice. We do
    recommend it. What we say is you must have a way to audit. You
    can do it through paper ballots or you can do it through this
    voter verification, but you must have a way to audit and verify
    the election results.
        Senator Wyden. Are you aware of the way we do it in Oregon
    and we've done it now for decades? We vote by mail. Everybody
    gets a paper ballot. There is an audit trail. We've done it for
    decades. It's been supported by Democrats and Republicans.
        I'd like in 2020 every American to get a ballot in the
    mail. I think it is a national scandal, the security issues
    you've talked about and the idea that so many of our people
    wait in these lines only to be told they ought to go somewhere
    else.
        What do you think of the Oregon system?
        Secretary Nielsen. So I'm not as familiar with it. I look
    forward to learning more about it. Some of the issues that,
    aside from this particular conversation, that have been raised
    with mail is just making sure that the person who's voting is
    who we think they are. So we do have to have a way to verify
    identity.
        Senator Wyden. We'll show you how to do it because we've
    done it----
        Secretary Nielsen. Happy to learn.
        Senator Wyden [continuing]. We've done it for two decades,
    and we basically say right on the envelope: ``If you aren't the
    person that you say you are, you are in one heck of a bad way.
    You are going to face serious, serious penalties.'' And that's
    why it has worked and is supported on both sides of the aisle.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Chairman Burr. Senator Cornyn.
        Senator Cornyn. Thank you both for being here. I think it
    sends a very good message to see both of you sitting side by
    side and appearing to answer the committee's questions, and
    appreciate your service to the country.
        I want to start, Secretary Nielsen, by thanking you for
    your comments about the bombings in Austin. When I talked to
    Chief Manley at the Austin Police Department the day before
    yesterday, he told me there were roughly 500 Federal
    authorities on the ground doing everything they could to
    identify the bomber.
        And as we've learned today, he will not be doing that
    anymore. But it's important to remain vigilant, I think you
    also said, lest there be some other unexploded bombs out there
    that he might have planted.
        I'd like to ask both of you to comment on this. My
    understanding of our adversaries, whether they be Russia or
    China, is they view the internet and cyber space far
    differently than we do. In other words, they view it as a
    domain for information warfare. They do not allow their
    citizens to use the internet for the purposes that we use it
    for, for commerce or for communication between friends and
    family, to share social media, pictures of grandkids, things
    like that. They use it as a weapon, and we don't.
        It seems like we are just constantly playing defense. And
    while I know today the topic of the hearing has to do with our
    election systems, and there couldn't be anything more important
    in terms of securing those election systems, it does raise the
    question about what is America's national security cyber
    strategy?
        I know we learned from the Department of Defense that they
    are late responding to a mandate in the Defense Authorization
    Act to respond in terms of their role. But clearly the
    Department of Homeland Security plays a very important role
    too, but you're not alone. There are other government agencies
    that are involved in this question.
        So what do you think it's going to take, and what do you
    recommend for the United States government that we do to create
    an all-of-government strategy to deal with the cyber threat?
        Maybe start with you, Secretary Johnson.
        Mr. Johnson. Senator, I think that's a very good question
    and I think you have to look at several aspects of the problem.
    One, I think that when you're talking about a nation-state
    actor we have to create an environment of sufficient deterrence
    to that nation-state. All nation-states will not engage or will
    refrain from behavior if it's cost-prohibitive behavior, if
    they know it's cost-prohibitive.
        The Department of Homeland Security has a role on defense
    in working with the public to harden our cyber security. I do
    think that--and I think your question touches on this--our open
    society, our strength as an open society, is also our
    vulnerability, and we have to be somewhat careful in going down
    the road of having U.S. government agencies trying to regulate
    speech, trying to regulate political speech, political debate.
    As you know, they do that in other countries. We don't do that
    here.
        So the information marketplace and its easy access is
    definitely a problem for our democracy, but I would hesitate
    for the U.S. government to go down the road of trying to
    regulate it in some way. There are matters of Federal election
    law, to be sure, things that violate Title 18, but I happen to
    believe that a lot of this has to depend upon self-regulation
    by internet service providers and social media providers.
        Senator Cornyn. Secretary Nielsen, do you think we have a
    national security strategy?
        Secretary Nielsen. We do.
        Senator Cornyn. When it comes to cyber?
        Secretary Nielsen. We do. But, having said that, the White
    House is working on an update to the national cyber security
    strategy. An update to DHS's strategy will nest within that.
        But I also want to just take the opportunity to reaffirm
    what you said. I think there's two parts to this at least.
    There's the part we're talking about today, but then closely
    related to that is the malign foreign influence in general.
        I agree with Secretary Johnson, we have to be very careful
    in that conversation about substance, but I think the real
    issue is who is providing that substance. The example that I've
    used before is: If I read something on the internet or social
    media, et cetera, and I believe that it's from 50 of my closest
    friends and neighbors, I might feel very differently if, in
    turn, I'm told that's from 50 machines in Russia.
        So it's not so much the substance as it is perhaps
    Americans need more understanding of who is messaging and the
    intent behind the messaging. So that is something that the DOJ,
    FBI, and State Department are leading on, but I do think is a
    very important part of this conversation.
        Senator Cornyn. If the Chairman will permit me just one
    last comment, I think what I also think about is some of the
    social media companies basically throttling or censoring the
    news. Since they've become a primary vehicle for people to
    learn what's happening in the world, if they then take that
    role of censors, what the implications of that might be.
    Something for us to think about and talk about maybe in the
    future.
        Secretary Nielsen. Yes, we need to be very, very careful.
        Chairman Burr. Thank you, Senator Cornyn.
        Secretary Nielsen, your staff has accommodated a slight
    change in your schedule, if it's okay with you, that we would
    go for--we've got two members that are here, maybe a third one
    that might come back for questions. We will finish by 11:15 if
    you're in agreement.
        Secretary Nielsen. Okay, yes, sir.
        Chairman Burr. Thank you.
        Senator.
        Senator King. Thank, Senator--or Mr. Chairman.
        I spent about an hour yesterday afternoon reading the
    classified draft report of our committee on this subject. All
    along we've been talking about the Russians penetrating our
    systems and messing around with our elections. That's not
    sufficient. What I learned yesterday was horrifying. What we
    saw wasn't messing around or penetrating. It was a
    sophisticated, thorough, comprehensive, malign, and malicious
    attack on our electoral system.
        What worries me is that, although the intelligence is
    uniform that no votes were changed, they weren't doing it for
    fun in 2016. What it looks like is a test, and it was
    incredibly, as I say, thorough and comprehensive.
        I want to follow up on Senator Cornyn's question. We can
    patch software systems till the end of time and we're not going
    to defeat these people. The history of warfare is the history
    of the invention of new offensive weapons, and then eventually
    defensive weapons catch up.
        We saw the advent of a serious offensive weapon in 2016
    being used against us. All of the patches aren't going to work
    if we don't have a strategy of deterrence. And that's the point
    of the question that Senator Cornyn asked and Senator Heinrich
    asked, and we don't have that strategy. In 2016 we passed the
    National Defense Act. It had an amendment requiring the
    Secretary of Defense by last June to give us the elements of a
    national cyber strategy. It hasn't happened yet.
        180 days from that report was supposed to be a report from
    the President. Of course, that hasn't happened yet because the
    first report hasn't happened.
        This problem is not being treated with the urgency that it
    deserves, and a deterrent strategy--because the problem now is
    the Russians send in this whole operation into our election
    system, into our states, 21 states that we know of, and paid no
    price. And we've had testimony from admirals and generals and
    people in CYBERCOM, and they've said: ``Yes, Senator, there's
    no price that will change their calculation.''
        And so, Secretary, I hope when you go back--and by the way,
    this was a failure of the prior Administration in my view,
    because we've known this for four or five years, that this was
    coming. So this isn't a partisan observation. But I hope you'll
    go back and join with DNI Coats and with Secretary Mattis and
    the President and make this the highest priority that we have.
        This is, I believe, with the possible exception of North
    Korea's nuclear weapons, this is the most serious threat that
    our country faces today and we are not adequately dealing with
    it.
        And please expunge from your lexicon the word ``whole-of-
    government.'' Every time I hear that I think: That means none
    of government. I want to hear who's in charge and what they're
    going to do about that.
        So, Secretary Nielsen, I think you're in a key position.
    And I hope you'll read this classified report because----
        Secretary Nielsen. I look forward to it.
        Senator King [continuing]. It will terrify you. And then,
    of course, this is just one aspect of this attack on us. So I
    believe this is an incredibly important area.
        Now, let me ask a more specific question. You mentioned
    earlier--we talked about clearance of State officials and only
    20 have been cleared. I hope that can be accelerated, because
    we've already had several primary elections and we're headed
    into many more this spring. Do you have plans to try to
    accelerate that clearance? Because communication won't work if
    you can't tell them.
        Secretary Nielsen. We do, yes, sir. It is a problem that is
    not unique, unfortunately, to this particular stakeholder set,
    so I do look forward in general----
        Senator King. No, you're right. 791,000 clearances that
    we're behind.
        Secretary Nielsen. I know.
        But what we have done is we've worked out the processes
    whereby, if we have actionable information, we will provide it
    to the State and local officials on a day read-in. So we are
    not letting the lack of a clearance hold us back. We're in
    contact with them. If we have information to share with them
    with respect to a real threat, we will do so.
        Senator King. Let me make a modest suggestion, because
    we're going to have State officials here soon; we've had State
    officials before. The general reaction is--and I don't want to
    over-characterize it, but the general reaction is: We're doing
    a pretty good job; we're in good shape. I get the same thing in
    the Energy and Natural Resources Committee from utility
    executives: Don't worry; we've got it in hand. I don't believe
    that.
        You have the capability--this is my modest suggestion:
    Create a red team in DHS, a group of really skillful hackers,
    and hack some of these states and show them how vulnerable they
    are. Because I don't think they're going to believe it until
    you show them what your people can do. And that may mean--this
    country has to wake up, and I just suggest that as a possible
    technique. You've got some skilled people you can work with,
    NSA or CYBERCOM, and develop a red team that will kind of shock
    people into the realization of how serious and how vulnerable
    they are. Would you consider that suggestion?
        Secretary Nielsen. We will consider it. We do try to
    currently get at that through our risk and vulnerability
    assessments. We have continued to encourage states to take us
    up on that. That is a comprehensive assessment we do on site.
    It includes pen testing; it includes wireless access; it
    includes database. So it gets at some of what you're saying.
        But yes, sir. We need to help them understand where they've
    vulnerable, absolutely.
        Senator King. Well, I appreciate your leadership and really
    urge you to go back with your hair on fire.
        Secretary Nielsen. You have an advocate here.
        Senator King. This is an urgent matter.
        Mr. Secretary, it's good to see you. Seeing you back
    reminds me of the old country song: ``How Can I Miss You If You
    Don't Go Away?''
        [Laughter.]
        It's nice to see you, sir.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Chairman Burr. Senator Risch.
        Senator Risch. I think that was meant as a compliment. You
    need to study the country songs genre a little more, Senator.
        Look, we've all, you and everybody on this panel have
    looked at thousands of pages, and done the interviews, and
    reviewed everything there is.
        A simple question I have for you. Right now, we pretty much
    know what happened and everybody's got an idea of what's
    happened. The question I have for you is: Are either one of you
    aware, or has it been suggested to either one of you, or have
    you seen any evidence of any kind that any U.S. person was
    involved in this scheme?
        Ms. Nielsen.
        Secretary Nielsen. Not to my knowledge. No, sir.
        Senator Risch. Mr. Johnson.
        Mr. Johnson. You have to--I'm sorry to be a lawyer here.
    Which scheme are you referring to?
        Senator Risch. I'm talking about the Russian scheme to do
    what they did as far as attempting to interfere in the
    elections, the kinds of things we've been talking about this
    morning, the attacks, the penetrations, and what have you.
        Mr. Johnson. My recollection of the Special Counsel's
    indictment is that there were some U.S. citizens included in
    it. That's my recollection, but I could be wrong about that.
        Senator Risch. You want to follow up on that?
        Secretary Nielsen. Just I have no knowledge, if we're
    talking about the topic of this hearing, which is the hacking
    of elections, I have no knowledge that a U.S. citizen was
    involved in that.
        Senator Risch. Thank you very much.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Chairman Burr. Senator Manchin.
        Senator Manchin. Let me just follow up on that very
    quickly, if I may. Do you all, either one of you all, have any
    doubt whatsoever, from what your knowledge and talking to the
    intelligence communities, that the Russians were involved at a
    higher level than they've ever been involved before?
        Secretary Nielsen. I have no doubt.
        Mr. Johnson. No, sir. No doubt.
        Senator Manchin. Okay. And as a result of the Russians
    meddling in 2016, I'd fought to ensure the bill passed out of
    the Senate Appropriations Committee included a directive for
    DHS to provide technical assistance to State and local law
    enforcement to secure networks against cyber attacks. And
    before our committee this past year I was shocked to learn that
    multiple Federal agencies, including DHS, could not confirm
    that they did not have Kaspersky software in their system after
    we recognized the threat it posed to our national security.
        So my question would be, if our own Federal Department of
    Homeland Security has trouble finding a reliable vendor and
    relates to a Russian vendor such as Kaspersky, wouldn't you
    think our cash-strapped states and local partners might have
    the same problems?
        Secretary Nielsen. The short answer to that is yes. As you
    know, we issued a binding operational directive to remove all
    such products from Federal systems. We do not have authority to
    mandate that states do that, but we have taken it----
        Senator Manchin. Have you removed Kaspersky from yours?
        Secretary Nielsen. Yes, sir, and we have taken it of the
    GSA catalogue, as you know, which would allow states to
    purchase it with Federal funds.
        Mr. Johnson. I generally agree with what the Secretary
    said.
        Senator Manchin. The other thing, Russia or any other
    country that has been found guilty of meddling in our
    elections, which I think that we have confirmed by all our
    intelligence communities, what punishment or what
    recommendations of punishment or sanctions would you all
    recommend that would be stringent enough to prohibit that from
    happening or any other country going down this path that Russia
    has gone down?
        Secretary Nielsen. Sir, I can just tell you I think it's a
    very important question because we have a multifaceted
    relationship with Russia. We still seek their cooperation when
    it comes to North Korea, Syria, Iran, for example. So, the
    consequences and what we do in reaction to their meddling in
    the election needs to be proportionate, but also needs to be
    driven in a way that they understand the specific behavior that
    we are seeking to avoid.
        And as the Secretary said, you know, the hope in general is
    that the international community continues to recognize that
    affecting and attacking critical infrastructure of another
    nation is a red line. As an international community, we all
    need to hold each other to that and recognize that that is a
    red line.
        So from a U.S. government perspective, we've looked at
    everything from sanctions back from the Obama Administration,
    to sanctions now, to the PNG'ing of diplomats, to indictments.
    We need to do more. We need to continue to make the point.
        Senator Manchin. Well, let me expand on that. Should we
    treat a cyber attack or intrusion on our government, on our
    country, if sponsored or directed by a foreign government,
    which we know was, an act of war?
        Secretary Nielsen. We need to look at that very carefully.
    As you know, we have not made that decision as a country,
    either as a policy perspective or a congressional perspective.
    But I hope that we can work together and with other parts of
    the Administration and decide where is that red line.
        Senator Manchin. Secretary Johnson, do you think that we
    have deterred Russia from continuing their operations as far as
    trying to infiltrate our election system for the 2018 election?
        Mr. Johnson. No, we have not, based on the testimony in
    this room last month from our intelligence chiefs.
        Senator Manchin. So we're facing the same, if not worse?
        Mr. Johnson. Correct. Yes, sir.
        Senator Manchin. Secretary Nielsen.
        Secretary Nielsen. Yes, there's no reason to believe they
    will not attempt again.
        Senator Manchin. Well, if that's the case then we have a
    nuclear weapons retaliation policy; shouldn't we have a cyber
    retaliation policy?
        Secretary Nielsen. I think that's what some of the members
    have asked about. Yes, we have an Executive Order 13800 Mr.
    King was mentioning and Mr. Heinrich, what we need to do in
    terms of being very specific with respect to our deterrence.
    You have an advocate here. I will go back to my colleagues and
    the President and make sure that we get that done very soon.
        Senator Manchin. We're coming down to the wire on the
    election, as you all know.
        Secretary Nielsen. Agree.
        Senator Manchin. The primary, most of our states have
    primaries very shortly, and November election coming up, and
    we're faced with the same. And our states don't have the
    wherewithal in order to deter this if they're hooked to the
    internet in any way, shape, or form.
        Secretary Nielsen. I'm happy to take that message back. As
    you know, DHS does not do offensive cyber----
        Senator Manchin. Do you believe the Federal Government
    should be involved in helping secure the election process State
    by State?
        Secretary Nielsen. Oh, we are, yes, sir. We are. At their
    request, we're working State by State, locality by locality.
        Senator Manchin. How much money do you all have targeted
    for this?
        Secretary Nielsen. We've asked for another $25 million
    specifically to help our own resources. But as I've mentioned
    earlier, we've prioritized these.
        Senator Manchin. Do you all have a final recommendation on
    how you're advising the states to secure their system?
        Secretary Nielsen. Oh, yes. We have many, many, depending
    on all of those different parts that I mentioned earlier.
        Senator Manchin. Have they spoken back to you about the
    money, they don't have the money to either meet the
    requirements or suggestions you've made?
        Secretary Nielsen. In some cases, yes, they have. Of course
    they have resource constraints. Some of the machines themselves
    are old, as you know.
        Senator Manchin. But it's a concern for the 2018 election?
        Secretary Nielsen. Yes, sir.
        Senator Manchin. Thank you.
        Chairman Burr. Thanks, Senators.
        Secretaries, we've come to the end of this hearing. And,
    Secretary Johnson, I'm not a lawyer, so I had to turn to our
    counsel. Of the four individuals that have been indicted by the
    Special Counsel, two were on lying to the FBI; the other two
    was a mix of bank fraud, wire fraud, mail fraud. So no
    individual that's been indicted by the Special Counsel.
        The other indictments--the other charges were directly at
    the IRA, the Russian facility that carried out. So if that
    helps to clarify your memory.
        And let me say to Senator Manchin that it's my
    understanding that the appropriators have taken care of, in the
    omnibus bill, an amount of money to be grants and other items--
    I don't want to speak for what their language is going to be--
    that mirrors the research that this committee did.
        And I want to thank Shelley Moore Capito, who chairs that
    Appropriations Committee, for working with our staff, and
    hopefully I've made a commitment to Secretary Nielsen that we
    would be more than open to address any other needs as we see
    those as we move up to 2018 or to 2020.
        I want to thank both of you for your testimony today and
    your willingness to appear together. Everybody's said something
    about it and I think it sends a strong message that the
    integrity of our election system is not a partisan issue and
    it's truly the heart of the strength of our democracy.
        The committee's investigation found ample evidence to agree
    with DHS's assessment in 2016 that Russian government actors
    scanned an estimated 21 states and attempted to gain access to
    a handful of those. In at least one case, they were successful
    in penetrating a voter registration database. We've heard our
    witnesses confirm that assessment today. Despite that activity,
    I need to reiterate that the committee found no evidence of any
    vote totals that were changed, a finding that was confirmed by
    our witnesses also today.
        The committee also discovered that Russian activities
    directed at the states fell in a seam of our national
    intelligence infrastructure. It was a foreign activity, but
    carried out on the United States inside the United States,
    where our intelligence agencies have limited authorities. And I
    can't stress that enough, that we've got to consider that as we
    go forward.
        The intelligence community was therefore almost entirely
    dependent on the states for the insight into these activities.
    The committee found that DHS and FBI alerted states to the
    threat in the summer and fall of 2016, but in a limited way.
        Our witnesses today confirm that they provided warnings to
    state IT staff, but notifications to election officials were
    delayed nearly a year. States therefore understood that there
    was a cyber threat, but not the seriousness of the scope of
    that threat.
        This committee intends, hopefully before the end of the
    week, to produce an overview of our report that's sanitized,
    that can be released. The committee's full findings and
    recommendations on election security will be reviewed for
    declassification and possible redaction and, when that is
    complete, released to the American people so that they can make
    their own judgments about involvement and attempts to intrude
    into our system.
        Once again, I want to thank both of you for being here. I
    want to conclude our first panel. A two-minute break as we
    bring the second panel up.
        [Pause.]
        Chairman Burr. I'd like to welcome our second panel here
    today and I'll say to each of you, thank you for your
    willingness on a snowy day to either come to Washington,
    because I know some of you made the trip or to travel through
    this town that sometimes understands snow removal, sometimes
    doesn't. So it's always a crapshoot.
        Our second panel is comprised of: Jeanette Manfra; National
    Protection and Programs Directorate, Assistance Secretary for
    the Office of Cyber Security and Communications at the
    Department of Homeland Security. The only thing that's changed
    is ``Acting'' is no longer in front of that, and I'm glad for
    that.
        Jim Condos, President-elect of the National Association of
    Secretaries of States and Vermont Secretary of State. Jim,
    thanks for bringing this weather today.
        Amy Cohen, Executive Director of the National Association
    of State Elections Directors.
        And Eric Rosenbach, Co-Director of the Harvard Kennedy
    School Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.
        I might add for the record that we also invited a
    representative of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to
    participate in today's hearing, but the committee's request was
    declined.
        You are the experts on cyber security and elections. And
    while we just received the big picture assessment, and we're
    going to rely on you to provide us a great deal more fidelity.
    Jeanette, I'd like you to provide some details on the services
    DHS is providing to states and local election officials and
    what additional resources DHS may need to provide these
    services comprehensively.
        Jim and Amy, I hope you'll provide a candid view from the
    states and from those on the ground who actually run elections.
    It's critical that we hear what states really need and whether
    all of this help from D.C. is proving to be valuable.
        Eric, the Belfer Center has done an in-depth look at
    states' cyber security posture and has run table-top exercises
    with election officials. And I look forward, very forward, to
    hearing your outside assessment of how the partnership between
    DHS and the states is working.
        In the interest of time, I'll end my remarks and go
    straight to the Vice Chairman. But when I recognize you, we
    will go Manfra, Condos, Cohen, and Rosenbach.
        Vice Chairman Warner. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just
    want to make two brief remarks. I think the first panel was
    very good, but I understand this is a collaborative
    relationship with the states and localities.
        But I do think, as Senator King has mentioned and I
    mentioned in terms of my State, there are enormous
    vulnerabilities. Based on the Hackathon of last summer, I made
    sure in Virginia that we took out voting machines that didn't
    have auditable paper trails. So, recognizing the collaboration
    particularly between the State and DHS--I'd love to have all
    your comments on this--how do we make sure that we
    appropriately noodge or perhaps we as policymakers, we have to
    call out states and localities who don't participate, who don't
    upgrade their systems, who don't realize the seriousness of
    this problem. Not in the way that will fracture the
    relationship between DHS and the states, but leave that perhaps
    to us or others.
        I'd also like to hear your comments on--we focused a lot on
    the states and localities itself. But there are clearly a whole
    host of vendors who manage voter files, who provide the
    equipment. How do we make sure, again, they are actually using
    best practices; and those that are not, that the states and
    localities who might hire those vendors are notified that they
    are not meeting standards of security that are appropriate?
        So those are the kind of questions I'm going to hope to
    drill down on. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I look forward to your
    testimony, everybody.
        Chairman Burr. Thank you, Vice Chairman.
        Jeanette, the floor is yours.

      STATEMENT OF JEANETTE MANFRA, ASSISTANT SECRETARY, NATIONAL
     PROTECTION AND PROGRAMS DIRECTORATE, OFFICE OF CYBER SECURITY
        AND COMMUNICATIONS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY

        Ms. Manfra. Thank you, sir. Chairman Burr, Vice Chairman
    Warner and members of the committee: Thank you for today's
    opportunity to testify, on this lovely D.C. spring day,
    regarding our ongoing efforts to assist with reducing and
    mitigating risks to election infrastructure.
        Before I discuss elections, however, I want to take a
    moment to thank Congress, Chairman McCaul and Ranking Member
    Thompson of the House Homeland Committee, Chairman Johnson and
    Ranking Member McCaskill, the Senate Homeland Security and
    Government Affairs Committee, and this committee in particular,
    for your long and continued support and legislation in granting
    DHS the authorities that we need to not only secure the
    integrity of our elections, but also to do our job in
    protecting Federal networks and critical infrastructure.
        These efforts highlight the importance of the creation of
    the Cyber Security and Infrastructure Security Agency, at DHS,
    which would see our organization, the National Protection and
    Programs Directorate, become a new agency under DHS. This
    change reflects the important work we carry out every day on
    behalf of the American people to safeguard and secure our
    critical infrastructure. Again, we strongly support this much-
    needed effort and we appreciate Congress' action and look
    forward to becoming the Cyber Security Infrastructure Security
    Agency.
        Though I was appointed to this position in July of last
    year, I have spent the last decade of my career after leaving
    the Army to advance the Department's cyber security mission
    within the Department of Homeland Security. During my time at
    DHS, I have personally witnessed the commitment, dedication and
    tireless efforts of the men and women to secure Federal
    networks, critical infrastructure systems and most recently our
    election systems.
        During the 2016 elections, the Department used every
    resource based off of the information that we had to ensure
    that election officials were receiving the information we could
    provide them and the services we could provide them to secure
    their infrastructure.
        As cyber threats continue to evolve in times of calm and in
    times of crisis, our network defenders at DHS will never waiver
    in their duty to protect the homeland. And I'm honored to have
    the privilege of leading that organization today. I would like
    to publicly thank them for their service and their excellence,
    and I look forward to continuing to lead and serve alongside
    them.
        Since I last appeared before this committee, the National
    Protection and Programs Directorate at DHS has continued to
    lead an inter-agency effort to provide voluntary assistance to
    State and local officials. This inter-agency assistance brings
    together the Election Assistance Commission, the FBI, the
    intelligence community, NIST, other DHS partners and is modeled
    on our work with other critical infrastructure sectors.
    Importantly, it also depends on our partnership with the
    representatives on the panel, whether that's from academia, the
    National Association of Secretaries of State, or the National
    Association of State Election Directors.
        Since 2016, we have learned much from our State and local
    partners; and in the efforts we undertook to assist them in
    2016, we've worked to refine and improve our partnerships and
    our services. Securing the Nation's election systems is a
    complex challenge and a shared responsibility. There's no one
    size fits all solution. Our Nation's election systems are
    managed by State and local governments in thousands of
    jurisdictions across the country and they must remain that way.
        State and local officials have already been working
    individually and collectively to reduce risks and ensure the
    integrity of the elections they're responsible for running. As
    threat actors become increasingly sophisticated, DHS sands in
    partnership to support the efforts of these officials.
        Through these collective efforts, we've made significant
    progress by creating government and private sector councils who
    collaboratively work to share information, promote best
    practices, and develop strategies to reduce risks to the
    Nation's election system. The recently formed Election
    Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center,
    facilitates the sharing of near-real-time information about
    potential cyber incidents. Additionally, 38 states are
    receiving feeds of actionable cyber threat indicators provided
    by the Department.
        We are sponsoring up to three election officials in each
    State for security clearances. And while not all of them have
    submitted the paperwork, we have been able to grant security
    clearances to 21 individuals in 19 states.
        We have increased the availability of free technical
    assistance by reprioritizing resources that were previously
    dedicated to securing Federal networks to the priority of
    securing election infrastructure. And we will continue to offer
    those services, whether those are cyber security assessments,
    red teaming, intrusion detection capabilities, information
    sharing, incident response, or training and career development
    free of charge to all State and local officials.
        We will continue to collaborate, coordinate and support
    State and local officials to secure our election infrastructure
    for the 2018 primary, special, and general elections. Cyber
    actors can come from anywhere, internationally or within the
    U.S. borders.
        We are committed to ensuring a coordinated response from
    DHS and its Federal partners to plan for, prepare for, and
    mitigate risk to any threat to our critical infrastructure. We
    understand that working with the election stakeholders is
    essential to ensuring a more secure election.
        Our voting infrastructure is diverse, subject to local
    control and has many checks and balances. As we work
    collectively to address these and other challenges, the
    Department will continue to work with Congress and industry
    experts to support our State and local partners.
        I look forward to further outlining our efforts to help
    enhance the security of elections which are administered by our
    State and local partners. Thank you and I look forward to your
    questions.
        Chairman Burr. Thank you very much.
        Jim, the floor is yours.

          STATEMENT OF JIM CONDOS, VERMONT SECRETARY OF STATE

        Mr. Condos. Thank you. First, I'd like to just say thank
    you for this warm welcome with the weather outside. It makes me
    feel right at home. And just to give you a perspective, it was
    minus 11 on the first day of spring in Vermont.
        Chairman Burr. When your flight is canceled, I hope you'll
    hold us equally as----
        Mr. Condos. I don't have a flight now until tomorrow night.
        Good morning, Chairman Burr, Vice Chairman Warner, and
    distinguished members of the committee. Thank you for this
    opportunity to appear before you representing the Nation's
    secretaries of state, 40 of whom serve as chief State election
    officials in their respective states.
        My name is Jim Condos and I am the Vermont Secretary of
    State. I am also President-elect of the non-partisan National
    Association of Secretaries of State and a member of the
    Department of Homeland Security's new Election Infrastructure
    Government Coordinating Council. That's a mouthful.
        NASS President Connie Lawson of Indiana was not able to be
    here today, but I want to acknowledge her outstanding
    leadership in leading our organization. Our organization is
    comprised of members with strong and very diverse opinions. But
    when we speak for NASS, we speak with one voice.
        Voting is the very core of our democracy. We are in the
    2018 election cycle, with November's general election only
    eight months away. I want to assure you and all Americans that
    election officials across the states, across the country, are
    taking cyber security very seriously. While it is important to
    ask what really happened in 2016 and learn from it, we believe
    it is even more important for us to be discussing what lies
    ahead.
        The 21 states that were not notified until September of
    2017, one year after the supposed scans. No votes were changed,
    as you have heard. But let me be clear. Secretaries of state
    across this Nation are diligently working each day to safeguard
    the elections process.
        When former DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson announced the
    ``critical infrastructure'' designation for election systems in
    January of 2017, our members raised many questions and
    expressed serious concerns about potential Federal overreach
    into the administration of elections. With the ``critical
    infrastructure'' designation in place, we are focused on
    improving communications between the states and with DHS to
    achieve our shared goal of election security.
        Under DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen's leadership, we are
    now working well together. NASS is committed to facilitating
    this relationship. State and local autonomy over elections is
    our best asset against cyber attacks. Our decentralized, low-
    connectivity electoral process is inherently designed to
    withstand and deter threats.
        States use many resources available to them to bolster
    cyber security. Some utilize resources provided by DHS, others
    use private sector security companies, and still others partner
    with colleges and universities.
        Mr. Chairman, in your press conference yesterday you and
    other Senators outlined cyber security recommendations. I would
    like to highlight that states are already implementing many, if
    not all, of the committee's recommendations, including in my
    own home state.
        In Vermont--and let me go to my Vermont home State--we
    completed a thorough review of our cyber posture back in 2014,
    and we completed both physical and cyber. In 2015, we
    implemented a new election management platform. Because the
    system was new and it was nearly designed, it included built-in
    cyber risk assessments.
        Some of the acknowledged best practices that we use in
    Vermont are: paper ballots, post-election audits, no internet
    connection of our vote tabulators, daily backup of our voter
    registration database, daily monitoring of traffic to our site,
    blacklisting of known problem or suspected IP addresses,
    additional penetration testing.
        We also have same-day voter registration and automatic
    voter registration. And we are planning, we're in the process
    of planning a statewide cyber security forum to be held in our
    State.
        We have no less than three levels of security between the
    outside internet and our cyber systems and they're monitored on
    a daily basis. We have joined the Multi-State Information
    Sharing Analysis Center, better known as MS-ISAC. We receive
    weekly DHS cyber hygiene scans, and we have met with both DHS
    and FBI contacts. We have also recently ordered an Einstein
    monitor to attach to our systems to help us monitor.
        Secretaries and their staffs are also working to secure
    more funding for improved cyber security, new voting machines,
    and to strengthen our existing election systems. These efforts
    have become much more challenging as election officials have to
    work now to counter cyber security in addition to our
    election's administration.
        To ensure the integrity of our systems, my colleagues and I
    do have a prepared ask for you. One of the most critical
    resources that Congress could provide to the states, is the
    remaining $396 million from the Help America Vote Act of 2002.
    It was allocated, but never completely appropriated. Meeting
    the ongoing demands for updated equipment and ongoing cyber
    security upgrades requires funding that the states simply do
    not have within their own budgets.
        I must say, the new and immediate funds are absolutely
    critical as we are now only eight months away from the November
    general election. If we do not receive this money until August,
    it's too late for this year. We need the money now.
        As election officials work to fulfil this commitment and to
    improve voter confidence, we ask Congress to fulfil that
    commitment. We ask that Congress, DHS and others help us
    improve America's confidence in our election systems by
    promoting State and local efforts in providing clear, accurate
    risk assessment.
        I want to again thank the members of this committee for
    holding this hearing and giving me this opportunity to speak to
    you on this important matter. On behalf of NASS, I look forward
    to answering your questions.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Condos follows:]
        [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Chairman Burr. Jim, thank you very much. I'm not going to
    speak for the Appropriations Committee and I haven't read the
    omnibus bill. But there is a sizable chunk of money. It matches
    about what you're mentioning.
        Mr. Condos. We appreciate that.
        Chairman Burr. Where that goes, I'll leave that up to the
    instructions of the appropriators. But I feel fairly confident
    that the committee, the appropriators and DHS are all on the
    same page on this one.
        Amy, the floor is yours.

         STATEMENT OF AMY COHEN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, NATIONAL
                ASSOCIATION OF STATE ELECTION DIRECTORS

        Ms. Cohen. Thank you, Chairman Burr, Vice Chairman Warner,
    and distinguished committee members, for the opportunity to
    submit this testimony on behalf of the National Association of
    State Election Directors.
        My name is Amy Cohen and I'm the Executive Director of
    NASED. NASED's members are the State election directors in all
    50 states, the District of Columbia, American Samoa, the
    Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, Puerto Rico
    and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Our members are the nonpartisan
    professionals who administer and implement election-related
    policies, procedures and technologies. And NASED's mission is
    to promote accessible, accurate and transparent elections in
    the United States and territories, which we do by sharing
    information and best practices. Since elections were designated
    ``critical infrastructure'' in January 2017, our efforts have
    become more important than ever before.
        In 40 states, the secretary of state or lieutenant governor
    is the State's chief election official. And in the remainder,
    the chief election official is the executive director of a
    board or commission. Beyond differences in leadership and other
    obvious differences in policies, the states also differ in the
    way elections are conducted. In eight states, elections are
    conducted at the township level instead of at the county level.
    Wisconsin alone has 1,853 local clerks responsible for
    conducting elections, in addition to the State election office.
    I highlight these differences as a reminder of how complex the
    administration of elections truly is.
        Every State election official, though, is a planner. They
    have spent every day since the 2016 election learning how to
    improve for the future, and the ``critical infrastructure''
    designation has given us access to resources many did not know
    were available previously. Now, approximately 15 months into
    the designation of elections as ``critical infrastructure,''
    we've made great strides as a field.
        State election directors must communicate basic information
    to their voters to ensure that every eligible voter who wants
    to cast a ballot can do so. And election officials must give
    them confidence that their vote will then be counted as they
    intended. Effective communication with local election officials
    who serve as the boots on the ground in running elections is
    also paramount. States run regular trainings and provide
    information and resources year-round every year to make sure
    that local officials have access to the information, tools, and
    skills they need to do their jobs effectively.
        State election directors must also communicate with our
    colleagues in the Federal Government. Until 2016, this was
    primarily with the members and staff of the Election Assistance
    Commission, who provide an invaluable service to our field
    through their guides and best practices, informed by both
    qualitative and quantitative data.
        Communication with DHS was new to NASED members in 2016 and
    is an area where we have seen significant improvement. In
    October 2017, DHS, the National Association of Secretaries of
    State, NASED and local election officials convened the first
    meeting of the Government Coordinating Council as a mechanism
    for sharing information about elections infrastructure threats
    across State, local, and Federal Governments. Since then, the
    GCC has met several times by telephone and again in person at
    the NASS and NASED winter conferences. The executive committee
    of the GCC, which has representatives from NASS, NASED, local
    election official organizations, and DHS, meets every other
    week by telephone.
        The GCC voted unanimously in February to adopt goals and
    objectives for the elections infrastructure sector. Working
    groups are doing the challenging work of writing a strategic
    communications plan, to develop guidelines around
    communications, and of writing a sector-specific plan to
    formalize the strategic goals of the elections infrastructure
    sector for the next several years.
        In addition, the Elections Infrastructure Sector
    Coordinating Council was launched in December 2017 with
    representatives from private sector vendors and nonprofit
    organizations.
        The GCC and the executive committee of the GCC are critical
    to distributing information to all 50 states, the District of
    Columbia, and the territories, as well as disseminating
    critical cyber security information to the more than 8,000
    local election officials.
        The GCC also voted at the February meeting to formally
    recognize the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis
    Center as the elections infrastructure ISAC. While all 50
    states, the District of Columbia and the U.S. territories were
    members of the MS-ISAC prior to 2017, election officials were
    not privy to the information shared by the ISAC and thus could
    not act on any of the information shared about the 2016
    election.
        As of today, however, the EI-ISAC, which is free for
    election offices to join, counts 38 State-level election
    offices and more than a 100 local election offices as members.
    NASS, NASED and the executive committee of the GCC strongly
    encourage all State and local election jurisdictions to join
    and are developing a strategic outreach plan to make sure every
    one of our State and local election officials understands the
    benefits of participation and joins.
        DHS has also facilitated secret-level security clearances
    for State chief election officials, as well as additional
    election office staff, including State election directors. Our
    hope in doing so is to ensure that any future information-
    sharing will not be hindered or delayed by the information's
    classification. As you are aware and have heard about this
    morning, processing for security clearances can take time, but
    we continue to make progress with DHS in this area.
        Finally, DHS hosted more than 60 election directors and
    staff, representing 43 states, D.C., and two territories, for a
    secure briefing with the Office of the Director of National
    Intelligence and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in
    conjunction with our February conference.
        It would be naive to say that we received answers to all of
    our questions, but the briefing was incredibly valuable and
    demonstrated how seriously DHS and others take their commitment
    to the elections community as well as to our concerns.
        There have of course been challenges, but we have taken
    incredible leaps forward in a relatively short amount of time.
    Since the November 2016 elections, states have hardened the
    defenses of their voter registration databases and other IT
    systems against intrusion. This has included taking advantage
    of free resources such as vulnerability and risk assessments
    from DHS, cyber security services offered by State branches of
    the National Guard, and utilizing services offered by other
    branches of State government.
        Several private sector vendors have made tools and
    resources available to State and local election officials
    providing additional defenses. The Belfer Center at Harvard and
    the Center for Internet Security have provided practical
    guidance and tools for State and local election officials to
    use to strengthen their cyber security posture. Election
    officials have long taken steps to build resiliency and
    redundancy into their systems, and all states are evaluating
    the steps they take in light of the cyber security threats we
    face today.
        Aging voting equipment has been at the forefront for
    election officials for years. The Presidential Commission on
    Election Administration report, released in 2013, highlighted
    the impending crisis in voting technology. The voting
    technology problem and its effect on cyber security is multi-
    faceted. First, I mentioned earlier that states run their
    elections differently. Local election officials are strapped
    for resources and are sometimes reliant on vendors or
    contractors for IT support. This can make it difficult for
    local jurisdictions to make smart technology purchases and adds
    an additional layer of complexity to maintaining a defensive
    cyber security posture. Many are taking advantage of in-State
    academics or national resources, including those at the EAC, to
    make sure that purchases comply with best practices.
        Second, many jurisdictions purchased their current voting
    equipment with Federal funds received under the Help America
    Vote Act of 2002, meaning that the equipment and software often
    predate parts of our lives we now take for granted, such as
    smartphones. Without additional funding, jurisdictions cannot
    afford to purchase new technology. We're encouraged to hear
    that Congress may release some outstanding HAVA dollars in the
    omnibus appropriations bill.
        Third, a handful of states still use voting technology that
    does not have a paper record or a voter-verified paper audit
    trail. These states are reliant on the accuracy of their voting
    machines, because in the event of a recount their records only
    exist in the machine. To be clear, we have seen no evidence
    that voting machines or election results have been manipulated
    or compromised in any election. But election officials must
    remain vigilant.
        Understanding these risks is important, but we should not
    overlook the safeguards currently in place to protect the
    existing technology. Elections are decentralized. There are
    thousands of jurisdictions, hundreds of thousands of voting
    locations, and many more hundreds of thousands of voting
    machines. The diversity of equipment used and the sheer number
    of precincts and machines creates obstacles to a large-scale
    attack on voting equipment. Voting machines themselves are not
    connected to the internet, making them less susceptible to
    intrusion.
        And results released on election night are not the official
    results. Every State and every local jurisdiction for elections
    run at the local level conducts an official canvass of results
    several days after election day to complete the official tally
    of results. In addition, an increasing number of states are
    doing post-election audits and many more are considering risk-
    limiting audits.
        In summary, the field of election administration has made
    great strides since the 2016 presidential election, and State
    and local election officials cannot do this alone.
        If 2016 taught us anything, it is that we need a whole-of-
    government approach, with strong coordination and communication
    across the Federal, State, and local players.
        We appreciate this committee's recommendations released
    yesterday and are pleased that many of those are already
    underway in many states. Thank you for the opportunity to share
    NASED's thoughts and opinions with you, and I am happy to
    answer any questions.
        [The prepared statement of Ms. Cohen follows:]
        [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Chairman Burr. Thank you, Amy for that testimony.
        Eric, the floor is yours.

      STATEMENT OF ERIC ROSENBACH, CO-DIRECTOR, BELFER CENTER FOR
       SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, HARVARD KENNEDY SCHOOL

        Mr. Rosenbach. Chairman Burr, Vice Chairman Warner, other
    distinguished members of the committee: Thank you very much for
    the invitation to testify. The committee is one of the very few
    bipartisan efforts to address threats to the integrity of our
    democracy right now, and your leadership is crucial to charting
    the course forward. As a former professional staff member on
    the Senate Intelligence Committee, I have great respect for
    your bipartisan approach to what you're doing and genuinely
    thank you and your hardworking staff for all the work you're
    doing and your service.
        Our response to Vladimir Putin's ongoing attempts to
    undermine the strength of American democracy will be a defining
    issue of our digital age. Putin's attacks are not limited only
    to our election systems. Recent reports from the Department of
    Homeland Security make clear that Russian military intelligence
    operatives continue to conduct the preparatory steps needed for
    a major cyber attack against our energy infrastructure,
    including pre-placing the same malware in the United States
    that they used to take down the electric grid in Ukraine,
    twice.
        Imagine, if you would, that during the Cold War we found
    out that Soviet military intelligence operatives had placed
    secret explosives that could take down the electric grid all
    around the United States. Would our leaders have stood by and
    debated the nature of the threat or would we act?
        Unfortunately, over the past three years and both
    Administrations our national response to Russian cyber and info
    attacks both against the United States and our allies has been
    too weak. America and democracies around the world need action
    and, given the current environment in Washington, the Senate
    Intelligence Committee will need to play a leading role in
    driving that action.
        In the summer of 2017, a little team up at the Harvard
    Kennedy School set on a mission with one primary goal: to do as
    much, as quickly as possible, to help lower the risk of cyber
    and information attacks on the 2018 mid-term elections. So this
    project, known as the Defending Digital Democracy Project, is a
    bipartisan initiative that I co-lead with Robby Mook and Matt
    Rhoades. And we're developing real-world practical solutions to
    try to defend against cyber and information attacks.
        It's a diverse team. We have technical experts, political
    operatives, public affairs ninjas, and a hardworking team of
    Kennedy School students who are working very closely with NASS,
    NASED and the Department of Homeland Security to support our
    project. They've been truly outstanding partners, including
    several secretaries of state, Mac Warner in West Virginia,
    Denise Merrill in Connecticut, and Alison Lundgren Grimes in
    Kentucky, all part of the team.
        Since then, our team has conducted field research in 34
    State and local election offices, observed the November 2017
    elections in three states, and conducted a nationwide survey on
    cyber security in 37 states and territories, and engaged State
    and local elections officials in a tabletop exercise at a
    national level three different times.
        Based on that research and our observation, we have
    released four different practical election-related security
    playbooks, including for political campaign staffs, local
    election officials, and two specific playbooks on incident
    response.
        Next week, up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, we'll host over
    160 State and local election officials from 38 states to run
    them through a series of crisis simulations that are structured
    to train and empower them to improve their cyber defenses and
    incident response capabilities, and to provide them with the
    tools to run these exercises back in their home states. The so-
    called ``train the trainer'' exercise, a traditional military,
    Army way of doing things, we'll follow up then with a
    hackathon, where we sponsored a national competition for
    student teams from around the country to compete for three
    $10,000 prizes which will be awarded to the best developed tech
    and policy options to counter Russian information operations.
        Now, I would like to tell you a little bit about our
    observations of the states. Chairman Burr, you asked about
    that. And the bottom line is this: State and local election
    officials are on the front lines of the effort to defend
    against nation-state attacks on our democracy. They accept this
    mission admirably. Our team has always been impressed with
    their professionalism and dedication. But, that said, the
    states need more help. They simply are not equipped to face the
    pointy end of the spear of cyber attacks and information
    operations from advanced nation-states.
        One often underemphasized issue is that the states, along
    with the Federal Government and outside organizations, need to
    continue to develop the capabilities for public incident
    response to information operations. So not just the hacks, but
    along the lines of what Senator Rubio mentioned, an information
    operation trying to sow distrust in the outcome of the election
    even if a hack were not successful. One of the few real
    antidotes to aggressive information operations like the
    Russians regularly conduct is effective public communications
    about the true state of affairs.
        The work we've done at the Kennedy School is really just a
    small part of the assistance that the states need and deserve
    to defend themselves. They need extra help. Specifically, it
    will require a four-cornered effort an all-of-nation effort,
    not just government. There's a lot that people not in the
    government can do now.
        The first is the State governments, which I think you've
    heard a lot about and so I won't reiterate. Second of all, we
    need to pay attention to political campaigns. They're the soft
    underbelly of this system right now. Their cyber hygiene
    generally is not good, and the overall chaotic environment in
    which they operate is not conducive to good cyber security.
        Social media companies, who must accept that our
    adversaries will continue to manipulate their platforms unless
    they dramatically change their organizational culture and their
    operational paradigm.
        And finally, the Federal Government, which must better
    support State and campaign efforts, oversee social media, and
    lead in creating the credible national defensive posture equal
    to the cyber and information threats that our elections face.
        Thank you very much. I look forward to answering any
    questions you have about any of our research, and I promised
    your staff that I wouldn't go over five minutes.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Rosenbach follows:]
        [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Chairman Burr. Eric, thank you.
        Mr. Rosenbach. Yes, sir.
        Chairman Burr. Thank you for your service on this
    committee. Senator Hagel would be proud of you, as we are.
        I would note that today we're highlighting one slice of the
    Russian effort into the U.S. democracy. It's the election
    process. When we've completed our investigation, which has been
    extensive, hopefully it will expose all of the portals that
    Russia used to sow chaos and societal chaos and everything else
    that they did.
        But you also mentioned a lot of things at the beginning
    that have not historically been on the plate of the Senate
    Intelligence Committee, that are now front and center, not
    because of the lack of interest of other committees, but
    because of the unique expertise of the staff on this committee
    and the interests of the members. And so we're juggling a lot
    of balls in the air right now.
        With that, I'd like to recognize Senator Lankford for the
    first round of questions.
        Senator Lankford. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Thank you all for being here and the time you've dedicated
    to this already.
        Let me ask just, Mr. Condos, about the recommendations that
    this committee has made on trying to make changes for cyber
    security, whether that be systems that can be audited, whether
    that be--obviously being separate from the internet during
    voting times, attentive when there are updates for software
    even when you're not connected to the internet for those
    machines, having a way to be able to do risk-limiting audits,
    security clearances for individuals when they--so we have a
    point of contact with DHS so they can do rapid communication.
    Any of those--are any of those concerns to you or to your
    organization?
        Mr. Condos. Let me speak on behalf of personally and the
    State, not----
        Senator Lankford. Sure.
        Mr. Condos [continuing]. Not NASS on this, because we have
    actually not taken a formal position because we just barely got
    the recommendations. But let me just say that we have long
    believed that having paper ballots, having an audit--we've been
    completing audits since 2006 and to date we've not had any
    anomalies from those audits.
        In fact, the audit that we do now, that started in 2014,
    now we call it a 100 percent census because we do the entire
    set of ballots for a particular town. We do a series of towns,
    randomly picked, and we do the entire ballot bag for that town
    that were cast, and then we also do every race that's on that
    ballot from President on down.
        We believe that having audits is critical to this and we
    are completely in agreement with that. I think that some of the
    other recommendations that you have put forth are excellent
    recommendations. We're already implementing many of them in
    Vermont and will be--like for instance, we're adding two-factor
    authentication for our local towns. We do not have county
    government in Vermont. We go straight from the towns to the
    State, so we're looking now at putting two-factor
    authentication between now and probably May or June.
        Senator Lankford. Can I ask you if DHS has been proactive
    to be able to help your State over the past year in
    communication and ideas.
        Mr. Condos. So let me just say that I think there was a lot
    of trepidation between the states and DHS in the beginning, but
    over the last----
        Senator Lankford. When you say ``in the beginning,'' are
    you talking about that August 15th call?
        Mr. Condos. Well, I'm talking about from August 16th--
    August 2016 to sometime last fall. Since that time we have
    really improved communications and we're working well together.
    You know, there's the obvious ups and downs that you have, but
    we are working well together, and I think that communication
    has improved tremendously.
        Senator Lankford. Has DHS been an asset to you?
        Mr. Condos. Yes. We do use the weekly hygiene scans. Many
    of the other products that they give, we've already done and we
    will continue to do. I don't want to leave the impression that
    just because we're not doing it with DHS, we're not doing it.
        Senator Lankford. No, I understand. They're a resource that
    will be available to you if you choose to use those.
        Mr. Condos. Correct.
        Senator Lankford. There is the concern that some of us have
    that if an individual State is attacked, that State identifies,
    I'm getting in some certain attack, and that information,
    whether it be the IP address or the type of malware or whatever
    it is, that the State picks up, if that's not shared with DHS
    there's not the opportunity for other states to also be able to
    check their system.
        How can we improve the trust level, that when a State
    identifies, I'm getting an attack that's unique, that they
    share that with DHS and so other election systems can also
    check for it?
        Mr. Condos. Well, let me explain what we've done in
    Vermont. When we see an anomaly, what we think of as an anomaly
    in our daily monitoring of our systems, if we encounter
    something like that, we will automatically count our FBI, DHS
    partners, and MS-ISAC to let them all know. And once we have--
    they will tell us what they need from us and then we provide
    that to them so that they can look at it.
        But I definitely, I think where you were going is the fact
    that if one State is attacked, all states are attacked.
        Senator Lankford. Right.
        Mr. Condos. And that's the way we have to approach this.
        Senator Lankford. And one of the issues that we have is, if
    one State is attacked, the other states might have already been
    attacked, they just didn't pick it up and you did.
        Mr. Condos. Possibly.
        Senator Lankford. So it's exceptionally important that we
    get the chance to have that two-way communication going, again
    voluntarily. But it is good participation whether it's just to
    be able to make sure that we can help each other.
        You mentioned as well duplication in your voter rolls. You
    said you do that every single day, to be able to duplicate
    voter registration rolls?
        Mr. Condos. Yes, we back up our system daily. It's kept for
    a period of time before it's cycled out. So at any given point
    in time, we could always go back to that date and re-establish,
    and then we only have a small sliver that we have to
    authenticate after that.
        We also have same-day voter registration so nobody will be
    denied at the polls.
        Senator Lankford. Okay. I just want to make one quick
    comment and I want to yield back to the Chairman as well. Thank
    you for all the work. You've been in quite a few meetings with
    our team and with Homeland Security that Senator Harris and I
    have both seen you on oftentimes. You've done a lot of work on
    a lot of these issues, boots on the ground, and we do
    appreciate your daily work on this. You've had some long days
    with your team, being able to work through some issues, so I
    appreciate your work on it.
        I yield back.
        Vice Chairman Warner [presiding]. Senator Harris.
        Senator Harris. And I couldn't agree more with Senator
    Lankford. Miss Manfra, every day it seems like we're seeing you
    on one of these committees, so thank you for your work.
        Mr. Rosenbach, as everyone understands, achieving cyber
    security will be extremely difficult. In fact, some say we
    should--we're never going to actually achieve security, but we
    will try to do as best as we can. But there are no absolutes in
    this realm.
        So the concern I have is that I think that there's a very
    real chance that when we're talking about HAVA, which is the
    Help America Vote Act of 2012--2002, that it may be a
    simplistic approach to suggest that the HAVA grant program is
    the solution to election cyber security.
        One of the concerns that I have heard and I'd like your
    opinion about it, is that there is a very real chance that
    states could acquire a new batch of insecure systems--and Miss
    Cohen actually spoke a bit about that concern as well--because
    they just don't have the resources and it may be the technical
    resources or advice or support to make the best decisions about
    acquiring the best and most secure equipment.
        So what is your perspective about that? And should states
    be required also to use those funds only for cyber security
    improvements versus other needs they may have?
        Mr. Rosenbach. Yes ma'am. I think, to start with your idea
    and highlighting that risk mitigation in cyber needs to be much
    broader than just the technical cyber security issues. So you
    talk about an incident response plan----
        Senator Harris. Right.
        Mr. Rosenbach [continuing]. And leadership at the top.
    Vermont seems like a model in terms of a secretary of state who
    can talk about two-factor authentication and is doing all these
    things. That's what you want.
        Senator Harris. And he's at this table for that very
    reason.
        Mr. Rosenbach. Exactly, but that's a rare thing.
        Senator Harris. Yes.
        Mr. Rosenbach. And the states take this very seriously, but
    that level of knowledge is a rare thing.
        Senator Harris. Right.
        Mr. Rosenbach. So the money will do one thing, but it's
    leadership that's even more important, and rehearsing what
    happens when you do get hacked or if you don't get hacked, but
    the Russians manipulate your information, that is very
    important.
        I do think having outside technical expertise that has no
    vested interest can be helpful to the states in trying to
    determine maybe how to allocate resources. I don't think that
    you want to make it bureaucratic because we need to move fast
    and things are already bureaucratic enough in government. But
    some way to help the states I think would be appropriate.
        Senator Harris. And so, as you think about that, as
    Congress considers appropriating this money, do you have some
    thoughts about how we can make sure that grant recipients use
    it in the best way, the most efficient way?
        Mr. Rosenbach. Yes, ma'am. I think you definitely should
    appropriate it. There's no doubt about that. And a couple
    options would be something almost like the NIST framework,
    where it's an agreed-upon framework. You would never try to
    stipulate specifically what they should do because the
    diversity of systems is so great, it would never be exactly
    right. It would also change in two years. That broad type of
    approach, with some outside technical expertise, may be one
    option.
        Senator Harris. Assistant Secretary Manfra, do you agree
    that there's a certain type of election interference that we
    should be concerned about, that would target the so-called
    swing states or those jurisdictions within states that have
    been identified as perhaps making all the difference in terms
    of the outcome of a national election. I know we've talked a
    lot about the diversity and the number of jurisdictions that
    hold elections. But some perhaps are more pivotal than others,
    as we have seen.
        Ms. Manfra. Yes ma'am, thank you for your question. While
    our focus is on the security, not the political dynamics of
    elections, we do take a risk-based approach to everything that
    we do with critical infrastructure in terms of how we
    prioritize. So what we seek to understand is how would the
    adversary, if their end goal was to--whether that's to sow
    chaos and discord or to manipulate a voting process--what would
    be the most likely way that they would do that?
        So we would definitely include consideration of that
    scenario that you described as to how we would think about a
    risk-based approach to prioritizing, if that answers your
    question, ma'am.
        Senator Harris. It is, but so that we can just take it out
    of the theoretical, there's pretty much consensus about what
    are the so-called ``swing states'' and ``swing counties.'' What
    I really hope and would like to know is that you and DHS has
    identified those perhaps as being priorities, knowing that
    foreign adversaries, Russia for example, all they have to do is
    pick up the paper to figure out where they should target if
    they actually want to manipulate the outcome of the national
    election.
        Ms. Manfra. Yes ma'am, we would consider those priorities.
        Senator Harris. Great. And my understanding is that
    basically if a State election agency is hacked, you pretty much
    send out a hazmat team to get right out there on the ground,
    boots on the ground, and do whatever is necessary to help the
    State in terms of getting back up and also figuring out in a
    forensic way, maybe in an investigative way, what you need to
    determine in terms of who was responsible, who the perpetrator
    is, where the specific breaches are and so on. Is that correct?
        Ms. Manfra. Yes ma'am. There's two models. One would be
    where we know whether the State has--and this is applying our
    model that we use for all critical infrastructure and Federal
    networks to states. But one scenario where a State or an entity
    reports that they have had some type of unauthorized access and
    they voluntarily request our assistance, our priority then
    would be, yes, to deploy a team. Sometimes we can do it
    remotely, but we deploy a team, work with them to gain access
    to their system, and then our responders would help first
    identify the presence and how wide scale that presence is.
        We need to be careful not to evict them too quickly,
    because we want to understand completely how much of the
    network or the systems that they're on. Once we've identified
    that, then we work with the victim organization to remove the
    malicious actors from the system and then, importantly, help
    them get back up and running very quickly.
        In other scenarios where we have maybe intelligence or
    other information, where we think someone may have been a
    target, but we don't know, we do something that's called a
    hunt, and that is also voluntary, but we work with that target.
    Ideally, they would voluntarily let us connect to their system,
    and we attempt to search for any evidence of that adversary.
    Sometimes we find them; sometimes we find that they were
    effective, the entity blocked that potential intrusion.
        Senator Harris. And if I may, and I'm over my time, but all
    of that happens, all of that work happens, when and if you have
    been notified by the State, correct?
        Ms. Manfra. In the former case, it would require
    notification by the State. In the latter case, it would be
    usually something from the intelligence community, though it
    could be from the State or say from the MS-ISAC.
        Senator Harris. Okay. And--and, Mr. Condos, I think you
    would agree--that DHS is best able to do its job if there's
    that kind of notification and cooperation.
        Ms. Manfra. Yes, ma'am.
        Senator Harris. Thank you.
        Chairman Burr. Thank you, Senator.
        The Chair would recognize himself, then the Vice Chairman,
    and then members by seniority. If Senator Heinrich or Collins
    come back, we will work them in since this is their lead.
        Jim, let me ask you a simple question. When you leave here
    today, are you thoroughly convinced that the United States
    government does not want to take over the election process of
    states and localities?
        Mr. Condos. I am in that position right now.
        Chairman Burr. Okay.
        Mr. Condos. Yes.
        Chairman Burr. We have accomplished a lot based upon where
    we started.
        Jeanette, let me ask you. It seems it took a while for DHS
    to come to a solid estimate about the number--or a solid number
    about the number of states that were actually targets of
    Russian attention and activities. The scanning activity ran
    through the fall of 2016. What's your confidence level in that
    assessment?
        Ms. Manfra. What I would say, sir, is that, based off of
    the visibility that we had at the time, which has increased
    since 2016, but based off of the partnership with MS-ISAC, with
    states and the intelligence community, we are confident that
    that 21 number is accurate.
        Chairman Burr. I'll ask you a very broad question. Have you
    seen things running up to the 2018 election, activities that
    concern you that an adversary might be testing the systems?
        Ms. Manfra. Not at this time, sir.
        Chairman Burr. Okay.
        Jim, to you and Amy. State election officials reviewed with
    our staff two of the DHS conference calls with states. One was
    in August of 2016. What was shared with us was that states say
    about that call that they didn't understand why DHS was
    contacting them in August 2016; there was little context to the
    call or to any threat relayed. Is that what you hear from your
    members?
        Mr. Condos. I would say that in the August call, it kind of
    caught us out of the blue. We knew we were invited to this
    call, we were on the call, and when Secretary Johnson spoke to
    us about some of what was going on, we weren't sure what was
    happening.
        When he talked, when he spoke about the critical
    infrastructure, we really pushed back. I will say that we
    pushed back. Red states and blue states were pushing back
    because we were looking at potential for a Federal overreach.
        Chairman Burr. So when I suggested to him today that just
    the mere mention of State elections being under the critical
    infrastructure, that this was a passionate point for the
    states, I didn't understate that, did I?
        Mr. Condos. No, you did not. I will say, though, when
    Secretary Johnson actually declared, made the designation in
    January of 2017, it was not until July when we met in East
    Greenbush, New York, at the MS-ISAC Center, that we actually
    got a presentation on what critical infrastructure designation
    was going to be about. Up to that point, we still didn't--so
    almost a year later, we still didn't know what was happening
    until then.
        Chairman Burr. So I think we would all agree on this
    committee that communication was poor. Jeanette, you sort of
    inherited, one, the state of mind that they were in. Eric,
    you've had an opportunity to look at it as well. And you were
    tasked with, come up with a plan that solves this.
        In the September 17 call, DHS for the first time announced
    21 states had been scanned and that State election officials
    might not know their states were targeted. States told our
    staff that they felt shocked and waited for one-on-one calls
    with DHS to find out if they were one of the 21. Many then
    reported that they were surprised by additional lack of
    details.
        What's changed since then and what assurance can you give
    the states that not only we're on top of the number, we're
    confident of the number, and, more importantly, we got a plan
    in place?
        Ms. Cohen. Yes sir. Looking back on some of the lessons
    learned over the past couple of years, our policy has always
    been, in order to notify a target or a victim of a potential
    cyber intrusion, to prioritize communicating with that. In the
    partnership with the MS-ISAC, which all 50 states participate
    with and have sensors, the primary interlocutor, I guess we'd
    say, was usually the states' CIO for the MS-ISAC.
        So we prioritize per existing protocol notifying those
    victims. What we didn't fully appreciate at the time and
    through those multiple conversations in 2017 in particular, was
    that just by notifying that victim that didn't necessarily mean
    that that senior election official who's responsible for that
    overall administration received that notification.
        It was at their request that we undertake that broad
    notification in September. So while we did notify the potential
    targets or the victims when we saw the activity, it was
    notifying those senior election officials and giving them more
    insight.
        The other issue which is always a challenge in cyber
    incidents or targeting, is we don't always have perfect
    information. So we prioritize notifying a target even if we in
    the intelligence community don't fully understand what's going
    on, because, frankly, by having a conversation, by being able
    to deploy our incident response teams, it will help the
    intelligence community and DHS learn more about what's going
    on.
        So when we first notified in 2016, we didn't fully
    understand what was happening, who was actually targeting those
    states. We just knew that it was coming from suspicious servers
    and a company. So now what we have done is, working with the
    Government Coordinating Council and the representatives, is
    defining who are those points of contacts. The states provide
    those points of contacts at the State level, and we have the
    appropriate mechanisms to ensure that we get that information
    and.
        And again, we're not waiting for clearances. If there's
    information that we can't declassify, we will provide one-time
    read-ins to those organizations to ensure that, even if we
    can't declassify, we can provide them additional context,
    frankly, even if we're not completely sure at the time.
        So those are some of the things that we've improved over
    the past couple of years.
        Chairman Burr. Thank you for that.
        Eric, brief question, brief answer. As an outside entity
    looking at this process, what letter grade would you give us
    collectively on the progress that's been made based upon the
    threat that you saw?
        Mr. Rosenbach. That, sir, is a hard question. You know,
    this is what I would say. I would give you all B, and it's
    mostly----
        Chairman Burr. Not us, but collectively.
        Mr. Rosenbach. But I'm talking about the whole government.
    In particular, it's a B because DHS in particular over the last
    year has been working very hard to rebuild that trust with the
    states and with other organizations so that they can do better.
    And just working hard can overcome maybe not having a lot of
    capacity or, coming from DOD, having a $600 billion budget.
    DHS, they're not like that. But, it's not as good as it should
    be.
        Chairman Burr. I think we all agree we've got more to do.
        Vice Chairman.
        Vice Chairman Warner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Let me say I understand probably the concerns that were
    raised by the states when they got the call from Secretary
    Johnson. But I think history has shown that designation was
    correct, and I am appreciative of the recognition. Miss Manfra,
    you had to receive some of my concerns last June at the
    hearing, but the notion that we've worked through some of the
    security clearance issues and that there is this better
    communication, I want to commend your efforts.
        My first question is for you, Miss Manfra, and you, Mr.
    Rosenbach, and it's a bit of a speculative question. Try to
    answer fairly brief, though. Which is: We know how vulnerable
    now our systems were. I know that the Hackathon that took place
    last year, where virtually every machine was broken into fairly
    quickly--I had to really raise heck to make sure we changed out
    machines in Virginia before our election system.
        One of the things I've always wondered: With the
    capabilities that clearly Russia has and the level of
    sophistication of their cyber activities, the fact that they
    scanned 20 states and only broke into one. Would you speculate
    whether their goal was to actually go in and change voter
    totals in 2016 or whether it was just in a sense to leave
    digital dust that might then be interpreted as outside
    interference, that somehow could then be used to stir up
    dissension and the kind of concerns that Senator Rubio raised
    about his scenario, which I think was potentially very real?
    Either one of you want to try on that?
        Ms. Manfra. I could start, sir. I would say that what the
    Russians were trying to do, which we've talked about a lot, was
    sow chaos and confusion and discord. And I believe, while--and
    this is my opinion--that by scanning systems, they were looking
    for vulnerabilities, they were looking for weak points. And the
    good news is most of the states deflected it, and I think
    that's something that doesn't get talked about a lot. But you
    know, they scanned, they looked for weak spots, and the State
    systems deflected that.
        That doesn't mean that there aren't continued
    vulnerabilities. But I believe that's what they were likely
    looking for, is weak spots to get into systems.
        Chairman Burr. Mr. Rosenbach.
        Mr. Rosenbach. Yes, sir. I'd start by saying, I've been
    working in cyber and intel and on the Russians for almost 20
    years, and I just don't believe when someone tells me we know
    everything about what the Russians did or didn't do. So I want
    to be very clear. I'm not basing this on intel and it is
    speculation, but I have to be honest: I don't believe that
    there isn't more to the Russian story, and that they may not
    have penetrated more than we know right now.
        That's always been the case when I've seen these advanced
    Russian actors, and the GRU in particular, and just like we
    learned more about them being in the energy grid.
        So my fear is that, if you look at the Gerasimov doctrine
    and the way Putin is now recently re-elected, that this is all
    about something even bigger, which could be when there's an
    escalation of tensions and they know they have malware in our
    grid and they have malware in our election infrastructure, that
    there will be a threat and a type of coercion that advances
    broader national security interests.
        So I don't want to sound, you know, shrill, but that's my
    assessment.
        Vice Chairman Warner. I agree, and I think, again, one of
    the reasons why the very good work so many members on this
    committee have done in a bipartisan way to try to help
    alleviate this issue and lay out specific recommendations.
        One of the question I raised on the earlier panel and I
    want to raise again, Mr. Condos and Miss Cohen, is how do we
    make sure that your vendors--my understanding was that the
    Belfer study showed that over 60 percent of American voters
    cast ballots on a system operator owned by a single vendor. I
    think it was back in 2012, but there are still these large,
    large vendors.
        How do we ensure that, working with DHS, that they're up to
    security? Are you auditing that, that they're guarding your
    voter files in an appropriate way?
        Mr. Condos. Let me start by just saying that the simple way
    is that we build it into our contracts with the vendors. So we
    require them to meet NIST standards. If we're buying new
    equipment, it has to be EAC certified. So those are the ways
    that you can do that, is to get them involved in it. But then
    we also have our own independent security folks that will do
    penetration testing, will do risk assessments, to determine
    whether what we've got is what we hope to have to defend, as
    was pointed out.
        So I think many of the states, the idea of putting in stuff
    into the contract, requirements into the contract, I think that
    has changed over the last few years. When we first proposed it,
    we were told, oh, nobody does that. Then, now it's becoming
    standard, at least in our State for all IT contracts. So we are
    moving in that direction to try to protect ourselves.
        Ms. Cohen. I'd add that many of the changes that we've seen
    in the election technology space have been consumer-driven over
    time. And Secretary Condos' point is a good one, that as we
    educate State and local election officials to better understand
    what they're putting in their contracts and give them resources
    like the EAC, like the Belfer resources and others, to make
    sure that they're putting good things in their RFPs and in
    their contracts, we will start to see a shift in the vendor
    area.
        Vice Chairman Warner. My time has expired, but I would also
    commend my colleagues the work the Belfer Center has done, what
    Eric has done. On the question around campaigns, these are the
    ultimate start-ups and huge vulnerabilities. We obviously have
    a whole segment of our government, the Secret Service, that
    oftentimes protects candidates. I do think we're going to need
    best practices and think about how we can put at least best
    practices out there in terms of protecting campaigns, because
    this could be a next layer of vulnerability. Having been
    involved, and probably everybody up here on the panel being
    involved in campaigns, at least in the past, cyber security has
    probably been one of the last items you look at as you try to
    put together--and I commend your good work there.
        Chairman Burr. I'm just sitting here thinking. If you
    thought we saw pushback from State elections officials, I can't
    wait to see the pushback from campaigns.
        [Laughter.]
        But I would also agree that they are an extremely
    vulnerable part of our whole election process right now.
        Mr. Rosenbach. I think they're the most vulnerable. Quite
    frankly, it's very chaotic, resource constrained, all the
    things that lead to really poor cyber hygiene.
        Chairman Burr. I'm going to turn to Senator Blunt, but as I
    do that, the likelihood is that when we return from the Easter
    work period Senator Blunt will then be Chairman of the Rules
    Committee, where a majority of the Federal statute changes
    relative to elections will fall. So I thank Senator Blunt for
    being integrally involved in this process, because he will be
    integrally involved in the next generation of this as well.
        Senator Blunt. Well, thank you, Chairman. We'll see how
    that works out. If it does work out, we'll expect to see all of
    you back and all of you back when we actually look at
    legislation.
        I want to see if I can't cover a couple of topics with the
    whole panel. One was, you can probably tell--you were all here
    for the earlier testimony on notification and public
    notification. As you can tell, we've dealt with this in other
    areas before and have generally come to the conclusion that
    public notification was not necessarily helpful and generally
    not desired by the people you were encouraging to report in.
        What's your view of that topic of whether states and local
    entities are less likely, more likely, helped by some public
    disclosure that someone attacked your system. Or does that make
    it a different kind of decision when you report in what you
    report in and why you report in?
        So let's just start, Miss Cohen, with you. Your view of, if
    we made that or DHS made that, we required them to report when
    you reported to them?
        Ms. Cohen. State and local election officials balance the
    right to know and transparency with also impacting voter
    confidence in the system. I can't comment specifically about
    whether I think they should or should not make it public, but
    it is a difficult balance for all election officials because
    the public does have a right to know, as we've discussed
    throughout this hearing. But balancing voter confidence and not
    impacting people's confidence in their election system and the
    outcome is something that has to be taken into consideration.
        Senator Blunt. Mr. Secretary, what are you and your NASS
    colleagues likely to think about that?
        Mr. Condos. Well, I'll speak for myself. I won't speak for
    my NASS colleagues on that. But I think that I will say that,
    as Miss Cohen has just said, it's a balance between
    transparency and privacy, and I think we have to be careful
    about that. I do think that if some of our citizens'
    information was actually accessed, they deserve to know that.
        If it was just a target or a scan--and by the way, I do
    want to say that it is important that we use the right words. I
    think during that discussion about the 21 states, they we
    talked about targeted, scanned, hacked, breached; and it was a
    scan or a target, which is similar to a burglar walking up to
    your house and trying the doorknobs or looking through the
    windows. I think we have to be careful about how we use those
    words because they do matter.
        So I do think that there's some likelihood that there will
    be some public announcement if people's information was
    actually accessed, and I caution that we have to be careful.
    You also want the incentive to be on the states to notify their
    partners that things have occurred or may possibly have
    occurred. And you don't want to have it be a disincentive.
        Senator Blunt. Secretary Manfra.
        Ms. Manfra. I would agree with my colleagues. I think this
    isn't just an issue just for this sector. It's across all
    sectors. We very much would like them to voluntarily report
    incidents to us, particularly if we've published a document
    asking industry to look or State and locals to look for
    indicators of compromise, and let us know, because that just
    benefits everybody. It benefits the government, it benefits our
    defense.
        I would say, as far as publicly talking about it, I agree
    that individuals have a right to know when their information
    has been stolen or tampered with, and a lot of states have
    different laws governing that. I do think we always have to
    balance, as Ms. Cohen noted, the public confidence in our
    system.
        Also, as I mentioned before, often you know the fact of an
    incident, but you don't know everything about it, and you don't
    know what was taken, you don't know all these different pieces
    around who did it; and it's hard to convey a lot of that nuance
    publicly.
        So I know it's complicated, it's challenging. I look
    forward to continuing to work with you on this issue, but I
    guess I would prioritize notification to the Departments over
    public notification.
        Senator Blunt. I might point out here, too, that, in case
    anybody is paying attention to this, the information in your
    voter registration file usually is not nearly as extensive as
    the information in lots of other files. So your Social Security
    Number, things like that, that we've seen large segments of
    information be accessed improperly, the voter registration file
    doesn't have a lot of that in it.
        Let's get a final response.
        Mr. Rosenbach. Yes sir. I'll be real quick. I would say it
    matters most if it's a compromise. If it's a compromise, it's
    something different. That definitely requires disclosure to the
    Hill for certain, and I think you have to disclose it to the
    public. And here's why. You all know this. It's almost
    impossible to keep a secret, and when something like that comes
    out in a leaked way it undermines the public's confidence in
    the government and what they're doing. So, although it's very
    hard, I think you just have to err on the side of publicly
    communicating about these things and giving as many facts as
    possible and doing that over and over.
        Otherwise, you create a new seam for the Russians to try to
    get in and sow this disinformation.
        Senator Blunt. It would be another area where how you
    define ``compromise'' matters, too. Was information shifted
    around, people have reason to believe they're going to be
    directed to the wrong place, anything like that, as opposed to
    there was an attempt to get into this information, we are
    confident that attempt failed, but we want to report it because
    other entities might also be having the same kind of attempt.
        At some point--we don't have time today, but the whole idea
    of the audit system, the paper trail, all of those things and
    who is doing that, who's not, provisional voting, things that
    can give voters some sense that, no matter how many of these
    things go wrong, they on election day are going to be able to
    cast the ballot they intended to cast and without a government
    that stands in the way of doing that.
        Thank you, Chairman.
        Chairman Burr. Senator Wyden.
        Senator Wyden. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Ms. Manfra, to just recap a little bit from this morning, I
    talked with Secretary Nielsen about the 43 percent of Americans
    who vote with voting machines that researchers say have serious
    flaws, including backdoors, which would make them obviously
    susceptible to frauds and hackers. She claimed, to her credit,
    that this is now a national security problem. She said best
    practices are paper ballots. That's encouraging.
        I just want to go a little bit further, and I think this is
    an area that might be part of your expertise. So I've written
    to the major manufacturers of the voting machines to get basic
    answers to their cyber security practices. I asked, for
    example, if they employ cyber security experts, if there were
    audits and if they had ever been hacked.
        Most of the companies have just been stonewalling. So this
    is how almost half of America votes. There is essentially no
    accountability over these companies.
        My first question would be: If the voting machine companies
    do not employ cyber security experts and they don't have
    independent audits of their products, how confident are you
    that the election technology they sell to the states follows
    cyber security best practices?
        Ms. Manfra. Sir, I'll do my best to answer those pieces.
    While we've been talking a lot about our work with the State
    and local entities that administer our elections, we have also
    worked with the industry that supports election officials, most
    recently setting up a sector coordinating council, which--it
    allows us to use our critical infrastructure partnership
    authorities to have non-public conversations with industry on
    security issues.
        Those manufacturers and others are participating in that.
    Our partnership with them is more nascent than with the State
    and locals, as my colleagues have talked about the importance
    of State and locals and, frankly, businesses everywhere in
    ensuring that they require cyber security best practices for
    their vendors is important.
        I can't comment on the specific statistic. I'm not familiar
    with that statistic.
        Senator Wyden. You don't have to comment. The question is,
    though, ma'am, how confident are you as of this afternoon that
    the election technology that they're selling to the states
    follows cyber security best practices?
        Ms. Manfra. Sir, it's just hard for me to judge right now.
    I don't have perfect insight into the machines that the states
    buy. What I can tell you is that many of those manufacturers
    have submitted their equipment through a voluntary compliance
    process, run by the EAC and NIST and now DHS, that includes
    things like a code review--so they've voluntarily submitted
    those for compliance. And that many states use whether it's a
    voluntary voting standards, guidelines or similar mechanism for
    assuring the security of those systems, whether they mandate it
    or they do it voluntarily.
        I can also tell you that many of those machines that
    researchers say have vulnerabilities or other issues, that
    those can only be exploited when an individual has physical
    access to those machines. And election officials have other
    mechanisms that they've put in place to ensure that that
    physical access is not possible.
        Senator Wyden. Well, let me be----
        Ms. Manfra. Yes sir.
        Senator Wyden. Let me be specific on it. There have been
    press reports that that biggest company actually stipulated
    that remote access software be installed in the machine. Now,
    if that's correct--and that's why I very much want your agency
    to get back to us. I think my time is almost out. I would like
    to have you get back to me with a written response to my
    question, of how confident you are that this technology they
    sell to the states follows best practices.
        I heard about the voluntary certification and the like,
    because when you read press reports that the biggest seller of
    voting machines is doing something that violates Cyber Security
    101, is actually directing that you install remote access
    software which would make a machine like that a magnet for
    fraudsters and hackers and the like, you say, ``Boy, we've got
    to really beef up what we're doing.''
        The Secretary, to her credit, said,``Hey, this is a
    national security, you know, issue.'' She wants best practices,
    to include paper ballots.
        Can you get back to me with an answer within a week with
    respect to how confident you are of the technology they sell as
    following best practices?
        Ms. Manfra. Yes sir, although if I could add, remote access
    software is only useful to an attacker if there is an internet
    connection, which the states do not allow. But I will
    absolutely get back to you, sir.
        Senator Wyden. If the press reports are talking about it, I
    think we ought to at least get an assessment from you----
        Ms. Manfra. Yes, sir.
        Senator Wyden [continuing]. With respect to how confident
    you are.
        Ms. Manfra. Yes, sir.
        Senator Wyden. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
        Chairman Burr. Jim, you look like you maybe wanted to
    comment on that. Do you?
        Mr. Condos. Thank you. Going by the press reports, the
    press reports initially stated that there was remote access
    software, but I believe there was a follow-up from perhaps that
    software company that--or the machine company--that said that
    they don't use that. That was something that was done at one
    time, but is not any longer used.
        Senator Wyden. Well, let's just hear from Ms. Manfra and
    that would be in writing within a week, and we'll go from
    there.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Chairman Burr. Senator King.
        Senator King. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
        Mr. Rosenbach, I want you to be shrill. You said you don't
    want to be shrill. I want you to be shrill. Tell us in 30
    seconds about General Gerasimov.
        Mr. Rosenbach. General Gerasimov believes that the most
    powerful weapon you can use is information combined with----
        Senator King. He's a Russian general, right?
        Mr. Rosenbach. He was the second ranking person on the
    Russian general staff. I'll tell you a story about this. You
    know, I used to be in charge of cyber at the Pentagon and there
    was a time when we actually talked to the Russians and the guy
    I was talking to was a three-star, he was like the number three
    ranking guy in the Russian military.
        He was taunting me, because he said, ``You guys are so
    dumb; you're building a Cyber Command that doesn't even have
    information operations and information operations is the way
    that you take a country down.''
        Senator King. And they in fact hacked the Pentagon, they
    hacked the White House, they hacked the Joint Chief of Staff,
    they hacked the Democratic National Committee. I mean--I don't
    believe we're--you're grading on a curve, man. You said it was
    a B. I think you're giving us too much credit.
        Mr. Rosenbach. It's a B for effort, but that doesn't mean
    that we can sleep well.
        Senator King. Yes. Where I come from, effort doesn't count.
        Mr. Rosenbach. No, but it doesn't mean you can sleep well.
    I mean, the Russians, remember, they're very good, which means
    they have capability, and they're mean, and they have interests
    that are directly opposed to the United States, so they have
    motive. Those are the two things you look at.
        Senator King. Mr. Condos, welcome from Vermont. We in Maine
    think of Vermont as the West Coast of New England. We're glad
    to have you here.
        I understand that in Senator Lankford's bill originally
    there was a red team provision--you heard me describe that--
    that would have had a hacking team at DHS or somewhere
    practice; and that the states furiously opposed this and that
    it was dropped out. Is that true?
        Mr. Condos. I am not aware of it being--I can't answer
    that. I don't know if that was true or not.
        Senator King. Do you think it would be a good idea?
        Mr. Condos. I think many of the states, if not all of the
    states, are going through penetration testing already, which is
    I think the same thing as what you're talking about, is
    professional folks who try to hack into your systems. We're
    already doing it. We've done it already in Vermont and we are
    continuing to do it as we go.
        Senator King. Well, I just hope it's being done at the
    highest possible level, because I understand there was a so-
    called Hackathon last summer where every State or every State
    that they tried, they managed to penetrate. The results were
    devastating. So, I just hope that this is something that's
    really been taken seriously.
        I just worry. I have to say, I just have to worry that
    there's an overconfidence here in terms of the sophistication
    of our adversaries.
        Mr. Condos. If there was a hack last year that hit 50
    states, the 50 states don't know about it.
        Senator King. I don't know about 50 states. It was a number
    of states. I don't know if it was 50 states.
        Also, you mentioned that you thought one of the strengths--
    and frankly, I thought this, too--of our system was that it was
    so decentralized. Do you know how many election system vendors
    there are, anybody?
        Mr. Condos. I do not know how many vendors there are.
        Senator King. Does anybody know?
        [No response.]
        My sense is that there are not very many, and that they're
    getting fewer, fewer and fewer all the time.
        Anybody know how many election systems have foreign owners?
        [No response.]
        No?
        Ms. Manfra. Sir, I don't have it with me, but we can get
    back to you.
        Senator King. Could you get that for us, yes?
        Ms. Manfra. Yes, sir.
        Senator King. That's just what I was going to ask you. If
    you could----
        Ms. Manfra. Yes, sir.
        Senator King [continuing]. Give us a report on how many
    vendors there are and what the ownership structure of those
    vendors are.
        I think a point that's been made that ought to be
    reiterated: They don't have to change votes to win; they just
    have to sow lack of confidence, and people lose confidence in
    the electoral system, they lose confidence in the democratic
    process.
        We haven't talked too much about registration lists or
    election night reporting. What if they hack into that system
    and the election night reporting turns out to be all wrong the
    next morning? That would be rather chaotic. So I think that's
    something.
        I understand the issues of transparency, but I think we
    have to understand that they don't have to actually get in and
    change votes in order to achieve the result that they're
    seeking.
        Mr. Rosenbach, do you agree with that?
        Mr. Rosenbach. Yes sir. I was just going to say they've
    done that. They did that in Ukraine. They hacked the web page
    used to publicly announce the final vote, used misinformation,
    and Ukraine was left in chaos for days afterwards trying to
    figure out who won. So we need to look at that playbook. They
    will do it to us.
        Senator King. So it could be--we're not necessarily talking
    about voting machines not connected to the internet. How about
    the lines from the Associated Press to CNN, because it may be
    that that may be a place where there could be mischief.
        Ms. Manfra. Yes sir. And I know we've focused mostly on
    voting machines, but that is not our exclusive focus. We're
    concerned about the entire process, as Secretary Nielsen
    outlined, everything from registering to the final
    certification of the vote.
        And as former Secretary Johnson talked about, the
    Associated Press engagement. We remain focused and thinking
    about if an adversary is trying to undermine confidence, what
    are the ways to do that? We've published best practices on
    voter registration systems. We've worked with states on
    everything from voting machines to election management systems,
    which can include tallying, how we secure the secretary of
    state website, how we think about unofficial election night
    reporting, how we think about crisis communications, if there
    is misinformation on the day of an election or immediately
    following.
        So we are trying to take a very holistic approach and not
    just thinking about voting machines. In fact, using this risk
    based approach to it and thinking about the difficulty in
    actually trying to manipulate a vote itself is why we
    prioritize engagement on those systems that are connected to
    the internet, like voter databases and others, that could cause
    that misinformation issue.
        Senator King. Thank you.
        I know I'm out of time, but, Mr. Rosenbach, yes or no: Do
    you agree with the contention that we, this country, aside from
    all of these defensive measures, needs to develop a cyber
    deterrence strategy in order so that our adversaries know that
    there'll be a price to be paid for these kinds of incursions?
        Mr. Rosenbach. Yes sir. I could not agree more strongly at
    all.
        Senator King. Thank you.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Chairman Burr. Senator Collins.
        Senator Collins. Thank you Mr. Chairman.
        Secretary Manfra, Senator Heinrich and I wrote a letter to
    the Department asking specifically whether or not you needed
    new statutory authority or funding in order to help State
    election agencies and ensure the integrity of our elections
    systems and the voting process. I personally am surprised that
    the Department has not been more proactive in that area in
    submitting requests to the Congress.
        What is your answer to that question? Does DHS need
    additional authorities or additional funding in order to assist
    states and ensure the integrity of our voting systems?
        Ms. Manfra. Yes, ma'am; thank you for the question. On the
    authorities piece, we have the authorities we need right now to
    do our job. Thanks to the work of this committee and the
    Homeland Committees, frankly, over the last few years, we have
    very broad authorities that we can apply.
        We're continuing to build the capacity and the capability
    to fully execute those authorities. We have reprogrammed money.
    We have reprioritized money. That does mean that we have had to
    lower the prioritization of other entities receiving our
    services, whether those were Federal or other critical
    infrastructure, but we felt it was appropriate for the risk. We
    have spoken with appropriators and others to ensure that we do
    have the resources that we need to continue to prioritize
    elections in addition to our other missions.
        Senator Collins. Well, you certainly need to prioritize
    elections, but you also have to be cognizant of other critical
    infrastructure such as the power grid and natural gas
    pipelines. So more specifically, are you going to and have you
    requested additional funding to ensure the integrity of our
    elections?
        Ms. Manfra. Yes, ma'am, we have spoken to the appropriators
    and requested additional.
        Senator Collins. And how much additional funding have you
    requested?
        Ms. Manfra. Approximately $25 million.
        Senator Collins. Well, I would note, Mr. Chairman, that I
    believe the bills that many of us have co-sponsored called for
    far more funding than that, like $386 million; and I know
    you've worked hard to get it into the omnibus bill.
        Secretary Condos, I apologize for being out for part of
    your testimony and much of the Q and A due to another
    commitment that I have. It's my understanding that, at least
    until recently, you've been pretty disappointed with the level
    of communication between the Department and your office. I'm
    curious whether you're one of those lucky 21 of the 150 State
    election officials who has received a security clearance.
        Mr. Condos. First, let me say yes, I have received my
    clearance, so I'm fully cleared at this point.
        Secondly, I will say that I'm not sure that that's being
    lucky or not.
        Senator Collins. I was being facetious actually.
        [Laughter.]
        Mr. Condos. But I think that the communication levels
    between the states and Department of Homeland Security have
    improved greatly, specifically in the last six months, and I
    think we're on the same page and we're working to secure our
    election systems.
        Senator Collins. Finally, let me ask you: State election
    officials have expressed apprehension about the risk that being
    too public about the threat that we face might provoke exactly
    the impression that they're endeavoring to dispel, that is,
    that the Nation's voting systems are insecure and subject to
    compromise, and thus may help the Russians and other foreign
    adversaries achieve their goals.
        I would note, to counter that, that when the French and the
    Germans made very public what the Russians were trying to do in
    their elections, it had a beneficial impact on the public, and
    the public was much more weary of fake news stories or other
    issues.
        In your view, how do we strike the right balance for public
    communications concerning threats to our election
    infrastructure?
        Mr. Condos. As far as the threats themselves, I think that
    we should be communicating with the public to let them know
    what's going on. I will say that in our State we are right now
    preparing for an early April cyber summit that we're going to
    do in Vermont for the media, for the public, for our
    legislature, so that they are fully aware of what is going on
    and where we are going and how we are set up to fend off in the
    attacks.
        I think it's also very important to know that the bad
    actors that tried to hack us yesterday are going to try a
    different way today and they're going to be different tomorrow.
    They evolve probably--not probably. They evolve far quicker
    than any government can set up. So what you need to do is make
    sure that you have the protocols in place, that you have the
    processes in place, and that you have the defenses in place, in
    hopes to be able to fend those off.
        No computer, no computer, is safe from a hack. Every
    computer can be hacked if it's out there. What you want to do
    is make sure you have the proper defenses in place.
        Senator Collins. Thank you.
        Mr. Chairman, thank you, and Vice Chairman, for this
    excellent hearing. My final message to DHS is again to stress
    the urgency. Everyone seems focused on the November hearings.
    We're having elections right now. We're having the by-
    elections, we're having special elections, we're having
    primaries coming up now. We can't wait. We can't just be
    focused on November.
        Thank you Mr. Chairman.
        Chairman Burr. Thank you Senator Collins.
        We have exhausted the questions. I'm going to turn to the
    Vice Chairman briefly.
        Vice Chairman Warner. I want to first of all thank the
    panel. I want to echo what Senator Collins has said, but I do
    think, echoing what has Eric said, there's been some progress.
    At least there is a recognition of how significant it is.
        I think in the omnibus, because of the work frankly that
    has been done by members on this committee, that some of the
    resources that our State partners are looking for will be
    there. We're going to want to see regular milestones on how we
    move forward on that.
        I want to echo what Senator King has said. We've spent a
    lot of time in closed sessions on this, and that is the need
    for our country to have an articulated cyber doctrine. I think
    that's going to raise a lot of tough questions. I think it's
    going to raise questions about where does the responsibility
    lie to report and how far down does it go.
        It may raise questions around the whole question of
    software liability, which has been an area that has been not
    talked about for years. But in this new realm with the level of
    vulnerabilities we have, it may have to be explored.
        Again, I know I gave Secretary Manfra some challenging
    times last year, but this question, not just with election
    security, but across the government, of the slowness of getting
    security clearances. We had a good hearing on this again
    yesterday. We had a public hearing a couple of weeks back. This
    just has to be a higher priority. We're 700,000 in arrears.
    We've got only a few of the election security officials. I
    would argue, frankly, we need Fortune 1,000 chief security
    officers to have security clearances as well. So a lot of work
    to be done.
        I do want to just close before I turn it back to the
    Chairman, though, and not all of the members are here, but
    thank all of those members particularly from both parties who
    have worked so diligently on putting together a legislative
    effort that I'm proud to co-sponsor, that I think shows the
    kind of commitment of this committee to not only investigate
    looking backwards, but to also try to lay out some solutions
    sets going forward.
        I would point out again, yesterday at the press conference
    we had on this we had virtually every member of the committee
    attending, and that's a credit to the good work of a lot of
    folks on this committee.
        With that, thank you Mr. Chairman.
        Chairman Burr. I thank the Vice Chairman and, more
    importantly, I thank this panel. You have provided us some
    great insight, not just today, but on an ongoing basis, and
    we're grateful for that.
        I will note at this time that the Lankford-Harris
    legislation is not legislation from this committee, but it is
    important legislation. And there's others out there, and
    Senator Blunt and probably Government Oversight will
    jurisdictionally have pieces of it. I have joined Senator
    Warner in co-sponsoring the legislation now that we've finished
    this portion of our investigation.
        I want to thank each of you for being here. In 2016, states
    faced a threat they never expected to confront: a hostile
    nation seeking to invade networks essential to the functioning
    of our democracy. While our collective insight is still limited
    and based in large part on states' self-reporting when they saw
    a problem, the committee has found that the actual damage was
    limited. No votes were changed and only one State reported an
    actual penetration of voter registration database.
        Still, given the capabilities and the intent of Russia and
    other potential cyber adversaries, the lack of resources
    available to most states, the committee remains concerned about
    potential future attacks. States should not be asked to stand
    alone against a nation.
        We heard today from DHS how they learned, course-corrected,
    and have become a true partner with the states. We commend you
    for that. DHS needs to continue to rise to the challenge, with
    more resources if needed; and they need to tailor their
    assistance to where the State needs are.
        We've heard from NASS and NASED how the states feel about
    suddenly being in the cross-hairs of a hostile foreign power.
    We've also heard what states need to do to secure their
    election systems. Our witnesses lined up today made clear the
    strength of decentralized vibrant election systems at the State
    and local level, paired with capability and resources at the
    Federal level.
        However, we also need to have in place a solid deterrent, a
    deterrent to activities like this in the future. Any hostile
    power who seeks to undermine the fundamental structures of our
    democracy should be prepared to pay a hefty price.
        The close of this hearing concludes chapter one of our
    committee's investigation. I believe we've shown through our
    work today and over the past year that these issues go beyond
    party politics. We may disagree on some things, but we all
    agree on this committee that we must take steps to ensure
    elections are secure. We've investigated and uncovered the full
    scope of a sobering threat. We now hand this over to the Rules
    and the Government Affairs Committee to consider legislative
    approaches within their jurisdiction.
        I'd also like to take a moment to thank the committee staff
    for their work. The staff involved in this effort has worked
    tirelessly with few days off over the last 14 months in a
    politically charged and demanding environment. They are
    talented, they are professionals, and they are focused, and
    they have done outstanding work for the committee and, more
    importantly, for the American people. While their names won't
    be on the report and probably and hopefully will never be
    released publicly, they should know just how much we appreciate
    their hard work and how beneficial this has been to states,
    localities, and to the American people.
        Once again, thank you for your testimony today. This
    hearing is adjourned.
        [Whereupon, at 12:37 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]

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