[Senate Hearing 117-307]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                                                        S. Hrg. 117-307

                             OPEN HEARING:
                2022 ANNUAL WORLDWIDE THREAT ASSESSMENT
                   OF THE U.S. INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY

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

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                    SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE

                                 OF THE

                          UNITED STATES SENATE

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             SECOND SESSION
                               __________

                             MARCH 10, 2022
                               __________

      Printed for the use of the Select Committee on Intelligence
      

                  [GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]


        Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov
        
                               __________

                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
                    
47-985                      WASHINGTON : 2023 

        
        
                    SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE

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

                   MARK R. WARNER, Virginia, Chairman
                  MARCO RUBIO, Florida, Vice Chairman

DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California         RICHARD BURR, North Carolina
RON WYDEN, Oregon                    JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho
MARTIN HEINRICH, New Mexico          SUSAN COLLINS, Maine
ANGUS KING, Maine                    ROY BLUNT, Missouri
MICHAEL F. BENNET, Colorado          TOM COTTON, Arkansas
BOB CASEY, Pennsylvania              JOHN CORNYN, Texas
KIRSTEN E. GILLIBRAND, New York      BEN SASSE, Nebraska

                  CHUCK SCHUMER, New York, Ex Officio
                 MITCH McCONNELL, Kentucky, Ex Officio
                  JACK REED, Rhode Island, Ex Officio
                   JAMES INHOFE, Oklahoma, Ex Officio
                              ----------                              

                     Michael Casey, Staff Director
                  Brian Walsh, Minority Staff Director
                   Kelsey Stroud Bailey, Chief Clerk


                            C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              

                             MARCH 10, 2022
                           OPENING STATEMENTS

                                                                   Page

Warner, Hon. Mark R., a U.S. Senator from Virginia...............     1
Rubio, Hon. Marco, a U.S. Senator from Florida...................     4

                               WITNESSES

Haines, Avril, Director of National Intelligence, accompanied by: 
  William J. Burns, Director, Central Intelligence Agency; 
  Lieutenant General Scott D. Berrier, Director, Defense 
  Intelligence Agency; General Paul Nakasone, Director, National 
  Security Agency; and Christopher Wray, Director, Federal Bureau 
  of Investigation...............................................     6

                         SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

Report titled ``Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence 
  Community''....................................................    43

 
   OPEN HEARING: 2022 ANNUAL WORLDWIDE THREAT ASSESSMENT OF THE U.S. 
                         INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY

                              ----------                              


                        THURSDAY, MARCH 10, 2022

                                       U.S. Senate,
                          Select Committee on Intelligence,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:05 a.m., in 
Room SH-216 in the Hart Senate Office Building, Hon. Mark R. 
Warner, Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
    Present: Senators Warner, Rubio, Feinstein, Wyden, 
Heinrich, King, Bennet, Casey, Gillibrand, Burr, Risch, 
Collins, Blunt, Cotton, Cornyn, and Sasse.

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

    Chairman Warner. Good morning. I call this hearing to 
order.
    I want to welcome our witnesses: Director of National 
Intelligence, Avril Haines; the CIA Director, Bill Burns; the 
FBI Director, Chris Wray; Director of the National Security 
Agency and the Commander of U.S. Cyber Command, General Paul 
Nakasone; and DIA Director, Lieutenant General Scott Berrier.
    Thank you all for being here today, and thank you also to 
the literally thousands of dedicated IC professionals who help 
do the good work that allows you to appear before this 
Committee.
    The annual worldwide threats hearing is critically 
important. It is not only an opportunity for the intelligence 
agencies to inform our Members of the many threats and 
opportunities facing the United States, it's also really one of 
the only times when the combined leadership of the IC comes 
together to actually inform the American public
    It's why last year, after there was no worldwide threats 
hearing in 2020, Congress codified this briefing requirement in 
law. This dialog and transparency is a fundamental pillar of 
democracy. It allows the American people to appreciate the IC's 
usually secret mission and also to hold our Nation's security 
agencies accountable.
    In that light, I want to first express, though, my 
enormous, enormous gratitude for the accuracy with which the IC 
predicted Putin's plans to invade Ukraine. Those warnings made 
plain for all to see that the lies of the Kremlin, which was 
attempting to put together false flag operations to somehow 
legitimize Putin's actions, were totally false. And your 
forward-leaningness--and, candidly, I know for some of you, 
probably outside your traditional comfort zone--I think was 
critically, critically important in throwing Putin off guard, 
but also showing to our allies, and not just our traditional 
allies but people across the world, the nefarious intent of 
Vladimir Putin.
    Right now, Putin is waging an illegal and disastrous war in 
Ukraine. And as we saw yesterday, the bombing of the Children's 
and Maternal Hospital, with horrific humanitarian consequences. 
We all know that Putin had this aspiration to restore Russia's 
greatness, but what he got is that now Russia is even further 
viewed as a pariah state and his invasion has been virtually 
unanimously condemned. Truth is, right now, NATO is more 
unified than ever.
    Russia's economy suffers under crippling sanctions from a 
global coalition, not only Five Eyes or NATO, but the E.U., 
Japan, Sweden, Finland. And as we've all indicated a number of 
times, it's a pretty remarkable action when even Switzerland 
gets out of its traditional neutral position.
    Truth is, businesses are fleeing Russia. We've seen 
international energy companies and others, the pictures in the 
last couple of days of McDonald's. And I still remember the 
very first McDonald's going into Moscow. What an event that 
was. But the fact is that, at least on a short-term basis, 
McDonald's is closing down all its stores.
    All the while, the people of Ukraine demonstrate a bravery 
and a commitment to defend their country against the madness of 
Putin's attempt at authoritarian subjugation. We've also been, 
I think, all inspired by President Zelensky's courage and his 
willingness to stand up against Putin's efforts. I also want to 
take a moment, and I've shared this with my colleagues, you 
know, democracy is sometimes messy.
    The way we sometimes go about passing our laws is messy. In 
the last few years in our country, whether it was grappling 
with the January 6th intervention, whether it was COVID, 
whether it was the ability of social media to pit us against 
each other on a tribal basis, I think it sometimes made us 
question whether traditional liberal democracy and its values 
can be successful against an authoritarian regime.
    And I believe with all my heart that the people of Ukraine 
are literally voting with their lives, embracing the values 
that we take for granted every day. And maybe we all want to 
take a deep breath at some point and recognize, with all our 
flaws, our system is still the best in the world, and people 
are willing to die to try to touch some of the freedoms that we 
take on a daily basis.
    And as we focus on this enormous crisis and as Russia axed 
up in the relative stability of the post-World War II order in 
Europe, I don't think we can take our eyes off one of the other 
great challenges our country and the world face, and that is 
the strategic competitor that the Chinese Communist Party of 
President Xi presents. And I think it is always important--I 
know I say this always--to make the point that our beef, 
particularly when it comes to China, is not with the Chinese 
people or the Chinese diaspora, but is with the Communist 
Party, because the failure to do so simply plays into Xi's 
efforts that are broadcasted on all of the Chinese social media 
platforms that somehow this is an anti-Asian, anti-China 
effort. We see this not only here; I had a conversation with 
our Australian counterpart just recently on this same topic. 
And the truth is, China is unlike any adversary that we've 
faced, I believe, since the Second World War. It's demonstrated 
not only its ability to try to compete with us on a military 
basis, but compete with us on an economic basis. Russia, the 
Soviet Union, was a military threat an ideological threat but 
was never truly an economic threat.
    And one area that is of enormous concern to me is China's 
competition with us in the technology realm. I got my start in 
telecom about 40 years ago, and I could never have imagined all 
the innovations that have come about from technology. Social 
media, satellites, high performance computing, semiconductors--
the list goes on and on. Technology has become so incredibly 
integral to our lives and our national security. I truly 
believe that whoever wins the technology race in the 21st 
century will lead to economic and other levels of dominance.
    I think that ability to compete against China--and it will 
require, frankly, not only the United States, but it will 
require great working with our allies around the world--is 
critically important in a clear intelligence and national 
security threat. One of the things I think that the 
Administration has done quite well is in terms of rallying 
forces against Russia. We see China on a daily basis continue 
to compete in those domains. Truth is, China is relying on 
strategic investments, cyber, and traditional espionage. I 
think the FBI Director has indicated close to $500 billion a 
year of intellectual property theft. The truth is, China is not 
trying to have a dual-win circumstance. They intend to win and 
dominate in technology domain after technology domain.
    Unlike the United States, I believe China will use that 
power to spread its authoritarian ideas, whether through 
economic coercion like the Belt and Road Initiative, or in an 
area that, again, we've talked with many of you about, in terms 
of China infiltrating those critically-important, technology-
setting bodies that sometimes have been not viewed with 
appropriate focus.
    And that's, again, why I want to thank the ODNI, the CIA, 
and all of you for refocusing your agencies on this critical 
competition in the technology domain. A rising China and a 
ruthless Russia, both headed by authoritarian regimes seeking 
to undermine the cause of democratic governments worldwide 
again, are a stark reminder that what we take for granted here 
in this country, freedom of the press, freedom to vote, 
democracy--as messy as it is--that order is not guaranteed. It 
requires conviction, leadership, and sometimes sacrifice, 
again, as we see that sacrifice play out on a daily basis with 
the people of Ukraine.
    Now, while I focus today on China and Russia, I know there 
are a multitude of other threats that I haven't addressed from 
rogue states like Iran and North Korea, the persistent threat 
of terrorism, the ongoing global pandemic and future emerging 
global health threats, and the obviously continued and pressing 
threat of global warming, which looms closer and closer. We see 
the floods playing out right now in Australia. Suffice it to 
say, I can't think of a time when the worldwide threats were 
more voluminously complex. I can't think of a better group of 
people, though, to come forward to present the Intelligence 
Community's view on these issues. I look forward to the day's 
very important discussion, and I appreciate you being here.
    I'll turn now to my friend, the Vice Chairman.

             OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. MARCO RUBIO,
                  A U.S. SENATOR FROM FLORIDA

    Vice Chairman Rubio. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you all 
for being here.
    This is, I imagine, probably the most important and most 
watched worldwide threats hearing in my time in the U.S. 
Senate. I was raised in the final decade of a long Cold War, in 
which the struggle between the two global superpowers and two 
ideologies really threatened to end life on the Earth. I came 
into adulthood and I witnessed the collapse of an evil empire, 
a vision and an image unimaginable to anyone just a few short 
years before it happened. And it seemed at that time that the 
world had reached the end of history, that liberal democracy 
had won and was destined to spread to every corner of the 
globe, and the connections of a globalized economy would, from 
here on out, prevent war between great powers forever.
    The truth is that, in every era, leaders, nations, and 
civilizations have struggled with the same feature of our 
fallen nature, and that is the desire of the powerful to 
conquer, to enslave, to rule over those that are weaker than 
themselves. Western civilization in general--our Nation, the 
United States of America, in particular--embraced moral 
principles that stigmatized this part of our nature. And we 
created rules and institutions both at home and around the 
world to control it. But it's now clear that the last 30 years 
were but a brief respite from the rhythms of human history 
because, while much has changed about humanity and our species, 
there is one thing that will never change: human nature.
    Putin's invasion of Ukraine has especially horrified the 
Western world because we had grown accustomed to war and 
brutality being what happens in other regions, troubled 
regions, far away, or the stuff of grainy black and white 
videos. But now the victims are people who are familiar to us. 
They're people who just a month ago had jobs. They had lives. 
They had trips planned. They had weddings on the books. They 
lived much like we do on this very day. And then overnight, 
they have no home to return to, no job to resume. And we see 
the images of wives and children boarding busses and trains and 
unsure that they will ever see their husband or father alive 
again.
    This man's barbarism is a shocking opening chapter in the 
return of history, and now we must prepare ourselves for this 
new era, for frankly, greater dangers lie ahead. Vladimir 
Putin's claim is both meritless but familiar: that his is a 
powerful country and therefore he has the right to make vassals 
of his neighbors. But it is not his claim alone. In the Middle 
East, Iran considers its Ayatollah to be the leader of the 
entire Muslim world, Shia and Sunni alike, and it seeks an arc 
of power extending to Lebanon to Syria to Iraq and eventually 
to Bahrain. It seeks the weapons to gain them immunity from the 
world doing anything about it.
    And in the Far East, we find the most audacious and 
consequential claim of all: an assertive China which believes 
that all roads must one day lead to Beijing, and that their 
smaller neighbors must accept their place in the world as 
tributary states. Standing in the way of this axis of 
totalitarianism is an imperfect yet very powerful living 
rejection of their claims. The United States of America--we 
face no shortages of challenges here at home. We're divided 
over issues that range from the consequential to, frankly, the 
trivial, but we cannot avoid the fork in the road before us 
now. We will either awaken from complacency, build our national 
strength, and confront this century's version of 
authoritarianism, or it will one day come for us and the world 
will enter a new Dark Age.
    In this new conflict, the agencies each of you have been 
entrusted to lead will play a role more pivotal than ever. 
Conflict now between competing powers and worldviews is no 
longer just a domain of soldiers and sailors. In this new era, 
our adversaries engage us daily on the battlefield of 
information and cyberspace and technology and in the heavens.
    They infiltrate our schools to steal our research and our 
laboratories to steal our science. They enter our computers to 
take our data and our companies to take our industries. And 
they embed themselves in our social media to divide us against 
one another and to confuse us and in our critical 
infrastructure to one day hold us hostage.
    There is not a single American soldier on the ground in 
Ukraine; not a single American airman patrols the skies. We may 
not be at war with Russia, but we are most certainly in 
conflict with Putin. When Putin was denying any intention of 
invading Ukraine, it was your work--the work of our 
Intelligence Community--that prepared a skeptical world to get 
ready and immunized it from the virus of disinformation. When 
it came time to inflict damage on his economy, it was our 
intelligence that identified the ones that would have the 
greatest impact.
    And all of us, as the Chairman has pointed out, have been 
inspired by the bravery of President Zelensky. But every 
American deserves and needs to know that neither his people nor 
the world would have been able to witness this bravery on a 
daily, real-time basis had it not been for the hard work of the 
men and women of our Intelligence Community, often days and 
weeks before the storm.
    And so today, even as we hear about the conflict before us 
now, I hope we will hear about how our intelligence agencies 
are evolving to meet the new challenges of a new era and 
specifically how twenty-first century intelligence was applied 
to the crisis in Ukraine.
    Today, we discuss the various threats confronting our 
Nation. But in all of this, let's not lose sight of the central 
threat before us now, because the spirit of totalitarianism has 
never left us. But it now possesses and lives inside great 
powers. And it's not looking for an off-ramp, it's not looking 
for a face-saving exit, it's not looking for its security 
interest to be respected or their rightful place in the world 
to be recognized. It is looking to fulfill the darkest impulse 
of our fallen nature: to conquer, to dominate, and to enslave.
    This is no time to forget the lessons of history, for this 
is a monster you cannot make a deal with. This is a monster 
that has to be defeated.
    Thank you.
    Chairman Warner. Thank you, Senator Rubio. And before I go 
to the Director, I just want to remind Members that we will 
have a classified briefing after this. So I would ask everyone 
to please respect that in terms of the form of your questions.
    And unlike the traditional way we approach this, order of 
arrival at the gavel, today we're going to go on a strict 
seniority basis down the dais, and I am going to ask Members to 
respect the five-minute rule.
    With that, Director Haines the floor is yours.

             STATEMENT OF AVRIL HAINES, DIRECTOR OF
   NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE, ACCOMPANIED BY: WILLIAM J. BURNS, 
DIRECTOR, CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY; LIEUTENANT GENERAL SCOTT 
D. BERRIER, DIRECTOR, DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE AGENCY; GENERAL PAUL 
 NAKASONE, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY; AND CHRISTOPHER 
        WRAY, DIRECTOR, FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION

    Director Haines. Thank you very much, Chairman Warner, Vice 
Chairman Rubio, for your kind words. And Members of the 
Committee, thank you for the opportunity to speak with you 
today and provide testimony alongside my wonderful colleagues 
and on behalf of the Intelligence Community on the IC's 2022 
Annual Assessment of Worldwide Threats to U.S. national 
security.
    Before I start, I just want to take a moment to express to 
you how much I've appreciated your thoughtful support and 
partnership this last year and to publicly thank the men and 
women of the Intelligence Community for their extraordinary 
work to keep us safe. I know how privileged I am to be part of 
this community, truly, of talented people and to be given a 
chance to do something useful in service to my country, and I 
thank you for the opportunity.
    Broadly speaking, this year's assessment focuses on 
adversaries and competitors, critical transnational threats, 
and conflicts and instability. And these categories often 
overlap, and one of the key challenges of this era is assessing 
how various threats and trends are likely to intersect so as to 
identify where their interactions may result in fundamentally 
greater risk to our interests than one might otherwise expect 
or where they introduce new opportunities.
    The 2022 Annual Threat Assessment highlights some of these 
connections as it provides the IC's baseline of the most 
pressing threats to U.S. national interests. I'll try to do so 
today as I provide a summary of our work. The assessment starts 
with threats from key state actors, beginning with the People's 
Republic of China, which remains an unparalleled priority for 
the Intelligence Community, and then turns to Russia, Iran, and 
North Korea.
    All four governments have demonstrated the capability and 
intent to promote their interests in ways that cut against U.S. 
and allied interests. The PRC is coming ever closer to being a 
pure competitor in areas of relevance to national security, is 
pushing to revise global norms and institutions to its 
advantage, and is challenging the United States in multiple 
arenas, but particularly economically, militarily, and 
technologically. China is especially effective at bringing 
together a coordinated whole-of-government approach to 
demonstrate its strength and to compel neighbors to acquiesce 
in its preferences, including its territorial and maritime 
claims and assertions of sovereignty over Taiwan.
    President Xi Jinping is determined to force unification 
with Taiwan on Beijing's terms, and China would prefer coerced 
unification that avoids armed conflict. And it has been 
stepping up diplomatic, economic, and military pressure on the 
island for years to isolate it and weaken confidence in its 
leaders. At the same time, Beijing is preparing to use military 
force if it decides that that is necessary. PRC is also engaged 
in the largest ever nuclear force expansion and arsenal 
diversification in its history, and is working to match or 
exceed U.S. capabilities in space, presenting the broadest, 
most active and persistent cyber espionage threat to U.S. 
government and private sector networks.
    Russia, of course, also remains a critical priority and is 
a significant focus right now. In light of President Putin's 
recent and tragic invasion of Ukraine, which has produced a 
shock to the geopolitical order with implications for the 
future that we are only beginning to understand and are sure to 
be consequential.
    And the IC, as you know, provided warning of President 
Putin's plans, but this is a case where I think all of us wish 
we had been wrong. Nevertheless, the invasion has proceeded 
consistent with the plan we assessed the Russian military would 
follow, only they are facing significantly more resistance from 
heroic Ukrainians than they expected and encountering serious 
military shortcomings.
    Russia's failure to rapidly seize Kyiv and overwhelm 
Ukrainian forces has deprived Moscow of the quick military 
victory that it probably had originally expected would prevent 
the United States and NATO from being able to provide 
meaningful military aid to Ukraine. Moreover, we assess Moscow 
underestimated the strength of Ukraine's resistance and the 
degree of internal military challenges we are observing in the 
Russian military, which include an ill-constructed plan, morale 
issues, and considerable logistical challenges.
    What is unclear at this stage is whether Russia will 
continue to pursue a maximalist plan to capture all or most of 
Ukraine, which we assess would require more resources even as 
the Russian military has begun to loosen its rules of 
engagement to achieve their military objectives. If they pursue 
the maximalist approach, we judge it will be especially 
challenging for the Russians to hold and control Ukrainian 
territory and install a sustainable pro-Russian regime to Kyiv 
in the face of what we assess is likely to be a persistent and 
significant insurgency. And of course, the human toll of the 
conflict is already considerable and only increasing.
    Thus far, the Russian and Ukrainian militaries have 
probably suffered thousands of casualties along with numerous 
civilian deaths, and of course, well more than a million people 
have fled Ukraine since Russia invaded. Moreover, Russian 
forces are at the very least operating with reckless disregard 
for the safety of civilians as Russian units launch artillery 
and airstrikes into urban areas as they have done in cities 
across Ukraine, including the Chairman's mention of the 
hospital and near critical infrastructure such as the Enerhodar 
nuclear plant. The IC is engaged across the interagency to 
document and hold Russia and Russian actors accountable for 
their actions.
    The reaction to the invasion from countries around the 
world has been extraordinarily severe. Western unity in 
imposing far-reaching sanctions, and export controls as well as 
foreign commercial decisions are having cascading effects on 
the Russian economy. The economic crisis that Russia is 
experiencing is also exacerbating the domestic political 
opposition to Putin's decision to invade.
    NATO's unified response, the significant resistance that 
the Ukrainians have demonstrated on the battlefield, Europe's 
rapid response to Russia's invasion--not just in terms of 
economic measures but also actions long thought to be off the 
table, such as the provision of lethal aid to Ukraine and 
shutting down EU airspace to Russian planes--all almost 
certainly surprised Moscow. In particular, while Putin probably 
anticipated many of the current sanctions to be imposed when he 
weighed the cost of the invasion, we judge that he did not 
anticipate either the degree to which the United States and its 
allies and partners would take steps to undermine his capacity 
to mitigate western sanctions or the pull-back from Russia 
initiated by the private sector.
    Nevertheless, our analysts assessed that Russia, that 
Putin, is unlikely to be deterred by such setbacks and instead 
may escalate the conflict, essentially doubling down to achieve 
Ukrainian disarmament and neutrality to prevent it from further 
integrating with the United States and NATO. We assess Putin 
feels aggrieved the West does not give him proper deference and 
perceives this as a war he cannot afford to lose. But what he 
might be willing to accept as a victory may change over time, 
given the significant costs he is incurring. Putin's nuclear 
saber-rattling is very much in line with this assessment. 
Putin's public announcement that he ordered Russia's strategic 
nuclear forces to go on special alert in response to aggressive 
statements from NATO leaders was extremely unusual. We have not 
seen a public announcement from the Russians regarding a 
heightened nuclear alert status since the 1960s; But we have 
also not observed force-wide nuclear posture changes that go 
beyond what we have seen in prior moments of heightened 
tensions during the last few decades. Our analysts assess that 
Putin's current posturing in this arena is probably intended to 
deter the West from providing additional support to Ukraine as 
he weighs an escalation of the conflict. And Putin probably 
still remains confident that Russia can militarily defeat 
Ukraine and wants to prevent Western support from tipping the 
balance and forcing a conflict with NATO.
    Regardless, our number one intelligence priority is defense 
of the homeland, and we will remain vigilant in monitoring 
every aspect of Russia's strategic nuclear forces. With 
tensions this high, there is always an enhanced potential for 
miscalculation, unintended escalation, and we hope that our 
intelligence can help to mitigate those concerns.
    Beyond its invasion of Ukraine, Moscow presents a serious 
cyber threat, a key space competitor, and one of the most 
serious foreign influence threats to the United States. Using 
its intelligence services, proxies, and wide-ranging influence 
tools, the Russian government seeks to not only pursue its own 
interests, but also to divide Western alliances, undermine U.S. 
global standing, amplify discord inside the United States, and 
influence U.S. voters and decision making.
    And to finish with our state actors, Iran continues to 
threaten U.S. interests. It tries to erode U.S. influence in 
the Middle East, entrench its influence and project power in 
neighboring states, minimize threats to regime stability.
    Meanwhile, Kim Jong-un continues to steadily expand and 
enhance Pyongyang's nuclear conventional capabilities, 
targeting the United States and its allies, periodically using 
aggressive and potentially destabilizing actions to reshape the 
regional security environment in his favor, and to reinforce 
his status as a de facto nuclear power.
    The assessment focuses next on a number of key global and 
transnational threats, including global health security, 
transnational organized crime, the rapid development of 
destabilizing technologies, climate migration, terrorism. I 
raise these because they pose challenges of a fundamentally 
different nature to our national security than those posed by 
the actions of nation-states, even powerful ones like China. We 
look at the Russia-Ukraine war and can imagine outcomes to 
resolve the crisis and the steps needed to get there, even 
though unpalatable and difficult. And similarly, we view the 
array of challenges China actions pose and can discuss what is 
required, how to think about tradeoffs involved. And 
transnational issues are more complex, requiring significant 
and sustained multilateral effort, and that we can discuss ways 
of managing them. All of them pose a set of choices that will 
be more difficult to untangle and perhaps require more 
sacrifice to bring about meaningful change.
    This reflects not just the interconnected nature of the 
problems, but also the significant impact increasingly-
empowered non-state actors have on the outcomes and the reality 
that some of the countries who are key to mitigating threats 
posed by nation-states are also the ones we will be asking to 
do more in the transnational space. For example, the lingering 
effects of the COVID-19 pandemic is putting a strain on 
governments and societies, fueling humanitarian and economic 
crises, political unrest, and geopolitical competition as 
countries such as China and Russia seek to exploit the crisis 
to their own advantage.
    And no country has been completely spared. Even when a 
vaccine is widely distributed globally, the economic and 
political aftershocks will be felt for years. Low income 
countries with high debts face particularly challenging 
recoveries, and the potential for cascading crises that lead to 
regional instability whereas others turn inward or will be 
distracted by other challenges. These shifts will spur 
migration around the world, including on our southern border. 
The economic impact has set many poor and middle income 
countries back years in terms of economic development, and is 
encouraging some in Latin America, Africa, and Asia to look to 
China and Russia for quick economic and security assistance to 
manage their new reality.
    We see the same complex mix of interlocking challenges 
stemming from climate change, which is exacerbating risk to 
U.S. national security interests across the board, but 
particularly as it intersects with environmental degradation 
and global health challenges.
    And terrorism of course remains a persistent threat to U.S. 
persons and interests at home and abroad, but the implications 
of the problem are evolving. In Africa, for example, where 
terrorist groups are clearly gaining strength, the growing 
overlap between terrorism, criminal activity, smuggling 
networks has undermined stability, contributed to coups and an 
erosion of democracy, and resulted in countries turning to 
Russian entities to help manage these problems.
    And global transnational criminal organizations continue to 
pose a direct threat to the United States through the 
production and trafficking of lethal illicit drugs, massive 
theft including cyber-crime, human trafficking, and financial 
crimes and money laundering schemes. In particular, the threat 
from illicit drugs is at historic levels, with more than 
100,000 American drug overdose deaths for the first time 
annually, driven mainly by a robust supply of synthetic opioids 
from Mexican transnational criminal organizations.
    In short, the interconnected global security environment is 
marked by the growing specter of great power competition and 
conflict, while transnational threats to all nations and actors 
compete for our attention and also our finite resources.
    And finally, the assessment turns to conflicts and 
instability, highlighting a series of regional challenges of 
importance to the United States: iterative violence between 
Israel and Iran. Conflicts in other areas, including Africa, 
Asia, and the Middle East, have the potential to escalate or 
spread, fueling humanitarian crises and threatening U.S. 
persons. Africa, for example, has seen six irregular transfers 
of power since 2020 and probably will see new bouts of conflict 
in the coming year as the region becomes increasingly strained 
by a volatile mixture of democratic backsliding, inter-communal 
violence, and the continued threat of cross-border terrorism.
    Of course, we are also focused on our workforce and their 
families. The IC continues to contribute to the government-wide 
effort to better understand potential causal mechanisms of 
anomalous health incidents and remains committed to ensuring 
afflicted individuals receive the quality care they need. The 
safety and well-being of our workforce is our highest priority, 
and we are grateful to Members of your Committee for your 
continued support on these efforts.
    In closing, I just want to note how much effort has gone 
into improving our capability to share intelligence and 
analysis with our partners and allies across the Intelligence 
Community. As we have seen in our approach to the threat to 
Ukraine, as you've noted, the sharing of intelligence and 
analysis has paid real dividends in helping facilitate 
collective action against the renewed threat of nation-state 
aggression. And while such efforts must be done with care to 
ensure we are able to protect our sources and methods, we are 
laying the groundwork to broaden our work where doing so 
creates the conditions for a more united focus on other 
emerging challenges. We appreciate your support in these 
efforts.
    Thank you. I look forward to your questions.
    Chairman Warner. Thank you, Director Haines, and thank you 
on behalf of the other members of the panel on deferring to 
only have you do the opening statement.
    My first question is on the cyber domain and I want to ask 
Director Haines and General Nakasone. And I want to just again 
compliment the Members of this Committee. When we saw the 
Russians launch the SolarWinds attack, it was this Committee 
that first focused on that issue. And in a broadly bipartisan 
way, we recognized that only about 30 percent of our cyber-
attacks are actually being reported to the government. I'm 
proud to say that in the budget bill that hopefully we'll take 
up the next day or two--it's already passed the House--we 
finally have put in place a cyber-notification process, 
something that I would recognize that Senator Collins has been 
working on literally for years and years and years. We are this 
close to the finish line. Since only about 30 percent of our 
cyber incidents are reported, we need to make sure that 
information gets to the FBI, gets to CISA, gets to our private-
sector partners in a real-time way.
    One of the things I've been surprised at is that the 
Russian cyber capabilities, while we've not seen a very 
efficient military so far, I don't think any of us think that 
Russia does not have extraordinarily critical and first-rate 
cyber tools. The fact that they have not launched much beyond 
traditional malware--they've not launched the kind of worm-
driven NotPetya attacks that we saw in 2017--my concern has 
been that that type of attack could literally go beyond the 
geographic boundaries of Ukraine, bleed into Poland where it 
could affect American troops or shut down Polish hospitals, and 
result in the death of Polish citizens, which could potentially 
move us into Article 5 territory.
    General Nakasone, I'd like to start with you. You're the 
best expert on this topic. Have you been a bit surprised that 
they haven't launched their full array of attacks? And how 
concerned are you, as Russia gets more and more stymied on the 
military front, that they may unleash some of their additional 
cyber tools?
    General Nakasone. Chairman, thank you very much for the 
question. I begin by saying that we remain vigilant. We're 15 
days into this conflict. By no means are we sitting back and 
taking this casually. We are watching every single day for any 
type of unusual activity. And I would just build on the 
scenario that you talked about. This idea of malware spreading 
is one scenario that we look at. But there are three other 
scenarios that also come into our thinking.
    One might be the use of ransomware, broad use of ransomware 
that our adversaries might use.
    The next would be scenario proxies, those that necessarily 
may not be part of the Russian government but are functioning 
as a proxy or as a non-nation-state actor due to this type of 
activity to perhaps launch malware.
    And the final one is this idea of a disruptive or 
destructive attack on a country in Eastern Europe that could 
take place.
    As I said, we're 15 days into this. We've seen three to 
four attacks. The reasons in terms of why there haven't been 
more, I think--obviously, this is part of Russia's own 
strategic calculus. But secondly, a tremendous amount of work 
was done prior to the actual invasion, work that was done by my 
agency, work that was done by Cyber Command, by the 
interagency, by a series of private sector partners that harden 
the infrastructure of Ukraine. I think that that was part of 
it. And the final thing is there have been actions since then 
that I think that have contributed to the Russians in terms of 
the way that they approach the future.
    I would just conclude by saying not only are we vigilant, 
we're prepared, and most importantly, we're sharing information 
and sharing our expertise with our partners.
    Chairman Warner. Let me get to my second question. I want 
to honor my own commitment to try to keep within five minutes. 
One of the things that my friend, Senator Burr, often mentioned 
is we don't have a technology committee in the Senate. In many 
ways, the Intelligence Committee has become the technology 
committee.
    I think a lot of the competition going forward, 
particularly vis-a-vis China, will be around technology. I 
think we were all surprised at their enormous success in the 5G 
domain. Again, many of us are working on making sure we make 
the kind of investments that China is making on semiconductors. 
Candidly, shutting off semiconductors to Russia will be as 
effective as any tool in shutting down their military 
industrial complex.
    Director Burns, you have made this a priority. How do we 
make sure that across the IC, we both monitor and incent 
policymakers and the balance of the government to make the 
necessary investments in technology?
    Director Burns. Well, thanks, Mr. Chairman.
    Nothing is going to matter more to the future of CIA and, I 
think, the U.S. Intelligence Community more broadly than our 
ability to compete technologically. It's the main arena, as you 
said before, Mr. Chairman, for competition with China.
    So just in the last couple of months, we've established a 
new mission center at the CIA alongside a new mission center on 
China, and equally important, a mission center focused on 
technology issues to make sure that we're anticipating, keeping 
pace, getting out ahead of the pace of innovation to deepen 
partnerships with the private sector, because that's absolutely 
essential, I think, to our future as we look at competition and 
technology.
    We've just created the position of Chief Technology Officer 
for the first time at CIA. So all of that, I think, reflects 
the enormously high priority that we will continue to attest to 
that set of issues.
    Chairman Warner. Thank you. Senator Rubio.
    Vice Chairman Rubio. Thank you all for being here.
    I'll direct this to you, Director Haines. But anybody who 
wants to answer it can do so. I think we've learned from all 
this, the best way to combat disinformation is through 
transparency. So I want to walk through some component pieces 
of a particular topic involving labs and Ukraine and then allow 
you or anyone to expand who could provide greater insight.
    As you're all well aware, Russia has been laying out this 
argument for a number of months now about how there are these 
labs in Ukraine that are developing chemical and biological 
weapons, that the U.S. is involved, that they've discovered it. 
And they've been making that argument for a period of time. And 
it's the argument they usually make before they use that kind 
of stuff themselves against someone.
    So let me just start with a question on the component 
pieces, and then allow you to expand more on the important 
parts of it. There is a difference between a biological 
research facility and a biological weapons research facility, 
correct?
    Director Haines. Correct.
    Vice Chairman Rubio. Okay. Does Ukraine have any biological 
weapons research facilities?
    Director Haines. No, but let me be clear, we do not assess 
that Ukraine is pursuing either biological weapons or nuclear 
weapons, which has been some of the propaganda that Russia is 
putting out.
    Vice Chairman Rubio. Okay. So they do have the biological 
research facilities. What is our government's role in their 
biological research programs?
    Director Haines. So as I understand it, Ukraine operates 
about a little over a dozen essentially bio labs. And what they 
are involved in is Ukraine's biodefense and their public health 
response. And that's essentially what they're intended to do. 
And I think that the U.S. government provides assistance, or at 
least has in the past provided assistance, really in the 
context of biosafety, which is something that we've done 
globally with a variety of different countries.
    So I would defer, obviously, the details of that assistance 
to the agencies involved.
    Vice Chairman Rubio. Well, I guess that's the important 
component. How do we define biosafety or biodefense? Is it the 
ability to have antidotes or responses if someone were to use 
an agent against you if you were having an outbreak? What 
exactly is that?
    Director Haines. I will quickly get out of my area of 
expertise. But I'll give you a generic answer that I 
understand.
    So it is essentially for biodefense. You can think about 
things like medical countermeasures, for example, things that 
will help you to address a pandemic that is an outbreak in your 
country, things along those lines; things that prevent 
spreading of pandemics and other health issues, things along 
those lines. And the kinds of biosafety pieces that you would 
be providing assistance for are things like making sure that, 
as you're producing medical countermeasures, that you're taking 
appropriate precautions, that you're letting the medical 
community internationally know, notifying when appropriate.
    So that's the kind of assistance. But again, I just want to 
be absolutely clear that we do not believe that Ukraine is 
pursuing biological or nuclear weapons, that we've seen no 
evidence of that. And frankly, this influence campaign is 
completely consistent with longstanding Russian efforts to 
accuse the United States of sponsoring bio-weapons work in the 
former Soviet Union.
    So this is a classic move by the Russians.
    Vice Chairman Rubio. So, I think the one thing that's 
piqued a lot of people's interest, and I hope we can address, 
is that Assistant Secretary Nuland said a couple of days ago, 
in response to my question in another hearing--this is a quote: 
``The U.S. government is concerned about preventing any of 
these research materials from falling into the hands of Russian 
forces should they approach.''
    So people will hear that and say, well, that means that 
there must be something in these labs that's very dangerous. 
They possess pathogens or something that must be very 
dangerous. Look, we're all coming off the trauma of COVID-19, 
the possibility that there might have been an accident or a 
leak out of a lab there that we still don't know the answer to. 
And so it's in that context that people read that statement or 
hear it and say, okay, it sounds to me like they have labs, 
these labs are working on dangerous things, and if the Russian 
were worried that it's going to get out of the laboratory, how 
should people assess that statement? Why are we so concerned? 
And again, I know I'm asking you some questions regarding 
medicine and biology and research and so forth. But it's really 
important for this effort to understand what exactly is in 
these labs that we're so worried about them getting their hands 
on.
    Director Haines. Medical facilities that I've certainly 
been in, done research in high school type of thing, in 
college--all have equipment for pathogens or other things that 
you have to have restrictions around, because you want to make 
sure that they're being treated and handled appropriately.
    And I think that's the kind of thing that probably Victoria 
Nuland was describing and thinking about in the context of 
that. We have to be concerned in the same way that we have to 
be concerned about in the Enerhodar nuclear power plant or 
other facilities that, when they're seized and if they're 
seized, that there may be damage done or theft. And they may in 
fact misuse some of the material that's there that's not 
intended for weapons purposes but, nevertheless, can be used in 
dangerous ways or that can create challenges for the local 
populations.
    Vice Chairman Rubio. All right. Thanks.
    Chairman Warner. Senator Rubio, thank you for raising this. 
I think we've seen some of these reports, that this may be 
another area where Russia is trying to offer a false flag 
signal, and really appreciate your line of questioning.
    I want to turn to Senator Feinstein. But I do want to 
acknowledge that Dianne has served the longest on this 
Committee. And we appreciate very much the challenges, the 
personal challenges you've been going through, and your 
attendance here always.
    I remember one time you literally had come, I think, from a 
medical procedure. You were still here showing up at one of 
these hearings, and we're grateful for your leadership. And I 
call on you now for five minutes.
    Senator Feinstein. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
    In an unclassified annual threat assessment you state that, 
quote, ``Individuals and small cells inspired by a variety of 
ideologies and personal motivation include Sunni violent 
extremism, racially or ethnically motivated violent extremism, 
and militia violent extremism probably represent the greatest 
terrorist threat to the United States.''
    Now, while we have no interest in giving Al-Qaeda or ISIS 
an opportunity to recover, you're making the clear point that 
individuals and small cells represent the greatest threat to 
the United States.
    So here's the question. How are you allocating your 
resources for counterterrorism? It appears that most of the 
funding for counterterrorism goes into efforts focused against 
specific groups instead of attempting to locate individuals.
    How do you justify that allocation compared against the 
assessed threat?
    Director Haines. I'm happy to start, but I suspect Director 
Wray and others may have some thoughts on this.
    I think from at least the Intelligence Community 
perspective, it's true that we focus in on groups that are 
critical to our national security, groups such as al-Shabab and 
ISIS and Al-Qaeda Khor in these contexts, as examples. But it 
is also true that we are looking at, consistently across the 
board, how it is that the ideologies that they propagate and 
that others propagate that are of concern and reflected in our 
assessment are creating violent extremism in a variety of 
places including in small groups and even for individuals.
    And our system is set up in such a way as to identify not 
simply the networking that we see with respect to such groups, 
but also to essentially create the opportunity for us to try to 
provide as much warning as we can with respect to individuals 
and others that----
    Senator Feinstein. Could the military respond as well?
    Director Haines. Absolutely. Yes. And it's challenging 
obviously when you have somebody that's disconnected from a 
system. Yes.
    Director Wray. I would just add that from the FBI's end, of 
course, the types of terrorist threats that you referenced, 
Senator, are at the top of our priority list. And through our 
Joint Terrorism Task Forces in every Field Office, we're 
prioritizing those. And the reason why the Jihadist-inspired 
homegrown violent extremists, and then the domestic violent 
extremists, are such a high priority is because unlike the more 
classic, post-9/11 sleeper cells where you have a large group 
of people plotting, planning, preparing, fundraising, training, 
there are a lot of dots to connect in a plot like that. With 
the kind of terrorist threat we're talking about here, you're 
talking about an individual going after an easily-accessible 
target with a very crude weapon, which means there's a lot 
fewer dots to connect. And so the key is getting the eyes and 
ears out in the community.
    And that's why the growth in the Joint Terrorism Task 
Forces with task force officers from state and local police 
departments all over the country has been such an important 
development.
    Senator Feinstein. Anyone, please. I'd like other comments.
    Director Burns. All I would add, Senator, is even at CIA, 
even as we focus more and more attention and resources on major 
power adversaries like China and Russia for all the obvious 
reasons, we remain sharply focused on the counterterrorism 
challenge, as well. I think it's notable that in the same 
month--last month in February--when all of us had to deal with 
renewed Russian aggression in Ukraine, we played a central role 
along with our partners in the U.S. military in finding the 
former Emir of ISIS, Hajji Abdullah, locating him, and then 
cooperating with our military partners in a successful 
operation against him. So we'll remain very sharply focused.
    Senator Feinstein. So if I understand what you're saying, 
you're changing the allocation of resources to individuals from 
groups. Is that correct or not?
    Director Burns. No. What I was suggesting, Senator, is that 
even as we focus more attention and resources on major power 
adversaries like China and Russia at CIA, where we're focused 
on external terrorist threats, we remain sharply focused on the 
threats posed to the homeland by everyone from ISIS--and I 
mentioned the successful operation against the former ISIS 
Emir--as well as Al-Qaeda and its affiliates like al-Shabab, 
like Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
    That was my only point.
    Senator Feinstein. Thank you. I will hear from the 
military, please.
    General Berrier. Senator, DIA's Defense Counterterrorism 
Center, DCTC, is focused on foreign terrorist threats. They 
continue to operate as they have for the last 20 years, focused 
on organizations' foreign transnational terrorist threats. 
Thank you.
    Senator Feinstein. Thank you.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Warner. Thank you, Senator.
    Senator Burr.
    Senator Burr. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    I want to take this opportunity to highlight what's already 
been pointed out: the success of our intelligence and the 
analysis of that intelligence product. Your thousands of 
employees deserve the thanks of this Committee, of this 
Congress, and of the American people. Likewise, President 
Zelensky and the Ukrainian people have reminded us that 
democracy does not come without a cost.
    It has to be protected. This democracy, the independence of 
Ukraine, demands that democracies around the world respond with 
everything needed to preserve Ukraine's independence and 
democracies that are threatened. Likewise, leaders like Putin 
don't want their people to have the freedoms that we cherish 
and that we strive to protect.
    This would not be possible without the men and women who 
work for you on behalf of not just this country, but 
democracies around the world. We are eternally grateful for all 
the work that they do, but more importantly, the response that 
they've had to this current challenge.
    Mr. Chairman, I have no questions in open session.
    Chairman Warner. Thank you, Senator Burr, for once again 
acknowledging the great work of this community. I appreciate 
it.
    Senator Wyden.
    Senator Wyden. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I share 
Senator Burr's view. And let me thank you particularly, 
Director, for your professionalism and dedication. We've talked 
on a number of subjects and I have appreciated it.
    Now let me turn to cybersecurity. In a recent unclassified 
briefing from my office, government cybersecurity experts 
reconfirmed that a technology known as SS7, which allows phones 
to roam from one network to another, could also allow foreign 
actors to get into our networks and intercept American's calls 
and texts. These experts also identified Russia as one of the 
top threats for this kind of surveillance.
    Now, fortunately, there's a way to prevent this that 
doesn't get in the way of communications between our country 
and Russia. U.S. carriers could simply block roaming requests 
from Russian phone networks. The only inconvenience would be 
that anyone with the U.S. phone in Russia would need to buy a 
local phone card.
    Director Haines, my question would be: would this policy 
make it harder for the Russian government to spy on Americans?
    Director Haines. Thank you so much, Senator Wyden. And I 
think it's an excellent question, obviously. I asked my folks 
what they thought about this. And basically, I think we want to 
explore it, if you're willing to give us a little bit of time. 
I gather it really would require a little bit of research to 
understand what the consequences would be of doing that exact 
kind of blocking.
    So I'd like to be able to come back to you. I think it's a 
really worthy question and appreciate the interest.
    Senator Wyden. Good.
    And you inherited this problem because I've been asking you 
about it for some time. But you're new on the beat and you've 
been responsive and I appreciate it.
    Director Burns, the public knows far less about 
intelligence activities conducted under Executive Order 12333 
than under the FISA law. So I want to express my appreciation 
to you and to the Director for being more forthcoming and 
transparent about this subject than your predecessors.
    Here's my question. The CIA released a portion of a report 
from the Privacy Board that raised the concern that when CIA 
analysts searched their records for information on Americans. 
There was no requirement to justify it. No requirement, for 
example, to write down the justification for a search.
    My question--and we've been talking with your folks--is: 
will you commit this morning to requiring CIA analysts to write 
down their requests for conducting searches on Americans so 
those searches can be reviewed?
    Director Burns. The short answer, Senator, is yes. I can 
assure you that CIA will comply with our Attorney General 
guidelines on documentation requirements for conducting 
queries. In fact, I met last Friday with the new Chair of the 
Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board to talk about this 
issue. And I stressed my personal commitment to working with 
her and the rest of the Board very effectively in the years 
ahead.
    Senator Wyden. So when could we expect that this reform 
would actually be implemented?
    Director Burns. Well, as I said, you have my commitment 
that we'll review our current procedures and ensure that all 
our systems are compliant, and I'd be glad to report back to 
you in six months on that.
    Senator Wyden. Okay, let's see if we can speed it up, 
because we've been waiting a long time for this one as well. 
We'll talk further about it. You've been responsive as well.
    Let me go to you, Director Wray, if I might. You testified 
on Tuesday that the FBI bought a license for the NSO hacking 
tools to evaluate them and determine what security concerns 
they raise.
    Did the FBI inform anybody else in the government about 
what it learned from that evaluation?
    Director Wray. I think I'd have to defer to closed session 
about anything on the--. I think what you're getting at is the 
so-called VEP, the vulnerabilities process that's interagency. 
And while we participate in that, whether or not it applied 
here is a different question. But we could maybe talk a little 
bit more about that in closed session.
    Senator Wyden. I'm glad to do that. Here's what I'm 
interested in. I'm just asking whether the government believes 
that the FBI's operational use of these tools would be legal 
and whether that's still on the table. The public deserves to 
know that. Even if the FBI decided against using NSO's hacking 
tools, the Department of Justice Inspector General has 
confirmed that the FBI does use hacking in investigations.
    I do think the public deserves some information on this. 
Let's continue the discussion.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Warner. Thank you, Senator Wyden.
    And I just want to again acknowledge if Congress had just 
followed Senator Collins ten or eleven years ago, we might be 
further along on the cyber issue.
    Senator Collins.
    Senator Collins. Thank you.
    Director Haines, following up on the Chairman's leadership 
here. Before I begin my questioning, I just want to personally 
thank you for working with the Chairman and me and other 
Members of this Committee on the Cyber Security Bill. We very 
much valued and appreciated your support, which was critical.
    Director Burns, you have always shown extraordinary insight 
into Putin's thinking. We all read about the Russian Defense 
Ministry publicly accusing Ukraine of possibly planning a 
false-flag chemical weapon attack. What do you make of that? 
Does that signal that Putin intends to launch a chemical or 
biological weapon attack on the Ukrainians?
    Director Burns. Well, thanks very much, Senator. I think it 
underscores the concern that all of us need to focus on those 
kind of issues, whether it's the potential for a use of 
chemical weapons, either as a false flag operation or against 
Ukrainians. This is something, as all of you know very well, is 
very much a part of Russia's playbook.
    They've used those weapons against their own citizens. 
They've at least encouraged the use in Syria and elsewhere. So 
it's something we take very seriously. And it's one of the 
reasons, as Director Haines said earlier, that I am convinced 
that our efforts at selective declassification to preempt those 
kinds of false-flag efforts and the creation of false 
narratives have been so important. In all the years I spent as 
a career diplomat, I saw too many instances in which we lost 
information wars with the Russians.
    In this case, I think we have had a great deal of effect in 
disrupting their tactics and their calculations, and 
demonstrating to the entire world that this is a premeditated 
and unprovoked aggression built on a body of lies and false 
narratives. So this is one information war that I think Putin 
is losing.
    Senator Collins. General Berrier, I feel very strongly that 
the Ukrainians should be able to defend their own airspace. But 
obviously, they need planes, they need manned drones. What is 
the current status of the battle for control of the Ukrainian 
airspace? And what is your assessment of what additional 
aircraft or manned drones would mean for Ukraine?
    General Berrier. Senator, thank you for that question.
    My assessment is that the Ukrainians have been somewhat 
effective with the assets and resources that they have. The 
Russians have not achieved what I would call air dominance or 
air superiority over the country of Ukraine right now. That 
said, they are taking some losses and they do need additional 
assets.
    Weapons like Stingers have moved in and they have been used 
with effect. I think the Ukrainians will continue to be able to 
use those in small unit tactics with great effect. Certainly, 
additional assets and resources with UAVs and aircraft, I'm 
sure they could make very good use of that.
    Senator Collins. Thank you.
    Director Berrier, I want to switch to a different issue. I 
believe that we have a very strong moral obligation to welcome 
those Afghans who have risked their lives, their families' 
lives, their livelihoods, to help our troops, our diplomats, 
and our intelligence professionals. Nevertheless, fulfilling 
that obligation does not require compromising a thorough, 
comprehensive vetting process for those Afghans who managed to 
get on to airplanes before the last U.S. aircraft left the 
runway. Unfortunately, a report from the Department of Defense 
IG found that Afghan evacuees have not been screened 
appropriately, using all available DoD databases. And as a 
result, at least 50 individuals with security concerns already 
are in the United States, and most of those cannot be located 
right now.
    Do you know whether the NGIC, the National Ground 
Intelligence Center, has completed a biometric analysis as part 
of this vetting process?
    General Berrier. Senator, I don't know the answer to that 
question right now, but I will take it for the record and get 
back to you.
    Senator Collins. Thank you.
    Chairman Warner. Thank you, Senator Collins. You know, we 
mentioned the fact that this Committee has really taken on a 
major focus on technology. And I want to acknowledge the fact 
that on some of the very sophisticated areas of technology, 
Senator Heinrich may be the only one that actually brings real 
expertise to those issues. So I appreciate that.
    Senator Heinrich.
    Senator Heinrich. Thank you, Chairman.
    Director Burns, I actually want to reiterate my colleague's 
statement of thanks to you for working with us on increasing 
some of the transparency around CIA's activities under 12333. I 
think this is all about ensuring we just understand how 
Americans' privacy and civil liberties are protected under 
those authorities, and I know that's something you care about 
as well.
    I want to ask about the current situation in Chernobyl and 
how concerned we should be about that. I know there's been a 
lot of reporting that Ukraine's grid operator was concerned 
about the reserve diesel generators potentially running out of 
fuel once that was disconnected from the larger power grid.
    How concerned should we be, and what do we know about the 
situation there that can be discussed in this setting?
    Director Haines. I'm happy to start. From my perspective, 
my understanding of it is that we should be concerned but that 
we haven't yet seen anything that brings us from concern to 
it's a complete crisis. And I think if you want further 
details, what I should do is come back to you in writing on it 
and give you our best sense of it. But I don't know if others 
have anything to add.
    Senator Heinrich. I look forward to that.
    Director, you talked a little bit about Russia's strategic 
nuclear posture. And I want to pivot from that for just a 
moment and ask about tactical--some people have even referred 
to them as small nuclear weapons, almost as if they're 
something we don't need to be overly concerned about.
    But folks who work with nuclear weapons today know that 
even tactical nuclear warheads have yields many times larger 
than what we used at the end of World War II. How concerned 
should we be about Russia's potential use of a tactical nuclear 
weapon in Ukraine? What would that look like? And what can we 
do to prevent that from happening, especially given how Putin 
seems to be in a posture where he needs some sort of a reset 
and has proven himself to be very unpredictable?
    Director Haines. I think, probably, we can have a further 
conversation about this in the closed session. But, as a 
general matter, as I indicated, we're obviously very concerned. 
We want to make sure that we're monitoring everything that may 
be going on with respect to Russia's strategic nuclear forces. 
But as I indicated, we have not yet seen posture changes that 
are beyond what we've seen previously during moments of tension 
such as in relation to Crimea or in 2016 vis-a-vis Syria, and 
so on. They have made certain posture changes and they're 
consistent with what we are seeing now. It's nothing 
unprecedented in a sense.
    Senator Heinrich. The international community's sanctions 
and economic work with respect to Russia have resulted in quite 
impressive outcomes. Obviously, Putin is trying to find 
workarounds for these sanctions, to include relying on energy 
sales, on the country's reserves and gold, and Chinese currency 
as well as cryptocurrency. I've read that while there are 
mitigating actions the Russian government can take to try to 
get around the worst of the sanctions, they can't really 
recreate their financial system.
    Director Wray, do you agree with that assessment? And also, 
what avenues do we have to combat Russia's misuse of 
cryptocurrency to evade the current sanctions regime?
    Director Wray. I think Director Haines may want to weigh in 
a little bit on this as well, but I think the top line takeaway 
is that the Russians' ability to circumvent the sanctions with 
cryptocurrency is probably highly overestimated on the part of 
maybe them and others. We are, as a community and with our 
partners overseas, far more effective on that than I think 
sometimes they appreciate.
    And there's a lot of expertise in terms of tools and 
strategies to help block that kind of effort. Ultimately, what 
they really need to do is get access to some form of fiat 
currency, which becomes more challenging. I don't know, 
Director Haines, if you want to----
    Senator Heinrich. And you are utilizing those tools?
    Director Wray. Absolutely. We have built up significant 
expertise both at the FBI and with some of our partners. And 
there have been some very significant seizures and other 
efforts that I think have exposed the vulnerability of 
cryptocurrency as a way to get around sanctions.
    Director Haines. The only thing I'd add to what Director 
Wray said is just with respect to the first part of your 
question, which is the enormous economic impact that's been had 
as a consequence of the sanctions. In that part of what we've 
seen is, as I indicated in my opening statement, we expected 
President Putin anticipated to some extent what the sanctions 
would be and how we would approach this given our past practice 
in these areas. He built up a reserve fund that was really 
intended to help him defend his currency in the context of 
sanctions. But through the actions of our Treasury Department 
and others in Europe and the West, what they've done is 
actually make it very hard for him to access that money in 
order to defend his currency. And we've seen it in freefall. I 
believe it's lost about 40 percent of its value. It is 
extraordinary to watch the stock markets--the fact that they've 
had to close down so much of their economy, industry. Also the 
private sector impact has been extraordinary and I think really 
exacerbates the challenge for them in a pretty extraordinary 
way.
    Director Burns. The only thing I would add very briefly, 
Senator, is that I think among the many profoundly-flawed 
assumptions that President Putin made in launching this 
invasion was his assumption that he had built a sanctions-proof 
economy. That by building, as Director Haines said, a very 
large war chest of foreign currency reserves and gold reserves, 
and by not anticipating there'd be sanctions against the 
Russian Central Bank, by not anticipating that the German 
leadership would show such resolve, in particular, I think he 
deeply underestimated the economic consequences. And I think 
they're just now being felt in Russia and that's going to 
intensify.
    Chairman Warner. Senator Heinrich, I think some of your 
crypto issues are really important. I've got some questions on 
that in the closed session.
    Senator Blunt this is going to be your last Worldwide 
Threat Assessment briefing and we really thank you for your 
service on this Committee.
    Senator Blunt. Well, there are things I'll miss about the 
Senate next year, but one of them will probably not be the 
worldwide threat discussions that we have publicly and every 
week on this fine Committee, Chairman, and thanks for your 
leadership.
    I just want to say that I'm working on NGS issues, and 
we'll address some of that in the classified briefing.
    Chairman Warner. Thank you, Senator Blunt.
    Senator Blunt. Thank you.
    Let's follow up, Director Burns, on your other idea about 
the economy. Do you think Putin overestimated what the Chinese 
might be able to do to offset the sanctions and other economic 
activities? Or, do you think the Chinese will step in in a way 
that he might have anticipated?
    Director Burns. Thanks very much for the question, Senator.
    I think he may be overestimating the extent to which the 
Chinese leadership will be able or willing to help him deal 
with quite severe economic consequences of his invasion of 
Ukraine. It remains to be seen how this will play out. But, you 
know, I recall after the sanctions that were levied against 
Russia after his prior aggression in Crimea, the Chinese drove 
a very hard bargain over pipelines that the Russians were 
trying to negotiate.
    So they weren't particularly flexible or sympathetic, in a 
way, during that period as well. So I suspect there's not going 
to be any easy out for President Putin as he looks at trying to 
deal with those economic consequences--not from the Chinese, 
not from anyone else.
    Senator Blunt. Do we have any sense of how the Chinese have 
reacted to recent locking arms with the Russians right before 
all of these events happened?
    Director Burns. I think, Senator, that the Chinese 
leadership, first, has invested a lot in partnership with 
Russia, and I don't expect that to change anytime soon. I do, 
however, believe that the Chinese leadership, President Xi in 
particular, is unsettled by what he's seen, partly, because his 
own intelligence doesn't appear to have told him what was going 
to happen.
    Second, because of the reputational damage that China 
suffers by association with the ugliness of Russia's aggression 
in Ukraine.
    Third, by the economic consequences at a time when growth 
rates in China, as you look over the rest of this year, are 
lower than they've been in 30 years.
    And fourth, I think because President Xi is probably a 
little bit unsettled as he watches the way in which President 
Putin has driven Americans and Europeans more closely together 
and strengthened the transatlantic alliance in ways that would 
have been a little bit hard to imagine before the invasion 
began.
    I think the Chinese leadership looks at Europe, not just as 
a market, but as a kind of player with whom they can have an 
independent relationship and try to look for ways in which they 
can drive wedges between us and our European allies. And what 
President Putin has so successfully done is to make that much 
less likely.
    Senator Blunt. I didn't intend to dwell in this public 
session on China as much as I'm going to wind up doing in my 
five minutes, but you know the Chinese have also announced 
their plans, their intention, their capability devoted to 
biotech. Underlying those activities, I think, is something, 
Director Wray, we should be really focused on: how much that 
may impact Americans as Chinese try to get more information 
about Americans in various ways, as they develop their own 
biotech potential to impact populations.
    I'll let you start, and then, Director Haines, I'll come to 
you.
    Director Wray. So certainly, the Chinese have shown that 
they are willing to pursue our personal data at a scale unlike 
anything anywhere else in the world. They have stolen more of 
our personal and corporate data than every other nation 
combined. And one of the other lessons we saw from the COVID 
period is their aggressive targeting of COVID research, whether 
it was vaccines or other forms of medical treatment. And you 
could almost clock any company's announcement that they were 
making progress on something. Almost within days, you could 
then see Chinese targeting or trying to steal that research.
    Senator Blunt. Right. We certainly know they've done that 
with personal data, financial data. I'm wondering about their 
biotech focus, Director Haines. Do we need to be now concerned 
about genetic data in ways that we might not have been at an 
earlier time?
    Director Haines. Yes, we do have concerns with bio data 
across the board and I think not just genetic data, as you 
point out. But that's a critical aspect of it. The collection 
of that by China, in particular, but by other countries as 
well, and how that can be used in the future, particularly as 
the technology develops. So, absolutely.
    Senator Blunt. I've noticed some of the reporting here and 
the studies here. You could take a biotechnology look at 
populations here or Africa or other places, and decide to do 
things that specifically have impact on just a segment of the 
population that has the genetic code that may be susceptible to 
that, where their surrounding neighbors and others in the 
country don't have. I think it's an area we'll be talking more 
about, and I look forward to discussing that further.
    Thank you, Chairman.
    Chairman Warner. Thank you, Senator Blunt.
    Senator Bennett, again, I just want to publicly thank you 
for what were able to do last week in looking at some of our 
overhead assets. You're up.
    Senator Bennet. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you very 
much for coming to Colorado.
    I want to start by lending my thanks to all of you and to 
the people that work for you. While Putin was lying to us and 
to the Ukrainians and his own people, your people were 
ascertaining the truth, and we were warning the world.
    And that could not have happened without the work that 
you've done. So I deeply, deeply appreciate it. We were on the 
phone on Saturday, most of us, I guess, with President 
Zelensky. He started the call by saying, we're just fighting to 
be able to live our lives like you. And he ended the call by 
saying, the world should live in peace, the world should live 
in a pluralistic way, by which he meant with freedom of speech, 
freedom of religion, self-determination--and that's what's at 
stake here. And I think we've got a chance to win this fight, 
in part, because of the people that work for all of you. So I 
want to say thank you.
    Director Haines, Putin's aggression against Ukraine and 
against international rules and norms demonstrates the urgency 
of maintaining American superiority in emerging domains, 
including space and cyber, two domains that really I think the 
American people have not heard enough about.
    Last week, as the Chairman mentioned, he joined me in 
Colorado for a series of briefings with Space Command, the 
National Space Defense Center, and NRO leadership. Our 
conversation reinforced for me that our military and 
Intelligence Community missions are inextricably linked. And we 
are concerned that the decision to relocate Space Command does 
not fully account for the Intelligence Community missions that 
are in Colorado, the depth of the private sector which is so 
critical to building resilience in space.
    It's my view that we should be spending money on the 
mission in space, not on moving Space Command and starting from 
scratch. Could you explain how strengthening the integration of 
our military and intelligence missions is critical to 
maintaining our superiority in space?
    Director Haines. Yes, absolutely. I couldn't agree more 
with the overall sentiment, which is that we have to integrate 
these areas. I do think that it's a domain in which obviously 
the Defense Department, but also other parts of the government 
such as NASA and so on are occupying, and it's increasingly 
crowded with commercial satellites as well.
    And all of us have to be able to integrate together in 
order to effectively manage things. But no two entities more 
than, I suppose, the Department of Defense and the IC in order 
for us to do our jobs. And as we've been doing--we have a 
number of mechanisms that we use for that kind of coordination.
    There's obviously the Joint Space Warfighter Forum which 
has the USSPACECOM Commander and the NRO Director as co-chairs 
and leading that. And that's an example of DoD and the IC 
coming together on these issues. And we have a number of other 
things: SPACECOM, the National Space Defense Center, an 
integrated protection strategy, that are intended to do this.
    I would just say that, as I know you already know, but just 
to acknowledge it, we have work to do in this area to make sure 
that, frankly, as compartmented as some aspects of our work is, 
that we integrate that as well, effectively, so that we can 
actually work across this domain in a sensible and strategic 
way. I really appreciate your support and others for this area 
because I think it's obviously critically important to our 
future.
    Senator Bennet. We heard some unbelievable things while we 
were there, which obviously we can't talk about in open 
session. But it is very clear--I think the Chairman would agree 
with this assessment--that we do not have a moment to lose here 
in space.
    I just have a minute left.
    Director Burns, could I just ask you to talk a little bit 
while we're in public session? Just give the American people a 
sense of how Russia is using disinformation across the world. 
How it's using it in its own country, but also how it's using 
it across the democracies to try to pit us against one another 
and divide us from one another?
    These are things that appear to the American people 
sometimes to look like just another person's Twitter feed when, 
in fact, the Russians can be behind it. So could you spend a 
minute on that?
    Director Burns. Sure. Thanks, Senator, and I'll focus on 
the ways in which I think President Putin has worked 
methodically over the last two decades to turn Russian society 
into a kind of propaganda bubble. He's used financial 
pressures, he's used lethal actions. I remember vividly when I 
was Ambassador in Russia some years ago, going to the funeral 
of a very courageous independent Russian journalist named 
Politkovskaya in the fall of 2006. And that's just one part of 
the pressure that he's brought against open information in 
Russia. He's intensified his domination of the state-run media 
and in his strangulation of independent media, especially in 
recent years, and particularly since the invasion of Ukraine 
began.
    But I guess the last thing I'd say is I don't believe that 
he's going to be able to seal Russians off entirely from the 
truth. There are lots of Russians who have VPN accounts, who 
have access to YouTube to this day, who have access to 
information. And I don't believe he can wall off indefinitely 
Russians from the truth, especially as realities began to 
puncture that bubble. The realities of killed and wounded 
coming home, an increasing number. The realities of the 
economic consequences for ordinary Russians as I was discussing 
before. The realities of the horrific scenes of hospitals and 
schools being bombed next door in Ukraine and of civilian 
casualties there as well.
    I don't think he can bottle up the truth indefinitely. 
Thank you.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Warner. Senator Cotton, thank you as well, also, 
for your constant willingness to press this Committee and 
frankly the IC leadership both on the unclassified and 
classified sections of collaboration between the DoD projects 
and the IC projects. Senator Cotton.
    Senator Cotton. Thank you.
    Director Haines, I want to address the Administration's 
fiasco of failing to help Poland transfer its aircraft to 
Ukraine. The Pentagon spokesman yesterday cited your 
Intelligence Community, quote, ``the Intelligence Community has 
assessed the transfer of MiG-29s to Ukraine may be mistaken as 
escalatory and could result in significant Russian reaction 
that might increase the prospects of a military escalation with 
NATO.''
    The State Department spokesman said essentially the same 
thing earlier today. Since Administration policymakers are 
justifying their hesitancy to help Poland transfer these 
aircraft by pointing to your Intelligence Community, could you 
tell us what is the basis for this alleged assessment that the 
transfer of these aircrafts would be viewed as escalatory?
    Director Haines. Thank you, Senator Cotton.
    So, it is our analysts' assessment that the transfer of 
these airplanes could be perceived as a significant escalation 
by the Russians. They are obviously an advanced and 
considerable weapon.
    Senator Cotton. I'm sorry. Director, I'm sorry. So I 
appreciate your analysts and their deep expertise and knowledge 
about this. I'm asking what specific evidence, information, 
intelligence do they have that the transfer of these aircrafts, 
as opposed to anti-aircraft missiles that shoot Russian jets 
out of the sky, is going to be viewed as escalatory?
    Director Haines. Why don't I provide to you a written 
product that will give you the basis for that?
    Senator Cotton. So the Pentagon spokesman also said that 
this is the same intelligence that they had last year that 
delayed the transfer of many of those missiles as well; that 
there's no new intelligence. He said it was the same 
intelligence he's had last year. Was that the case?
    Director Haines. No, Senator, I'm not aware of what it is 
that he was referencing, but this is a recent assessment that 
was done by the Intelligence Community. I'm very happy to 
provide that--
    Senator Cotton. I understand you didn't do assessments. I'm 
saying, do you have new intelligence?
    Director Haines. So when analysts--I know you know this--
but obviously, they're looking at a body of intelligence and 
then they're also providing their own knowledge and experience. 
And I don't know whether or not there is----
    Senator Cotton. So we can address this in a closed setting. 
But here's my opinion. You don't have new intelligence. This is 
opinion. And in many cases, this is policymakers who are 
looking to the Intelligence Community to provide them cover for 
their hesitancy.
    General Berrier, could you explain, as an intelligence 
officer, how Vladimir Putin might be A-OK with us transferring 
missiles that turned their tanks into burning piles of rubbish 
or shoot their jets out of the sky, yet transferring tactical 
aircraft is going to be unacceptable? Why is the latter 
escalatory and the former not escalatory?
    General Berrier. Senator Cotton, thank you. I will take a 
stab at that in open session here. I think when you look at 
anti-tank weapons and air defense, Sir, shoulder fired kinds of 
weapons, there is a range of escalation. And I think in our 
view that escalation ladder doesn't get checked higher with 
those weapons versus something like combat aircraft.
    Senator Cotton. I've got to say, I don't think there's a 
lot of common sense between this distinction. And a lot of 
farmers in Arkansas wouldn't understand it either. I mean your 
own written assessment, Ms. Haines, says that Russia, quote, 
``doesn't want a direct conflict with the United States,'' end 
quote. That was from January 21st. That assessment said Russia 
doesn't want a conflict with the United States.
    You think they're more likely to want a conflict now after 
Vladimir Putin has seen the performance of his army? Not just 
against the Ukrainian army, but with moms with Molotov 
cocktails and grandmas with AK-47s. You think they're more 
likely to want a piece of us now than they were two months ago?
    Director Haines. I don't think it's an issue of whether or 
not they're more likely to want to conflict. It's whether or 
not they perceive us as being in that conflict with them. I 
think we're in a very challenging position, where we are 
obviously providing enormous amounts of support to the 
Ukrainians, as we should and need to do, but at the same time 
trying not to escalate the conflict into a full-on NATO or U.S. 
war with Russia.
    And that's a challenging space to manage. And the analysts, 
I think, are just trying to provide their best assessment of 
what is likely to be perceived as that kind of escalation in 
this circumstance.
    Senator Cotton. I mean, I've got to say, it seems to me 
that Vladimir Putin simply deterred the U.S. government from 
providing these aircraft by saying they would view this as 
escalatory. And if that's going to be our position, we might as 
well call the commanding general at Fort Lewis, outside 
Seattle, and tell him to take the flag down and surrender our 
position because he's not going to stop in Ukraine. He's not 
going stop in Europe. Is going to go all the way to the West 
Coast. And every time he raises a threat, we immediately back 
off.
    One other question I want to ask in this area as well about 
intelligence sharing. Last Thursday, the House Armed Services 
Committee Chairman Adam Smith said, quote, ``we are providing 
some intelligence. We're not providing the kind of real-time 
targeting because that, you know, steps over the line that 
makes us participate in the war,'' end quote. Just a few hours 
later, the White House press secretary contradicted him saying, 
we have consistently been sharing intelligence that includes 
information the Ukrainians can use to inform and develop their 
military response to Russia's invasion. That has been ongoing 
and reports that suggest otherwise are inaccurate.
    So who is correct? The Democratic Chairman of the House 
Armed Service Committee or the White House press secretary? Are 
we not providing that kind of real-time targeting intelligence 
to Ukraine?
    Director Haines. We are providing an enormous amount of 
intelligence to Ukraine. I'd be happy to get into in closed 
sessions the details of what we're providing. Maybe if there's 
anything else that people would like to add?
    Senator Cotton. Can you at least tell me who is correct 
between the Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and 
the White House press secretary?
    Director Haines. Honestly, Senator, I think getting into 
this in closed session would be easier so that we can actually 
explain to you what it is that we're providing. But I'm happy 
to defer to my colleagues who may have additional----
    Senator Cotton. I'm sure we'll address it in closed 
session.
    Chairman Warner. Thank you, Senator Cotton.
    Senator Blunt, last worldwide threat. Senator Casey, your 
first worldwide hearing. Senator Casey.
    Senator Casey. Mr. Chairman, thanks very much. I think I 
join a chorus of gratitude and commendation for the work of the 
Intelligence Community, not only with respect to what's 
happening in Ukraine, but I think more generally. And so I want 
to thank both Director Haines and Director Burns for the work 
they and their teams have done, not just most recently, but in 
many cases for years and even decades. So many dedicated 
professionals.
    I think that gratitude, though, is extended to every member 
of this panel: Director Wray, General Nakasone, General 
Berrier. It might be that you're the collective public service 
of the people that work in each of your areas of 
responsibility--that that public service might be more 
consequential today than it's ever been. So I want to extend 
that thank you more broadly.
    I want to try to get maybe to two issues. One is on food 
security, or I should say food insecurity, across the world at 
this time and how it's exacerbated by what's playing out in 
Ukraine. But also to get to a question on China. We're told 
that in 2019, the number of people across the world who were on 
the edge of famine was about 27 million.
    That was in 2019. It's a hell of a lot worse right now: 45 
million people across the world on the edge of famine. So in 
just two or three years, two years really, from '19 to '21, up 
from 27 million to 45 million. We know that Ukraine itself, its 
farmlands, provide food for the whole world, especially to 
places like the Middle East and South Asia and North Africa.
    Here's the data on wheat, corn, and barley: 12 percent of 
the wheat of the world provided by Ukraine, 16 percent of corn, 
18 percent of barley. So you have both an exacerbating problem 
on food insecurity and Ukraine providing all that support. So 
with this state of food insecurity in mind, how does the IC 
incorporate food insecurity into its various analyses of 
threats in the United States and beyond.
    Director Haines, if you could start. Or anyone else.
    Director Haines. Of course, Senator. Thank you very much 
for the question. And I agree with you. This is a really 
incredibly important issue and one that we are following.
    We assess that Russia's invasion, which as you point out 
has caused energy prices to rise, which also has a dynamic 
relationship to the food security issue and has put upward 
pressure on global food prices. And this is what poses 
essentially the additional risk to food security globally. It 
could disrupt food supplies, particularly wheat for the reasons 
that you identified, because Ukraine, having been known as the 
breadbasket of Europe in many respects, is critical to that. 
And both Russia and Ukraine are important food suppliers to the 
global market. This is part of what I think we're going to be 
seeing as a challenge moving forward.
    And as a consequence, we perceive that there is an 
increasing challenge through 2022, particularly with developing 
countries that rely on many of the food supplies at particular 
prices for them to manage those, so we are doing work on this. 
If you're interested in additional material, I'll definitely 
get that to you from the real experts, as opposed to me. But 
others may have more to add on this.
    Senator Casey. Thanks very much. I wanted to get to a 
question on China.
    The China section of the threat assessment says, and I'm 
quoting in pertinent part, quote, ``Beijing's willingness to 
use espionage subsidies, trade policy to give its firms a 
competitive advantage, represents not just an ongoing challenge 
for the U.S. economy and its workers, but also advances 
Beijing's ability to assume leadership of the world's 
technological advancement and standards,'' unquote.
    As many of you know, Senator Cornyn and I have worked for a 
good while now on a piece of legislation which would institute 
as a matter of law, a committee to review outbound investment, 
especially the offshoring of critical U.S. supply chains.
    How's the IC working to better understand both the Chinese 
government's surreptitious efforts to gain an unfair 
competitive advantage over U.S. firms and workers?
    Director Haines. I'll start and others should weigh in. I 
think we are obviously following this very closely, and we 
recognize that Beijing targets U.S. private sector companies in 
a variety of ways. Cyber is one aspect of it but it's not the 
only way in which they do it. And we've observed China 
targeting company insiders, not just for their access to 
computer networks, but also because of the opportunity for 
essentially economic and other espionage in these spaces. And 
really other individuals that have access to critical 
technologies, to your point.
    We've also observed China engage in theft of trade secrets, 
U.S. export-control violations, hacking ransomware, cyber 
pieces. All of this leads to grave concerns, obviously, with 
respect to their capacity to steal from American companies and 
innovation, and to ultimately use that to bolster their 
capabilities to promote their own technological advancement in 
areas that are of critical national security interest to us. 
And we've also seen how they've created an essential legal 
framework that provides them with access to companies that 
invest or that move to Beijing in order to allow for that 
information to be used by the Chinese government and to advance 
their technological innovation.
    So let me leave it to others who probably have more to add.
    Chairman Warner. Director Wray.
    Director Wray. I would just add that some of the reforms 
that have taken place thanks to this Committee's leadership on 
the CFIUS process, for example, have been extremely important. 
And we've dedicated now, collectively, significantly more 
resources to trying to be more proactive, which is what some of 
the new authorities enable us to do. Certainly at the FBI, we 
now have about a 1,300 percent increase in economic espionage 
investigations tying back to the Chinese government from, say, 
a decade ago. And we are finding that more and more, much as 
Director Haines referenced more broadly in her opening 
statement, that sharing information through a variety of ways 
with private sector partners often enables them to make 
responsible decisions that maybe in the past, in a shortsighted 
way, they would not have made. I think that's ultimately going 
to have to be a key part of this as we go forward. We can't 
just investigate or disrupt our way out of it. We need the 
private sector engaged too.
    Chairman Warner. Senator Casey, thank you for your and 
Senator Cornyn's leadership on this. And I also want to 
acknowledge Senator Cornyn's leadership on the CFIUS reform a 
few years back that really has given Director Wray and others 
the tools they need.
    Senator Cornyn.
    Senator Cornyn. Thank you. I want to join my colleagues in 
thanking you and the people you represent for your service to 
our country.
    I want to talk about Russian propaganda. We all know that 
in 2016, there had been extensive work of this Committee and 
the Director of National Intelligence, the Intelligence 
Community writ large, on Russian propaganda. I want to talk not 
about their role in our elections, but now, when it comes to 
energy. John McCain, our former colleague, used to say that 
Russia was a gas station masquerading as a country, which is a 
humorous way of talking about how Russia is economically 
dependent on energy exports and is doing everything it can to 
keep Europe and the rest of the world dependent on Russian 
energy exports.
    Many of us have pointed out that the high price of oil that 
Putin is reaping today is being used to fund this horrific 
invasion in Ukraine. I just want to point out, I think it's the 
Energy Information Administration predicts that by 2050 that 
the world will still continue to need fossil fuels and its role 
in providing energy will, to the world, will be four times what 
renewables can provide. And this is not meant to denigrate the 
role of renewables. It plays an important part in our 
portfolio. But I do worry that Russia's ability to provide a 
monopoly and to weaponize energy when it comes to Europe could 
well undermine the sanctions that we are trying to impose. It 
would certainly seem to make the other countries in Europe who 
are reliant on Russia for their oil and gas more pliable or 
compliant with Russia's wishes.
    Back in 2017, Director Haines, the Office of the Director 
of National Intelligence, the office you now hold, reported on 
page 8 in annex A to a document called ``Assessing Russian 
Activities and Intentions in Recent Elections.'' But there's a 
piece about how ``Russia Today,'' which I believe now is a 
registered foreign agent of the Russian Federation, was 
conducting anti-fracking messages with the intended impact of 
weakening political support for U.S. production of our natural 
resources and diminishing any challenge to Russia's preeminent 
role when it comes to providing oil and gas and energy to 
Europe and the rest of the world.
    So it seems to me that Russia has been, for some time, 
trying to discredit any energy initiatives which threaten its 
preeminent position, whether it's attacking American or 
European fossil fuels or funding green groups to spread 
disinformation.
    Can you elaborate, Director Haines, on how extensive 
Russia's propaganda campaign has been in this area?
    Director Haines. Not with precision, and I'm not familiar 
with the specific report that you're referencing. But it 
certainly is consistent with what we've seen, and therefore, 
don't doubt it. And we could definitely provide you a further 
assessment that gives you a sense of what scale we've seen and 
whether there are any particular trends in that area.
    But I think your overall conclusions are ones that we 
share, which is to say that they would use their information 
campaign and influence in order to promote their own energy 
industry and in order to divide us on these issues as well.
    General Nakasone. The only thing I would add, Director, is 
that this is the methodology we've seen when the Russians find 
the divisive issue, find the two groups that you can both feed 
this, use social media as an influence, and then be able to 
continually pursue that message.
    Senator Cornyn. Director Burns, isn't Putin's monopoly on 
providing energy to Europe a boot on the neck of the Europeans? 
And doesn't this threaten their willingness to cooperate when 
it comes to these economic sanctions? Because he can just turn 
the gas off, right?
    Director Burns. Senator, one of the most striking, 
unintended consequences from Putin's point of view is the 
extent to which a number of leading European governments seem 
to be belatedly realizing what you just described: the threat 
that they face by overdependence on Russian energy resources. 
You have not just the demise of Nord Stream 2, but also the 
fact the Germans just announced the construction of an LNG 
facility clearly aimed at diversifying, beyond Russia, their 
sources of energy. And so I think that's something that 
President Putin certainly did not anticipate when he began this 
invasion. But it could have a quite significant, long-term, 
strategic effect as well.
    Chairman Warner. Senator King, I just want to also 
acknowledge the great work that you and Senator Sasse have done 
on the Cyber Symposium. A number of us have raised some of 
those questions, but thank you for your good work.
    Senator King. Thank you very much. I apologize for being 
late. If we could apply AI to the Senate schedule, we might not 
have three hearings scheduled at exactly the same time.
    Thank you very much for your testimony here today. I think 
one of my first questions in a large strategic sense for you, 
Director Haines, is China-Russia cooperation. It seems to me in 
the last couple of years, really in the last year, we've seen a 
closer cooperation and communication between those two 
countries. How do we assess that? It seems to me if you're 
talking worldwide threats, that's one of them.
    Director Haines. Yes, absolutely, Senator King. I think 
your assessment is our assessment, which is to say that we are 
seeing them cooperate more. And we anticipate that it will 
strengthen over the coming years. And it's across a variety of 
sectors: economic, political, military. In fact, the 
announcements that were made during the Olympics are an 
indication of how close they're becoming.
    At the same time, we do see it as not yet at the point 
where we are, for example, with allies. They have not achieved 
that kind of level of cooperation. And we anticipate it is 
unlikely in the next five years that they will, in fact, become 
the way we are an ally with our other NATO members in that 
context. But others may have things to add to this.
    Senator King. Director Burns.
    Director Burns. The only thing to add, Senator, is as 
Director Haines said, the joint statement that President Xi and 
President Putin issued on the 4th of February, at the beginning 
of the Winter Olympics, was the most sweeping expression of 
their commitment to partnership we've seen.
    But I would only add that I think what's unfolded in 
Ukraine, the ugliness of it, the flawed assumptions that 
underpinned it from the point of view of President Putin have 
unsettled the Chinese leadership a little bit. They're 
unsettled by the reputational damage that could come from that.
    Senator King. And the Chinese seem more concerned about 
reputational damage than Russia just generally?
    Director Burns. Russia, President Putin, has a low bar in 
terms of concern about reputational damage, I think. But I do 
think they're concerned about that. I think they're concerned 
about economic consequences at a time when their own projected 
growth rates are lower than they've been in quite some time.
    And I think as I mentioned earlier, they're concerned about 
the way in which President Putin is driving Europeans and 
Americans closer together at a moment when I think the Chinese 
have always valued their independent relationships with the 
Germans and other leading Europeans as offering opportunities 
to drive wedges between them and the United States, which, I 
think, President Putin's actions have helped to deprive them. 
So I think they're concerned by all that.
    Senator King. One more unintended consequence of what Mr. 
Putin has done.
    General Nakasone, one thing that has surprised me in 
Ukraine is the lack of a strong, consistent Russian cyber 
attack on Ukraine. I expected to see the grid go down and 
communications, and that hasn't happened. Do you have any 
assessment of why?
    I thought that would be in the first couple of days.
    General Nakasone. Senator, I think that you know, as we 
look at this--and we're only 15 days in, and so much can still 
occur--we're very vigilant to make sure nothing does occur. 
But, with that said, I think that there are several things that 
are important to note. We've worked very, very hard with 
Ukraine over the past several years, really since the shutdown 
of energy in 2015. We had Hunt Forward teams from U.S. 
CYBERCOMMAND in Kyiv. We worked very, very closely with a 
series of partners at NSA and the private sector to be able to 
provide that information; the interagency. These are all 
impacts that I think have played out positively early on. And I 
think, to a degree, there's still obviously a Russian calculus 
that will play out here. We will be very, very vigilant to see 
what occurs there.
    Senator King. Finally, Director Haines, one of the 
learnings from the Ukraine experience, from our point of view, 
is the value of sharing intelligence. I don't mean sharing 
necessarily between allies, but I mean with the American 
people, with the people of the world. I've always thought that 
we classify too much and that we really blunt the impact that 
we could have on international relations by not sharing, as 
long as we don't compromise sources and methods.
    It appears that a conscious decision was made to share 
more. Is that the case?
    Director Haines. Yes, we have, all of us, I think, engaged 
in this, and it has been an extraordinary team effort, to be 
honest, in trying to promote more mechanisms for sharing, 
finding ways to make sure that we're integrating our work 
across the Intelligence Community and providing that 
Information to partners and allies in this context, and also 
disclosing certain things publicly, as you've indicated.
    And I think it really has been, at least from my 
perspective, critical to the diplomatic effort. I think it has 
helped to galvanize the response and also, I hope, helped to 
prepare the Ukrainians to some extent, even though I think, 
honestly, it's obviously tragic that despite all of the 
information we put out, that we still see the Russians invade 
Ukraine.
    And so it's a bit bittersweet in this moment, but I think 
we've learned a lot of lessons from it, and I think it will 
allow us to continue to do that in places where we see the 
need.
    General Nakasone. Senator, if I might, just on top of what 
the Director said. We share a lot of intelligence, but here's 
the difference. The intelligence that we're sharing is 
accurate, it's relevant, and it's actionable. I think when we 
look back at this, that's the key piece of what we've been able 
to do as an Intelligence Community.
    Senator King. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman
    Chairman Warner. Senator Sasse, even though you claim to be 
the longest serving rookie on this Committee, I want to 
personally thank you for your relentless focus on China and 
holding the IC's feet to the fire, that it's not just language 
but dollars that flow that.
    Senator Sasse.
    Senator Sasse. Thanks, Chairman, and thanks to all five of 
you for being here. I have a bunch of questions about self-
deterrence, around the MiG U-turn, around real-time sharing of 
lethal targeting information, but I think I'm not going to do 
that here. I'm going to save it for the classified setting, 
because I think Senator Cotton's exchange is the most important 
part of this hearing so far today.
    Vladimir Putin will embrace the idea that we might self-
deter every time he issues a press release, and lawyerly 
hairsplitting about providing this kind of weaponry is not 
escalatory, but providing that kind of weaponry is escalatory. 
I don't think we really believe that. I think the 
Administration is pushing the Intelligence Community to give 
them cover for lean-forward decisions they don't want to be 
making.
    So I applaud Senator Cotton on his line of questioning, and 
I suspect it'll be the heart of a lot of what we do in the 
classified setting.
    I want to stay on the China point that the Chairman just 
mentioned--. And Director Burns, first of all, kudos. Kudos to 
all of you. It's been said many times today, but believe me, I 
associate myself with the praise for the pre-textual rebuttal 
of Putin's lies about why he was going to invade. The whole IC 
did great work.
    Director Burns, since you arrived, standing up the China 
Mission Center as you pledged to do is a really important 
development.
    So thank you. Could you explain to us how Chairman Xi views 
Putin and this invasion; a month ago, today, and a month from 
now?
    Director Burns. I think, as I said, I think the Chinese 
leadership, President Xi, has invested a lot in partnership 
with President Putin and Russia. I don't think that's going to 
change any time soon. It's for a lot of very cold-blooded 
reasons. I do, however, think that President Xi is unsettled by 
what he's seen transpire in the last 15 days in Ukraine. I 
don't think they anticipated that the Russian military was 
going to prove largely ineffective so far. I don't think they 
anticipated that the West would react with such resolve, in 
terms of not only military support for the Ukrainians, but also 
in terms of economic consequences, as well. I think they are 
worried about reputational damage, and I think they're worried 
about the wider economic consequences.
    At a time when, especially in 2022, with the Chinese 
leadership preoccupied by the party congress in November, 
they're looking for relative stability and predictability in 
the global economy. This unsettles that as well. So I think 
that's raised some question marks, you know, in the minds of 
the Chinese leadership as they look at what is going to be an 
enduring partnership, but maybe with a few more concerns than 
they had 16 days ago.
    Senator Sasse. That's helpful. I have heard from multiple 
foreign ministers and defense ministers and other NATO leaders 
over the course of the last month that one of the--you can't 
say there are any silver linings to the evil of what Putin is 
doing in targeting women and children and civilians. There is 
no moral limit to what the guy will do. But if you made a list 
a year from now of developments that happened in the world 
because of this invasion, the horror list is a mile long.
    But one of the only things on the good side of the ledger 
is that I think many European leaders are going to get more 
steely-eyed-realist about who Chairman Xi is, because the guy 
greenlit this invasion. Russia has eleven time zones and they 
were able to move almost all their troops back from the Far 
East, because Xi wants to see the West destabilized. He wants 
to see Europe and the U.S. humiliated and embarrassed, and 
there are a whole bunch of European corporate executives that 
lust for the 550 million middle-class consumers of the 1.4 
billion Chinese. And a lot of European political leaders who 
are willing to provide cover for that and pretend that Xi is a 
sort of benign figure, and he is not. And the fact that he 
greenlit this by Putin, I think, is a pretty important 
development for our allies to get more serious about.
    General Berrier, I wonder if you could help us understand 
what are the most important needs the Ukrainian military has to 
extend this fight? And how can the U.S. do more and faster?
    General Berrier. So, Senator, thanks for the question. 
We'll go into much more detail in the closed session. Right 
now, they do need support in the cities where the combat 
operations are going on right now, in the major cities. They 
need humanitarian support as well as small arms, ammunition, 
artillery rockets. The entire panoply, if you will, of ground 
forces kind of support.
    The anti-tank weapons are very important. The air defense 
weapons, as we've talked about it, are very important. I would 
like to go back to the escalation ladder, though, with these 
types of weapons. I do believe that there is an escalation 
ladder, and there is a difference between an anti-tank weapon, 
a shoulder-fired air defense weapon, and a combat aircraft and 
a jet that could cross a border and actually conduct operations 
on Russian soil.
    So in terms of analytical thinking, that's where that's at.
    Senator Sasse. I know we're at time, but I just want to 
underscore one historical point. In World War II, there were 
planes dragged across the U.S.-Canadian border. So this 
conversation has been had before, and it's not impossible to 
figure out a way to solve the problem if we wanted to solve the 
problem.
    Women and children are being bombed. Nobody on this 
Committee is calling for U.S. boots on the ground in Ukraine. 
But there's more we can do, and we should be going faster. The 
answers the American public hears, particularly from State 
Department and White House press briefings, is often process 
about process about a meeting. There's a war going on, and 
Zelensky is a hero on behalf of 44 million Ukrainians. He's 
asking for more help, and the Administration should be doing 
more faster.
    Chairman Warner. I know we're going to closed session, but 
I think a couple of Members want to at least ask one more 
question.
    I want to simply reemphasize what Senator Rubio's line of 
questioning would be, about things that are already floating in 
the Internet around the possibilities of bio tools being used. 
And I think Director Haines did most of this effort. I do 
think, in the public session, Director Burns, if you could 
address this. And clearly, there is a difference between 
bioresearch centers and bioweapons centers.
    Anything you can do to help clarify some of the things that 
are already floating, because I'm fearful that this could be 
the new direction of a Russian false-flag operation.
    Director Burns. The first thing I'd say, Senator, is that 
unlike Russia, which does have chemical weapons and has used 
them and does do biological weapons research and has for years, 
Ukraine has neither. And second, as Director Haines said, in 
any public health system around the world, there's going to be 
work done in the interests of wider public health to ensure 
that we have a grip on issues like that. But that's in no way 
threatening.
    That's not something that can be weaponized in the way that 
the Russians have clearly demonstrated by their own actions 
against their citizens and people outside their country. Their 
willingness to use--. And when you couple that with their 
demonstrated willingness to create false-flag operations and 
try to create the impression that somehow Ukrainians are 
responsible for this, that should give us all pretty serious 
reason for concern about their propaganda.
    Chairman Warner. Thank you. Senator Rubio.
    Vice Chairman Rubio. Just to follow up on that, trying to 
put it in perspective. So as Assistant Secretary Nuland said, 
there are these facilities there and there's something in those 
facilities. It's dangerous because we're afraid the Russians 
will get a hold of it. Now I understand that there's a 
difference between a bioweapons facility and one that's doing 
research. A bio research facility is a totally different thing 
from a bioweapon facility, because you could have samples of a 
deadly or serious pathogen. But that doesn't mean you could 
weaponize it or that you're working on weaponizing it. But 
people ask themselves if there are these facilities there and 
there's a lot at play here, I mean there is a lot we should 
have and this is none of you but a long time ago this should 
have been acknowledged like, yes, there are these labs. This is 
what they do because a lot of these fact checkers just said, 
don't even mention labs, because it's--they don't even exist. 
They do. They exist all over the world.
    There's labs like that right here. So what I think got some 
people fired up is when she said, we're worried that the 
Russians will get a hold of these facilities, because that 
implies that there's something in those facilities that's very 
dangerous. So I don't know if you could shed some light on how 
there can be things in the lab that are dangerous, but they not 
be weapons labs.
    Director Burns. All I would say, Senator, is that the 
danger here, it seems to me, is the capacity the Russians have 
developed and that they've used in the past, and their interest 
in trying to create false narratives here, as well. You have to 
be careful about any of those substances you've talked about, 
what you see in public health or research systems around the 
world for civilian purposes. Why you have to be careful about 
that that is in no way akin to the kind of threats that would 
be posed by weapons research and development or weapons 
facilities.
    Vice Chairman Rubio. Yes. I just think that the answer is 
what piqued a lot of people's--. And look, the latching onto it 
is my point. I think there's been such a good job done at 
defeating them in the information space, but this is one where 
they seem to have latched on. I don't think anyone believes per 
se that if there's some very serious attack, or even a fake 
one, that they're going to convince the American public that 
the Ukrainians are behind it. But it's the confusion around it 
that I worry about debilitating the debate and allowing them to 
deflect it.
    I do want to ask you in particular, Director Burns, because 
you have been involved with Russia issues for a very long time.
    I think, as much as anyone involved today in this issue, 
you've had an opportunity to watch Vladimir Putin through the 
years. This whole thing about they're having negotiations or 
parent negotiations today in Turkey with the foreign ministers. 
It's my view that he uses negotiations as just another tool on 
his toolbox.
    What is your view of why he continues to agree to these 
talks and put these talks forward if we know they're not 
resulting in anything and in fact he's violating whatever they 
even nominally agree to?
    Director Burns. Senator, yours is a fair assumption that 
these sometimes are just used tactically as well. I think the 
core issue here is that President Putin does not have a 
sustainable endgame in Ukraine right now. So the question is, 
is he simply going to continue to double down and grind down 
the Ukrainian military and the Ukrainian population? Or at some 
point, does he recognize that reality that he doesn't have a 
sustainable endgame and look for ways to end the bloodshed to 
cut his losses and to reaffirm the sovereignty and territorial 
integrity of Ukraine? Now, given Putin's track record, given 
the fact that he's someone who hates to act out of what he 
believes to be weakness--that he hates to concede or admit 
mistakes--that's probably a long shot.
    But that's our hope at least that at some point he 
recognizes that because, absent that, off-ramps become just 
rhetoric.
    Chairman Warner. Thank you for raising the bio issue, 
Senator Rubio.
    Senator King.
    Senator King. General Berrier, we see these horrendous 
pictures of apartment blocks being hit, hospitals being hit in 
Ukraine. My question is what's hitting them? The use of the 
term bombing is very common, but my impression is it's mostly 
missiles and artillery.
    Is it bombing from aircraft or missiles and artillery?
    General Berrier. It a combination of mostly missiles, 
artillery, multiple rocket launchers. There are some precision 
guided munitions that are being dropped from aircraft, but that 
number is small.
    Senator King. So the talk about a no-fly zone wouldn't 
really impact what's causing the damage currently, is that 
correct?
    General Berrier. The Air Force is having a tough time 
flying in Ukraine right now. They're conducting surveillance 
and reconnaissance. They're using their assets to do a bunch of 
different things. And quite honestly, a no-fly zone is a combat 
operation that requires manned and unmanned aircraft, ISR 
assets, resources, and, on the escalation ladder, that is 
escalatory.
    Senator King. I understand that, but my point is, a no-fly 
zone wouldn't inhibit missiles, rockets, and artillery.
    General Berrier. That is correct.
    Senator King. Thank you.
    Chairman Warner. Thank you.
    Senator Burr.
    Senator Burr. Mr. Chairman, thank you. I'm going to direct 
it to Director Haines. This is really precipitated by Senator 
Cotton's question on the transfer of aircraft.
    We gave a green light to Poland to transfer MIGs. The 
United States. Publicly. When Poland came back and said we'd 
like to transfer these over to a U.S. facility and have 
Ukrainian pilots fly from there, all of a sudden the American 
line was: we think that would be a escalatory.
    We're all part of the same thing called NATO, and under 
that agreement, when one of NATO's member's geography is 
challenged, the rest respond. Now, we can get into whatever we 
want to in closed session. I as much as anybody really respect 
the analytic product that comes out of the Intelligence 
Community. It should be questioned; that's why we have analysts 
in every area and outside of the Intel community. But when the 
U.S. publicly gives Poland a green light to transfer aircraft, 
and then changes their mind when the aircrafts are transferred 
off of our space, our geography, as a member of NATO as well. 
And we say that that would make it escalatory, but if Poland 
transferred it, we didn't consider it to be escalatory. Then I 
draw this conclusion. This is a policy decision. It's a policy 
decision made by the Administration. And I remind all of you at 
the table, intelligence is never supposed to influence policy. 
It's the reason that we tried desperately--we don't always 
succeed--but we try desperately not to present you with a 
policy question, as part of the Intelligence Community. By the 
same token, we expect that if intelligence is inappropriately 
being used to reach a policy decision, that it's the 
Intelligence Community that pushes back on that.
    So I look forward to your explanation, but I remind you 
that there is a bright line that the Intelligence Community has 
always maintained between policy and the advice you give about 
what the intelligence says.
    My hope is we haven't, as an Intelligence Community, put 
our finger on the scale of a policy decision that's been made. 
Because, clearly, this is confusing to the American people--how 
America could say, Poland, it's okay for you to transfer, but 
you can't transfer it off of our geography.
    I thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Warner. Senator Collins.
    Director Haines. Can I respond? Just to say Senator Burr, 
obviously you know this, but analytic objectivity, and for all 
of us here, is an absolutely core ethic for the Intelligence 
Community. And I do not believe that there is any issue here 
with respect to political or policy pressure being put on the 
analysts. They were asked the question of whether or not 
providing these airplanes would be perceived by the Russians in 
an escalatory way. And they answered the question. I don't know 
when the timing was with respect to the policy--things that 
were made----
    Senator Burr. Director, I'm not questioning what the 
analysts came to a conclusion on. But if the analyst came to a 
conclusion that the transfer of aircraft was escalatory, then 
it would apply to Poland's transfer, not just a transfer off of 
United States geography. And that was not used as a reason when 
Poland was given the green light. But it was used when it was 
thrown into our laps, which leads me to believe that there is a 
policy decision that we're not going to be involved in. I only 
throw it out there to you for the thought process of going 
through it. We can get into it in closed session.
    Director Haines. Okay.
    Senator Burr. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Warner. Senator Collins.
    Senator Collins. Director Haines, I want to switch to Iran. 
Your predecessors at every single Worldwide Threat Hearing 
since 2016 have labeled Iran as the foremost state sponsor of 
terrorism. Is that your assessment as well?
    Director Haines. Senator Collins, there's no question that 
Iran continues to support terrorism.
    Senator Collins. There's widespread speculation that, in 
exchange for a new nuclear agreement with Iran, that the 
Administration is considering lifting sanctions on Iranian 
organizations or individuals, including those that are tied 
directly to Iran's terrorist activity. And there's one 
speculation that the Administration may go so far as to rescind 
the Foreign Terrorist Organization designation of Iran's 
primary arm to foment terror in the region, the IRGC.
    Now, I'm not going to ask you whether sanctions should be 
lifted or not, recognizing that is a policy decision. But I do 
believe that it's fair to ask you which Iranian entities are 
actively supporting the regime's malign activity today. So let 
me pull on that thread a bit. Tony Blair's Institute for Global 
Change said in a report last year that the IRGC acts as an 
institutionalized militia and uses its vast resources to spread 
a mission of Jihad through an ideological army of recruits and 
proxies.
    So, with respect to the IRGC, do you agree that it 
continues to conduct, support, and facilitate terrorism 
throughout the Middle East?
    Director Haines. Thank you, Senator. The regime as a whole 
has supported destabilizing activities throughout the Middle 
East and continues to be a concern, and IRGC is among entities 
that do-- that are part of the regime's overall strategy. But I 
think if you want detail on particular entities, we should 
provide that to you separately and in writing. But I don't know 
if others have anything.
    Senator Collins. Is there any evidence that the Central 
Bank of Iran has stopped financing terrorist activity?
    Director Haines. I think if you mean money that goes 
through the Central Bank of Iran may be ultimately used by 
Iran----
    Senator Collins. Yes.
    Director Haines. In the context of the things, I don't have 
details. But we can certainly look at whether or not it's 
increasing or decreasing based on our assessments.
    Senator Collins. Is it fair to say that the assessment of 
the IC is that advances made by Iran related to launching 
missiles into space have an inherent dual-use technology as a 
delivery vehicle for a nuclear or a conventional ballistic 
missile?
    Director Haines. Absolutely. Senator, we obviously have had 
concerns about their ballistic missile technology and their 
advancements in this areas. And obviously, over the course of 
many bipartisan Administrations, sanctions have been enacted as 
a consequence of that.
    Senator Collins. And finally, I would just note, and I 
commend you for this, that in your confirmation hearing we 
discussed the prospect of a renegotiation of the JCPOA. And one 
of your points was that there should be more opportunity to 
consult with Congress on issues related to any new agreement. 
And I've appreciated the IC's attentiveness to keeping a focus 
on Iranian activity. But I've been disappointed in the lack of 
transparency and outreach from the policy community regarding 
the status of the negotiations. And I would just ask that you 
take that back to the White House. Thank you.
    Chairman Warner. So, we're going to move through, and 
everybody obviously gets this last round. As a--maybe--
incentive to limit this to one or two questions, in an 
unprecedented move, the Committee is providing lunch directly 
after this. And unfortunately, for our panel, there will be no 
breaks or we will go over. And if you guys answer briefly, you 
will also get lunch.
    Senator Cotton. [Laughter.]
    Senator Cotton. Senator Burr raised an excellent point. 
It's a second arbitrary distinction about these Polish MiGs. 
Apparently, the U.S.-government position was they go from 
Poland, okeydokey. That's A-Okay. They go from the United 
States, nope. Vladimir Putin views that as escalatory. I still 
don't think there's any intelligence to justify that 
distinction.
    I want to return, General Berrier, to what you said to 
Senator Sasse. You said that you believe that there is a 
difference in escalation between anti-tank missiles and anti-
aircraft missiles on the one hand, and aircraft on the other 
hand. I understand you believe that. I understand that Director 
Haynes believes that, and she claims that the analysts believe 
that. I don't believe it. I don't believe it, and I don't 
believe there's intelligence to support it. I bet the Russian 
pilot that gets shot out of the air by an anti-aircraft missile 
as opposed to the aircraft doesn't believe it either. But it's 
not really a matter of what you believe or I believe. It's a 
matter of what we can prove and what we can prove that Vladimir 
Putin believes. And I just don't think the proof is there. 
We'll know in a few minutes, I guess, if there is.
    I want to address a bigger point, and I want to join with a 
lot of my colleagues to commend the Intelligence Community and 
especially the DIA for the outstanding work it did leading up 
to the invasion. In my seven years on the Committee, it's the 
best I've seen the Intelligence Community perform--between 
September until February 24th. Director Haines, you testified 
that you think Vladimir Putin underestimated the Ukrainians' 
skill and their will to fight and he overestimated his own 
military's ability. Is it fair to say our Intelligence 
Community made the same mistakes based on the testimony we've 
heard here?
    Director Haines. So, we assessed, prior to the invasion, 
that he was underestimating the Ukrainians' resistance, likely 
resistance, too. So I think we did well there. We did not do as 
well in terms of predicting the military challenges that he has 
encountered with his own military.
    Senator Cotton. General Berrier, could you address this?
    General Berrier. Senator, I will address that. My view was 
that, based on a variety of factors, that the Ukrainians were 
not as ready as I thought they should be. Therefore, I 
questioned their will to fight. That was a bad assessment on my 
part, because they have fought bravely and honorably and are 
doing the right thing. So that was an issue for me as the 
Director of DIA.
    Senator Cotton. And I understand that. But assessing a 
people's will to fight is one of the hardest things an 
intelligence agency could do. In some ways, it's a moral or a 
psychological question, not an intelligence question. But in 
other things, like how long Kyiv would hold out or these other 
major cities, or how long Ukraine would still have an Air Force 
or air defense systems, did we make mistakes about those 
assessments as well?
    General Berrier. Well, we made some assumptions about his 
assumptions, which proved to be very, very flawed. And so, his 
actual activity as he got into this fight turned his operation 
kind of on its head. And what we've seen is a devolvement, if 
you will, of the operations that he has going on now. And I'd 
like to save the rest of this for a closed session.
    Senator Cotton. To the extent we can address it here, could 
you say why you think we made those mistakes?
    General Berrier. I think assessing will, morale, and a will 
to fight is a very difficult analytical task. We had different 
inputs from different organizations, and we, at least from my 
perspective as the Director, I did not do as well as I could 
have.
    Senator Cotton. Director Haines, could you give your 
opinion on why the IC made those mistakes?
    Director Haines. I don't think I have anything to add in 
open session. I'm trying to--we can discuss further.
    Senator Cotton. Okay. I just want to say because, and I'm 
not--I just don't want to be critical, but these mistakes had 
potentially real-world policy implications about the 
willingness of the President or other NATO leaders to provide 
weapons that they thought might have fallen into the hands of 
Russians in a matter of hours, or to impose sanctions for 
something that might have been a fait accompli.
    And we need to ask ourselves, if we made mistakes about the 
first two weeks of this war, are we making mistakes about the 
next two weeks or the next two months, and the policy 
implications those might have? And furthermore, to Richard 
Burr's point about the use of policy to influence intelligence, 
I have to say I have concerns that part of the reason the 
Administration went relatively soft on Russia and was hesitant 
in Ukraine in 2021 is they were relying on Russia to get the 
bad nuclear deal that Susan Collins was talking about?
    I have the unavoidable conclusion that influenced part of 
it.
    Chairman Warner. Senator Cornyn.
    Senator Cornyn. I wanted to just ask the question, 
recognizing intelligence is not science--it's an art. What do 
we think that Putin would do if the United States or the Poles 
provided these MiGs to the Ukrainians?
    General Berrier. Senator, we have run through a number of 
scenarios as the escalation ladder continues to unfold. I'd 
like to answer that question in closed session.
    Senator Cornyn. Thank you.
    Chairman Warner. Senator Sasse.
    Senator Sasse. Thank you, Chairman.
    I'll save most of my questions for classified, too. I want 
to make one comment and then ask General Nakasone one small 
question about the pre-textual work that you all did.
    The comment is, at many White House briefings and a number 
of State Department briefings over the course of the last week 
and a half, the phrase has been used that the U.S. did or NATO 
did, or the U.S. hypothetically did or NATO hypothetically did 
escalatory things or aggressive things. I think we should get 
the language right, which is there are claims by Putin that we 
did escalatory or aggressive things, or are hypothesizing about 
aggressive things.
    There's only one aggressor here, and that's the jackass 
who's killing women and children. There's one aggressor. 
There's one person targeting civilians. And us trying to figure 
out what our obligations are to our allies and our obligations 
are to the world and to humanity when civilians are being 
targeted, is a really important debate that we should be having 
more aggressively, leaning farther forward. And we shouldn't 
accept the idea that because Putin calls us aggressive when we 
figure out how we try to stop the guy, we are not the 
aggressor.
    General Nakasone, you all have done some really great work 
on sharing intelligence to expose what Putin was up to. What do 
you think the implications will be, one or two or three years 
from now, from what we've learned from this more aggressive, 
promiscuous, healthily promiscuous sharing of intel in advance?
    General Nakasone. I think we'll redefine sharing, Senator. 
You talk about sharing with our partners, that that had an 
impact, about being able to bring our coalition together. We 
talk about sharing with the Ukrainians actionable intelligence 
that allows them to be able to take combat operations to a new 
level.
    And then I think the other piece is being able to shine a 
light on disinformation. We've seen this in the elections--
2018, 2020. When we take on an adversary, when we work with a 
series of partners being able to shine a light on these mis-
stories and these false-flag operations, it suddenly isn't as 
big a deal. And I think that's what we'll learn from sharing.
    Chairman Warner. Let me just make two quick comments. One, 
you know, I remember when many of us were in Munich a few weeks 
back and some of the, I think, very legitimate questions that 
Senator Cotton's asking about what we got right or wrong post-
conflict starting. I just recall all of the interactions I had, 
and some of us who were with us there had, with all of our 
European partners who candidly had the same assessments, 
particularly around control of the skies.
    I think the more global comment I'd make, and it's one of 
the reasons why I think it's so important that we do this in 
public. You've heard from both sides of the aisle that Members 
are pressing the leaders of the IC on their analysts' 
assessment, the quality of their intelligence, decision making. 
This is a Committee that robustly asks hard questions.
    I want to assure the public, at least, that this same level 
of questions, if not higher, are raised in closed settings. 
Frankly, the fact that Senator Wyden didn't ask for those 
returns in his normal 30-day period as opposed to a week 
period--. I don't think you have a Committee here that is 
captured by the community. We have great respect for the 
community. I think virtually everyone here has commended their, 
I believe, excellent work, I would argue, both leading up to 
the invasion and continuing to keep us informed. The people 
should know that this Committee operates in the same way behind 
closed doors as it does in open session.
    And I hope people will take some solace from that. And 
recognizing because we're moving on and I know there's a host 
of questions for the closed setting, we will move directly next 
door. And again, lunch will be served.
    We stand in recess.
    [Whereupon at 12:25 p.m. the hearing was recessed subject 
to the call of the Chairman.]

      

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