    [Senate Hearing 118-297]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

                                                            S. Hrg. 118-297

                                 OPEN HEARING:
                    THE 2024 ANNUAL THREAT ASSESSMENT OF THE
                          U.S. INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY

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

                                    HEARING

                                   before the

                        SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE

                                     OF THE

                              UNITED STATES SENATE

                        ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS

                                 SECOND SESSION
                                   __________

                                 MARCH 11, 2024
                                   __________

          Printed for the use of the Select Committee on Intelligence

                 [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

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

                       U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE

    55-721                     WASHINGTON : 2025

                        SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE

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

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

    RON WYDEN, Oregon                    JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho
    MARTIN HEINRICH, New Mexico          SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine
    ANGUS S. KING, Jr., Maine            TOM COTTON, Arkansas
    MICHAEL F. BENNET, Colorado          JOHN CORNYN, Texas
    ROBERT P. CASEY, Jr., Pennsylvania   JERRY MORAN, Kansas
    KIRSTEN E. GILLIBRAND, New York      JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma
    JON OSSOFF, Georgia                  MIKE ROUNDS, South Dakota
    MARK KELLY, Arizona

                    CHARLES E. SCHUMER, New York, Ex Officio
                     MITCH McCONNELL, Kentucky, Ex Officio
                      JACK REED, Rhode Island, Ex Officio
                    ROGER F. WICKER, Mississippi, Ex Officio

                                  ----------

                           William Wu, Staff Director
                      Brian Walsh, Minority Staff Director
                       Kelsey Stroud Bailey, Chief Clerk

                                C O N T E N T S

                                  ----------

                                 MARCH 11, 2024

                               OPENING STATEMENTS

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

                                   WITNESSES

    Avril D. Haines, Director of National Intelligence...............     7
        Prepared Statement...........................................    41
    William J. Burns, Director, Central Intelligence Agency..........    18
    Christopher A. Wray, Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation...    11
    Brett M. Holmgren, Assistant Secretary for Intelligence and
      Research, U.S. Department of State.............................    32
    General Timothy D. Haugh, Director, National Security Agency/
      Chief, Central Security Service................................    33
    Lieutenant General Jeffrey A. Kruse, Director, Defense
      Intelligence Agency............................................    16

                            QUESTIONS FOR THE RECORD

    Answers Submitted by Mr. Holmgren in Response to Senator Lankford    81

                                 OPEN HEARING:
                       WORLDWIDE THREATS ASSESSMENT 2024

                                  ----------

                             Monday, March 11, 2024

                                           U.S. Senate,
                              Select Committee on Intelligence,
                                                        Washington, DC.
        The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:39 p.m., in
    Room SH-216 in the Hart Senate Office Building, in open
    session, the Honorable Mark R. Warner, Chairman of the
    Committee, presiding.
        Present: Senators Warner (presiding), Rubio, Wyden,
    Heinrich, King, Bennet, Casey, Gillibrand, Ossoff, Kelly,
    Risch, Collins, Cotton, Cornyn, Moran, Lankford, Rounds.

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

        Chairman Warner. Good afternoon. I'd like to call this
    hearing to order. And welcome to our witnesses: Director of
    National Intelligence, Avril Haines; CIA Director, Bill Burns;
    FBI Director, Chris Wray; Assistant Secretary for Intelligence
    and Research at the State Department, Brett Holmgren; Director
    of the National Security Agency, General Timothy Haugh; and
    Defense Intelligence Agency Director, Lieutenant General
    Jeffrey Kruse.
        Thank you for appearing today before the Senate
    Intelligence Committee's annual worldwide threats hearing. It
    is important for Congress and for the American people to hear
    directly from the leaders of our Intelligence Community about
    the threats and challenges facing the United States.
        I'd like to first acknowledge the women and men of the U.S.
    intel community. Most Americans will never see the work you do
    behind the scenes. But be assured that the Members of this
    Committee know its importance, and we thank you for what you do
    to keep America safe.
        The threat environment today is perhaps one of the most
    challenging we've seen in recent years. We see nations
    backsliding from democratic institutions. We see authoritarian
    systems seeking to impose their will upon neighbors while
    looking to undermine the international system that has been
    guarantor of security and stability since World War II. And we
    see the rise in competition around new technologies. We must
    ensure that our institutions, including the IC, evolve to meet
    these new challenges, which means, in my mind, redefining what
    we think of as national security.
        The IC was built to collect measures of hard power, how
    many ships, planes, and military personnel an adversary might
    have. But the nature of strategic competition today revolves as
    much around not only traditional military power, but around
    nontraditional tools and the ability to harness emerging dual-
    use technologies. For example, advanced communication networks
    can provide ubiquitous connectivity but also ubiquitous
    surveillance. Artificial intelligence can accelerate software
    development but can also accelerate malicious cyber attacks or
    the spread of misinformation. Biotechnology advancements may
    lead one day to curing cancer or eliminating famine, but also
    may create new pathogens or even, as some have warned,
    genetically-engineered super soldiers. And access to rare earth
    minerals may help determine who shapes the energy future for
    the whole world.
        Compounding all of this, the nature of conflict
    increasingly allows adversaries to project power through
    asymmetrical means. For example, cyber attacks can disable
    critical infrastructure from thousands of miles away and are
    increasingly available to a widening array of actors.
    Inexpensive, unmanned systems, drones, can threaten
    multibillion dollar ships. We are now even seeing the
    possibility of foreign adversaries weaponizing space in ways
    that could be massively destructive not only to our national
    security, but to our way of life and useful tools such as GPS
    and satellite communications.
        Similarly, misinformation and disinformation are
    increasingly deployed cheaply by an array of adversarial
    actors. We all know that more than 60 countries, over half the
    world's population, will vote this year. And I am deeply
    concerned that democracy, including in the United States, is
    under greater threat than ever from these foreign adversaries.
    Bad actors like Russia are particularly incentivized to
    interfere, given what's at stake in Ukraine. Poll after poll
    increasingly demonstrates that Americans are distrustful of
    traditional sources of information, while AI provides the tools
    to spread sophisticated misinformation at an unprecedented
    speed and scale.
        Amidst these threats, our ability to respond has been
    hamstrung as recent litigation pending before the Supreme Court
    has had a chilling effect on the voluntary sharing of
    information related to foreign malign influence threats between
    U.S. government agencies and social media companies. So, today
    I would like each of our witnesses to report on how their
    agencies and the IC as a whole are prepared and poised to meet
    these technology-based challenges and what more needs to be
    done.
        Yet even with this new landscape, more traditional national
    security challenges remain. Terrorist groups still threaten our
    homeland. Over the last couple of years, we've seen
    authoritarian powers challenging democratic norms, undermining
    the international order, and intimidating their neighbors. The
    People's Republic of China under Xi Jinping has presented an
    unprecedented challenge, a techno-authoritarian behemoth whose
    economy is intertwined with our own, challenging democratic
    values, U.S. leadership, and global institutions, often using
    enormous government subsidies. China has used its substantial
    investment power to lead or attempt to dominate a range of key
    industries, whether it be telecommunications and Huawei, social
    media and TikTok, or genomics and BGI.
        Another authoritarian adversary, Russia under Putin, has
    continued its brutal invasion of Ukraine, illegally using
    military forces to seize territory. Ukrainians have bravely
    been fending off the Russian military for over two years,
    supported by partners around the world. The Russian military
    has suffered severe losses of men and equipment. The fact is
    that close to 87 percent of Russia's pre-war ground forces have
    been taken out of the conflict by either being killed or
    wounded. And now, as a result of his aggression, Putin faces
    what he has always feared, a NATO more united than ever.
        That said, this war is in a critical phase, with a serious
    imbalance of equipment. And my fear is the decision thus far by
    the House of Representatives not to even take up legislation
    that would support Ukraine in their fight against Putin's
    aggression has been one of the most shortsighted decisions on a
    national security issue that I can possibly imagine. Without
    this assistance, Ukrainian defenses will be disastrously
    undermined, as well as global confidence in America's resolve
    will be undermined. And that will be the case whether it comes
    from Putin in Europe or the PRC in Taiwan.
        And as we convene this hearing, we also face continued
    instability in the Middle East. The horrific terrorist attacks
    against Israel's civilians by Hamas on October 7th have been
    followed by an incursion by Israel that has cost an estimated
    30,000 Palestinians their lives. And while Iran and its key
    partners such as Hezbollah appear to be deterred from widening
    the conflict for now, other Iranian proxies such as the Houthis
    in Yemen and Iraqi Shia militias have attempted to expand their
    conflict and drag in our country.
        At the same time, Israel's war against Hamas has shown the
    difficulty of using military force alone to eradicate a non-
    state actor embedded in a civilian population, especially one
    that has been so adept at using underground tunnels.
        And I worry that Prime Minister Netanyahu's conduct in the
    war threatens to undermine support for Israel in the long term,
    including in the United States. This international support has
    been key to Israel's security. And as a longtime friend of
    Israel, this is of great concern to me for even Israel's
    support in the United States.
        In addition, we convene this timely hearing as Congress
    faces a pressing deadline on a key national security program.
    Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
    provides unique and critical foreign intelligence necessary to
    protect our national security, enabling the IC to prevent and
    thwart terrorist attacks, track foreign spies, uncover economic
    espionage, protect U.S. troops, expose human and drug
    trafficking, and disrupt foreign cyber attacks. Allowing this
    program to lapse would critically damage our national security.
        In closing, we face an increasing array of diversity of
    challenges, but we also have an opportunity to reinvigorate
    America's democratic values in the face of autocracies like
    China and Russia. We cannot take for granted either democracy
    or the international system that has kept Americans safe for
    decades. Maintaining both requires leadership, conviction, and
    sacrifice.
        With that, let me now turn to 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 coming here today.
        And I also extend my thanks to the men and women who work
    underneath you that do the important work of keeping our
    country safe at what I think you could describe as one of those
    pivot moments in history, where what life will be like for a
    generation is being determined by what's happening now and in
    the near future, while events are changing perhaps faster than
    any other time in human history.
        I think we have to remind ourselves, if we're going to talk
    about the specific threats, the whats of the why, the bigger
    outline picture of why things are happening the way they are
    happening, because I do think that they are all interrelated.
    So, from the end of the Cold War, I don't know when the end
    date is, but let's say the late 2000s, we lived in a unipolar
    world. The United States was basically the only country in the
    world that could project power everywhere at every time. And we
    were called upon to do many things in regards to that. But
    other nation-states progressed during that stage. And I still
    think America by far, by every measure you can imagine,
    economically, culturally, militarily remains the world's
    strongest nation and should remain that way for the foreseeable
    future, if we make the right choices.
        That order that I just described is being challenged. It's
    being challenged by nation-states that, frankly, don't like the
    way the world looks now. At least, they think it benefits
    America and it hurts them, and they want to remake a new world,
    perhaps even replace the world that they think is beneficial to
    America and our democratic allies with an alternative, if not
    at least a replacement--this new order that they seek.
        The Chinese, they believe we're in inevitable decline and
    that their rise is inevitable as well. Like I said, they don't
    like the rules of the world as they believe were written by
    America and our allies, and so they increasingly are taking it
    upon themselves at every opportunity to challenge them. In
    every domain, they steal our ideas on innovation and so forth
    so that their companies can do the things that we do, but of
    course do it cheaper and flood markets with those products.
        I don't need to tell this panel or the Members of this
    Committee and the general public that they're expanding their
    military capabilities in an extraordinary way, to include not
    simply projecting power in the Indo-Pacific but around the
    world. By the way, they manipulate loopholes in our laws and in
    our systems in this country to buy up land, buy up companies,
    gain strategic advantage in industries, and undermine our
    industries in return. They are a major part of flooding this
    country with deadly drugs that are destroying communities and
    ravaging entire families. And they've also gotten very good at
    hiring lobbyists and even deputizing the corporate industry,
    corporate America to come up here and lobby us for things that
    are beneficial to the Chinese goals at the expense of this
    country long term.
        And I think it's important to mention here today they also
    happen to control--and anybody who says they don't, doesn't
    know what they're talking about, because every company in China
    is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party--they happen to
    control a company that owns the one of the world's best
    artificial intelligence algorithms. It's the one that's used in
    this country by TikTok, and it uses the data of Americans to
    basically read your mind and predict what videos you want to
    see. The reason why TikTok is so successful, the reason why
    it's so attractive, is because it knows you better than you
    know yourself. And the more you use it, the more it learns. The
    problem is not TikTok or the videos. The problem is that the
    algorithm that powers it is controlled by a company in China
    that must do whatever the Chinese Communist Party tells them to
    do. And the only way that that algorithm works is if that
    company in China, under the control of the Chinese government,
    is given access to the data that TikTok collects. TikTok does
    not work without that algorithm, and that algorithm is
    controlled by a company that's controlled by the Chinese
    Communist Party under the law of China.
        In the case of Putin, he actually sees America as decadent
    and in decline, and he views Russia as resilient. They view
    themselves as a great power, and he believes that great powers
    have a right to buffer-states. He believes that great powers
    have a right not just to have their own borders, but to control
    the countries around their borders as buffer-states. I think
    they already have that in Belarus in his mind, and it is one of
    the reasons why he invaded Ukraine.
        In the case of Iran, they want to export their Shia Islamic
    revolution to the entire Middle East. And the problem with this
    is two things standing in their way: the state of Israel and
    the United States of America. And so that is why they have
    proxy groups in places like Syria, in Iraq, in Lebanon, in
    Yemen, in Gaza, who they use for their purposes. One of their
    purposes is to use these groups now to attack Americans so that
    we will say it's not worth the trouble, we need to get out of
    there.
        And once we leave, then they'll move on Jordan and on
    Bahrain, then they'll make Israel an unlivable place. And
    ultimately, their ambitions are the entire region and most of
    the Gulf kingdoms. That's why I think it's a mistake to view
    the horrific events of October 7th as simply the latest
    iteration of a longstanding Israeli-Palestinian problem. It is
    deeply tied to the head of this snake, and the head of this
    snake is in Iran and in Tehran.
        Add to all of these three countries North Korea. We haven't
    heard a lot about it yet. They have become increasingly
    aggressive. In fact, I would argue that we perhaps are closer
    to some armed hostilities than we've been in a decade or
    longer. Why? Why have they become so aggressive? They feel
    empowered. They feel empowered because Putin is buying things
    from them and helping them to break their international
    isolation, and also because--I don't know what percentage of
    their economy is powered by ransomware attacks and cyber
    hacking, but it's substantial. They generate a lot of money
    from that.
        And then add to all these parades of horribles the fact
    that terror is still a threat. Iran, as has been publicly
    reported, is still trying to kill former government officials
    that live in the United States of America. There are former
    government officials in this country no longer in office who
    require 24 hours a day security because Iran is trying to kill
    them inside the United States. Hezbollah, an agent of Iran, is
    also looking for ways to conduct terrorist attacks against
    American interests and Israeli and Jewish interests all over
    the world and here in the homeland as well. By the way, ISIS
    and al-Qaeda are not out of business. They are still involved.
    I'll add al-Shabab to that. They also want to kill Americans.
    If they could do it in the homeland, they would love that. And
    all of that happening at a time in which perhaps the single
    largest, most eventful migration corridor in history is
    operating right off of our border.
        So, I think it's a mistake sometimes to divide all of these
    problems geographically because in some ways they're all
    interrelated in key ways. Yes, these individual states all have
    different ambitions, but they share a common goal, and the
    common goal is a world friendlier and better for them and their
    interests, and a world in which America is weakened and less
    able to act. And all of these crises begin to interlock in a
    way that help them. For example, the Chinese and the Russians
    probably see great benefit--no, not probably--they do see great
    benefit from what's happening in the Middle East, because they
    figure every dollar and every second of our attention that's
    paid there, we're not paying to what's happening with Ukraine
    and we're not paying to the Indo-Pacific. The Chinese see great
    benefit in Ukraine as well, because they view it as the more
    time and money we spend there, the less time and money and
    focus we have on them.
        In fact, one of the things I know the Chinese hope for is
    one of two things: (A) we deplete ourselves in Ukraine and/or
    the Middle East, particularly Ukraine; or (B), we cut and run,
    and then they can go around the world and say: See, I told you
    America's weak; I told you America's unreliable. They have a
    plan for either outcome, which makes it challenging for us as
    we decide what to do here.
        So, these things all come together, and I think that's
    really the overarching threat that we face, is an understanding
    that none of these should be viewed in isolation. The goals
    that Russia has, the goals that Iran has, the goals that North
    Korea has, the goals that the Chinese have may be different
    goals. But one of the real developments that threatens the
    security of our country is that they are increasingly
    partnering with one another--not a NATO alliance, not the sort
    of formal alliance that's written out. But they are
    increasingly partnering with each other, that's on selected
    topics and in selected opportunities, because they all share
    one goal. And that is they want to weaken America, weaken our
    alliances, weaken our standing and our capability and our will,
    because it helps them to achieve the world as they envision it,
    the world they want. But it comes at our expense and at the
    expense of all it's been built over the last 20 or 30 years.
        I think that one of the greatest dangers we face is the
    inability to see how all these things are interconnected. And I
    think one of the greatest challenges we face is to deal with
    them as if they are interconnected. I think that what life will
    be like on this planet for the next generation will be
    determined very much by what we do or fail to do here over the
    next two to three years, and certainly with the issues that are
    before us today.
        So, I look forward to hearing from all of you, and I
    appreciate you coming.
        Chairman Warner. Thank you, Senator Rubio. Director Haines,
    I believe you're up first.

                     STATEMENT OF AVRIL D. HAINES,
                   DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE

        Director Haines. Thank you very much.
        Chairman Warner, Vice Chairman Rubio, Members of the
    Committee, thank you so much for the opportunity to be here
    today alongside my wonderful colleagues to present the IC's
    annual threat assessment.
        And before I start, I also want to thank publicly the
    people of the Intelligence Community. From the collector to the
    analyst and everybody in between, we're really presenting the
    result of their labor at this hearing. And they work tirelessly
    every day to keep our country safe and prosperous, and we are
    all very proud to represent them here today.
        I also want to take the opportunity to thank all of you for
    the extraordinary support that you've shown to the Intelligence
    Community. The ICs relationship with its oversight committees
    is quite obviously critically important. And you all work with
    us on a bipartisan basis, and that is especially inspiring in
    today's environment. We're grateful for your encouragement and
    for your wisdom.
        Today the United States faces an increasingly complex and
    interconnected threat, as has been noted by the Chairman and
    Vice Chairman, environment characterized by really three
    categories of challenges. The first is an accelerating
    strategic competition with major authoritarian powers that are
    actively working to undermine the rules-based order and the
    open international system the United States and our partners
    rely on for trade, commerce, the free flow of information, and
    accountability to the truth.
        [Interruption from a member of the public.]
        Chairman Warner. I recognize people feel passionately, but
    the American people deserve to hear from the leaders of the
    Intelligence Community.
        Director Haines, continue.
        Director Haines. The second category is a set of more
    intense and unpredictable transnational challenges, such as
    climate change, corruption, narcotics trafficking, health
    security, terrorism, and cybercrime that often interact with
    traditional state-based political, economic, and security
    challenges.
        And the third category is regional and localized conflicts
    that have far-reaching and at times cascading implications, not
    only for neighboring countries but also for the world.
        And all three challenges are affected by trends in new and
    emerging technologies, environmental changes, and economic
    strain that are stoking instability and making it that much
    more challenging for us to forecast developments and their
    implications. These dynamics are putting unprecedented burdens
    on the institutions and the relationships that the United
    States relies on to manage such challenges, and perhaps more
    than ever, frankly, highlight the need for sustained U.S.
    leadership to uphold the rules-based order.
        And I'll just touch on these three categories of
    challenges, starting with strategic competition in China, in an
    effort to provide some context and highlight some of the
    intersections.
        President Xi continues to envision China as a leading power
    on the world stage, and Chinese leaders believe it is essential
    to project power globally in order to be able to resist U.S.
    pressure, for they are convinced that the United States will
    not tolerate a powerful China. Nevertheless, the PRC seeks to
    ensure China can maintain positive ties to the United States
    and will likely continue to do so this year, as they see
    stability in our relationship as important to their capacity to
    attract foreign direct investment. Boosting the domestic
    economy is a fundamental priority for President Xi, yet he
    appears to be doubling down on a long-term growth strategy that
    will deepen public and investor pessimism over the near-term.
    With youth unemployment around 14.9 percent, no major stimulus
    aimed at consumption, forthcoming massive local debts, and a
    property market contraction, 2024 is likely to be another
    difficult year for China's economy, all against the backdrop of
    an aging and shrinking population and slowing economic growth.
        President Xi is counting on China's investments in
    technology, such as advanced manufacturing and robotics,
    artificial intelligence, high performance computing to drive
    productivity gains and spur future growth. Yet, he is
    increasingly concerned about the United States ability to
    interfere with China's technological goals. Consequently, in an
    effort to protect and promote China's capacity to compete
    technologically, which President Xi views as fundamental to his
    long-term growth strategy, PRC leaders modified their approach
    to economic retaliation against the United States over the last
    year, imposing at least some tangible costs on U.S. firms, even
    as they continue to moderate such actions to avoid domestic
    costs.
        Chinese leadership is furthermore pursuing a strategy to
    boost China's indigenous innovation and technological self-
    reliance; expand their efforts to acquire, steal, or compel the
    production of intellectual property and capabilities from
    others, including the United States; and continue to engage in
    coercive behavior to control critical global supply chains of
    relevance. In the meantime, President Xi's emphasis on control
    and central oversight is unlikely to solve the challenges posed
    by China's economic and endemic corruption, demographic
    decline, and structural economic constraints. And over the
    coming year, tension between these challenges and China's
    aspirations for greater geopolitical power will probably become
    all the more apparent.
        Given its ambitions, Beijing will continue to use its
    military forces to intimidate its neighbors and to shape the
    region's actions in accordance with the PRC's priorities. We
    expect the PLA will field more advanced platforms, deploy new
    technologies, and grow more competent in joint operations, with
    a particular focus on Taiwan and the western Pacific.
        And the role intended for China's growing nuclear forces
    and cyber capabilities in this effort and the ultimate intent
    behind unprecedented growth in these areas remain a priority
    for us in the IC, and they are not unrelated to actions of
    Russia.
        President Putin's war of aggression against Ukraine
    continues unabated. Ukraine's retreat from Malvika and their
    struggle to stave off further territorial losses in the past
    few weeks have exposed the erosion of Ukraine's military
    capabilities with the declining availability of external
    military aid. The assistance that is contemplated in the
    Supplemental is absolutely critical to Ukraine's defense right
    now. And without that assistance, it is hard to imagine how
    Ukraine will be able to maintain the extremely hard-fought
    advances it has made against the Russians, especially given the
    sustained surge in Russian ammunition production and purchases
    from North Korea and Iran.
        And meanwhile, President Putin is increasing defense
    spending in Russia, reversing his long-standing reluctance to
    devote a high percentage of GDP to the military as he looks to
    rebuild. In many ways, this is prompted by the fact that Russia
    has paid an enormous price for the war in Ukraine. Not only has
    Russia suffered more military losses than in any time since
    World War II--roughly 300,000 casualties and thousands of tanks
    and armored combat vehicles, setting them back years--it has
    also precipitated Finland and Sweden's membership in NATO,
    which Putin believes requires an expansion of Russia's ground
    forces.
        Putin continues to judge the time is on his side and almost
    certainly assumes that a larger, better equipped military will
    also serve the purpose of driving that point home to Western
    audiences. Such messaging is important because Putin's
    strategic goals remain unchanged. He continues to see NATO
    enlargement and Western support to Ukraine as reinforcing his
    long held belief that the United States and Europe seek to
    restrict Russian power and undermine him.
        And of course, in the meantime, Russia continues to
    modernize and fortify its nuclear weapons capabilities, even
    though it maintains the largest and most diverse nuclear
    weapons stockpile. We remain concerned that Moscow will put at
    risk longstanding global norms against the use of asymmetric or
    strategically destabilizing weapons, including in space and in
    the cyber domain.
        Another critical intersection we are monitoring is the
    relationship, as the Vice Chairman noted, between the
    governments of Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran, which is
    evolving as these four countries expand collaboration through a
    web of bilateral and in some cases trilateral arrangements.
    This growing cooperation and willingness to exchange aid in
    military, economic, political, and intelligence matters
    enhances their individual capabilities, enables them to
    cooperate on competitive actions, assist them to further
    undermine the rules-based order, and gives them each some
    insulation from external international pressure.
        And nevertheless, we assess these relationships will remain
    far short of formal alliances or a multilateral access.
    Parochial interest, desire to avoid entanglements, and wariness
    of harm and instability from each other's actions will likely
    limit their cooperation and ensure it advances incrementally,
    absent direct conflict between one of these countries and the
    United States. And nevertheless, the power dynamics are
    shifting among them, and this is creating new challenges. In
    particular, Russia's need for support in the context of Ukraine
    has forced it to grant some long-sought concessions to China,
    North Korea and Iran, with the potential to undermine, among
    other things, long-held nonproliferation norms.
        As I noted in the beginning, intensifying transnational
    challenges are intersecting with these more traditional
    threats. For example, with the advent of generative AI, states
    and non-state actors who are interested in conducting foreign
    malign influence operations no longer need to master a language
    to create potentially believable false content. The threat of
    malign actors exploiting these tools and technologies to
    undercut U.S. interests in democracy is particularly potent as
    voters go to the poll in more than 60 elections around the
    globe this year, as the Chairman noted.
        We have also seen a massive increase in the number of
    ransomware attacks globally, which went up roughly 74 percent
    in 2023 from what it was in 2022, and U.S. entities were the
    most heavily targeted. Many of these are conducted by non-state
    actors with the Russia-based cybercriminal group LockBit
    remaining the most popular ransomware as a service provider.
    LockBit was responsible for nearly a quarter of all claimed
    attacks worldwide, leading to a joint effort by 11 countries to
    seize its resources and take down its online domains.
        Transnational criminal organizations and human smuggling
    operations increasingly exploit migrants through extortion,
    kidnaping, and human trafficking. And in particular, the threat
    from illicit drugs remains at historic levels, with Mexican
    transnational criminal organizations supplying and moving large
    amounts of synthetic opioids such as fentanyl into the United
    States. More than 100,000 Americans have died from drug related
    overdoses during the past year and most of those deaths have
    been attributed to illicit fentanyl. And as such, the threat
    from fentanyl and other synthetic drugs to the health and
    welfare of everyday Americans remains a top priority for the
    Intelligence Community.
        In the third category, we have multiple regional conflicts
    with far-reaching implications, perhaps nowhere more obviously
    than in the Middle East. This crisis in Gaza is a stark example
    of how regional developments have the potential for broader and
    even global implications. Now having lasted for more than five
    months, the Gaza conflict has roiled the Middle East with
    renewed instability, presenting new security paradigms and
    humanitarian challenges while pulling in a range of actors.
        The conflict has prompted new dynamics even as it has
    entrenched old ones. We continue to assess that Hezbollah and
    Iran do not want to cause an escalation of the conflict that
    pulls us or them into a full-out war, yet the Houthis entered
    the war and were willing to do so without Iran acting first,
    becoming one of the most aggressive actors in the conflict: the
    Iranian-aligned militia groups in Iraq and Syria that have been
    attacking our forces and have been more focused on the United
    States and Israel, using the conflict as an opportunity to
    pursue their own agenda.
        Moreover, the crisis has galvanized violence by a range of
    actors around the world. And while it is too early to tell, it
    is likely that the Gaza conflict will have a generational
    impact on terrorism. Both al-Qaeda and ISIS inspired by Hamas
    have directed supporters to conduct attacks against Israeli and
    U.S. interests. And we have seen how it is inspiring
    individuals to conduct acts of anti-Semitism and Islamophobic
    terror worldwide. In this third category of regional and
    localized conflicts, we have many more we might discuss,
    including Haiti and Sudan and what is happening in the Eastern
    Democratic Republic of Congo--and the list goes on.
        And this finally brings me to 702 of the Foreign
    Intelligence Surveillance Act, which will expire on April 19th
    without Congressional action. The intelligence gathered
    pursuant to Section 702 was essential in preparing this annual
    threat assessment and is absolutely fundamental to every aspect
    of our work, as I know you know. 702 provides unique insights
    into foreign intelligence targets such as foreign adversaries,
    terrorist organizations including Hamas, weapons proliferators,
    spies, malicious cyber actors, and fentanyl traffickers. And it
    does so at a speed and reliability that we simply cannot
    replace with any other authority. And as Congress pursues
    reauthorization, we understand there will be reforms and we
    support those that bolster the compliance and oversight regimes
    in place, while preserving the operational agility that is
    vital to keeping the Nation safe.
        Thank you for your patience and we look forward to your
    questions.
        Chairman Warner. Thank you, Director Haines. I appreciate
    it.
        I know we don't normally do these on Monday. I appreciate
    everybody coming in. We will be conducting a closed session
    after this open session, so Members should hold any questions
    of a classified nature until after that. And after the chair
    and vice chair go through our first round of questions, we'll
    then recognize Members in rounds of five minutes, all based on
    seniority.
        Director Haines, I want to start with where you ended up on
    702. This critical component of both law enforcement and the
    Intelligence Community expires on April 19th. Congress needs to
    act. Sixty percent of all the information that goes into the
    President's Daily Brief is derived from 702 information.
    Foreigner talking to foreigner in terms of bad guys.
        One of the things that the Vice Chairman and I are very
    proud of is we worked very hard on a reform of Section 702 that
    we introduced last year, including 16 co-sponsors. A great
    number of Members of this Committee are part of that reform
    effort that, again, looked at trying to make sure where there
    had been perhaps overzealous use at the FBI in terms of who was
    querying, how things were queried, have been dramatically
    constrained.
        Director Wray, I want to start my question, though, with
    you. Some have actually said, though, that where we didn't go
    far enough, and they would propose a reform that would require
    agencies to seek a warrant before conducting U.S. person
    queries. Could you explain what would happen on a practical
    level, both from the IC side and the law enforcement side, if
    that requirement was put in place?
        Director Wray. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        I think the short answer is a warrant requirement for us to
    run U.S. person queries would be untenable and would largely
    gut the effectiveness of the authority. And I say that for
    several reasons.
        First, it would blind us to information already lawfully in
    our possession that we need to be able to review and act on in
    a very time-sensitive way to be able to stop terrorist attacks,
    protect a victim from cyber-attack, warn somebody who is
    potentially targeted with assassination or kidnaping.
        Second, in many instances, at the time that the query would
    be run, we wouldn't have the probable cause that the query term
    is associated with an agent of a foreign power. That's what the
    query tells; and so, you got that problem. And then the third
    problem is that an awful lot of the places that we're using 702
    queries are to assist victims and to prevent potential victims
    from further attacks, whether terrorist attacks, cyberattacks,
    etc. And so, in those instances, you'd never be able to get a
    warrant requirement, even if there were some kind of delay
    built into it. That alone, for all these threats which are
    extremely time sensitive, I think the DNI correctly used the
    term agility. That is the key.
        And so, I would implore Congress not to take that
    additional step. You mentioned the compliance failures. I've
    been very clear that the compliance failures that occurred at
    the FBI are wholly unacceptable, and that's why I've put in
    place a whole host of reforms, covering everything from
    training to our systems, approvals, oversight, an Office of
    Internal Audit. I could go on and on. And those reforms are
    working. The FISA court itself most recently found 98 percent
    compliance and commented on the reforms working. The most
    recent Justice Department report found the reforms working, 99
    percent compliance. And so, I think legislation that ensures
    those reforms stay in place but also preserves the agility and
    the utility of the tools, what we need to be able to protect
    the American people.
        Chairman Warner. Well, I appreciate that. And I do think,
    our reform bill had the notion of trust-but-verify so that we
    would literally legislate the reforms that had been put in
    place, add a few others, add some of the additional amicus
    provisions. One of the things I think that has been discovered,
    that the majority of the queries that involve Americans are
    actually on victim notification. The very notion of having a
    warrant to have a victim notification is contradictory in
    itself. I want to raise another issue that I think has been
    appropriately raised, and this is the question around bulk
    purchase of personal data. I think we need to go much further
    on data protection, and I think that has been a failure of this
    Congress to address in its past.
        Director Haines, I know you've done a study on this. And my
    fear is that some of the proposed reforms would actually not
    limit foreign entities from obtaining this data but would limit
    law enforcement. Can you talk to the question of bulk data
    purchases and data brokers?
        Director Haines. Absolutely. From our perspective,
    commercially-available information, as we think about the
    entire set of what's out there and what's been discussed in
    Congress in relation to this, is just increasingly critical to
    the Intelligence Community's work. And I think an obvious
    example of this is commercial imagery and the role that it
    played, for example, in the context of the invasion of Ukraine.
    But there's a whole series of other areas where we're
    purchasing information, such as commercial threat information
    that's related to cyber security and things like that.
        And at the same time, we recognize that commercially-
    available information raises new and important issues related
    to privacy and civil liberties. And this is in large part true
    because more of our daily lives are connected digitally to the
    world today than ever before. And an increasing amount of data
    about individuals and their activities, often perceived as not
    especially sensitive on its own, is actually available for sale
    alongside increasingly sophisticated analytic tools that
    essentially, relying on artificial intelligence, can actually
    in aggregate raise significant privacy and civil liberties
    issues that are relevant, which is why we basically said, look,
    we recognize this is something that is of concern, and we want
    to make sure that we're actually addressing this issue
    appropriately and responsibly within the Intelligence
    Community.
        So, we had a panel, an external panel, look at this
    question and really asked them how and under what circumstances
    should we use commercially-available information, and in
    particular to reflect on the existing framework for privacy and
    civil liberties. We've published that report. And in fact,
    Senator Wyden asked us to, and as a consequence, put that out.
    And as an Intelligence Community in our EXCOM, as we call it,
    all the heads together, agreed that we thought those
    recommendations made sense. And we have issued IC guidance
    basically for cataloging commercially-available information
    acquired by IC elements to ensure that our handling of such
    information is consistent with relevant legal policy-security
    considerations to facilitate oversight. And we've developed a
    framework that augments each ICs elements attorney general
    guidelines and related policies with general principles and
    additional guidance on how IC elements should access, collect,
    process commercially available information, including more
    precise guidance for identifying and dealing with categories of
    information that pose a greater risk of implicating privacy and
    civil liberties concerns.
        And finally, as the panel recommended also, the framework
    sets out standards and procedures that govern and require
    periodic reevaluation and acquisition and use decisions. And I
    think the challenge that is posed by some of the legislative
    proposals that I've seen require, for example, a probable cause
    requirement before you can obtain that information. Similarly,
    we are not going to have in the scenario of, for example,
    getting cyber-threat information commercially, a probable cause
    reason for getting that. What we're trying to do is understand
    what the vulnerabilities are. And then what we recognize is
    that whatever the commercial information is that we're
    obtaining, we need to treat it in a way that actually mitigates
    against the risks that have been described.
        Chairman Warner. Thank you. Senator Rubio.
        Vice Chairman Rubio. Director Wray, we know that over the
    last three years millions of people crossed the U.S. border
    illegally, and many have been released into the country. Have
    members or people with ties to dangerous gangs like, for
    example, the prison gang Tren de Aragua from Venezuela, were
    they among the people that came into this country?
        Director Wray. Well, I don't know that I can speak to this
    specific gang. But certainly, we have had dangerous individuals
    enter the United States of a variety of sorts.
        Vice Chairman Rubio. Are we now seeing crimes from people
    that entered the country over the last three years, some of
    them with ties to gangs or other criminal organizations?
        Director Wray. Well, I guess what I would say is this. From
    an FBI perspective, we are seeing a wide array of very
    dangerous threats that emanate from the border, and that
    includes everything from drug trafficking. The FBI alone seized
    enough fentanyl in the last two years to kill 270 million
    people. That's just on the fentanyl side. An awful lot of the
    violent crime in the United States is at the hands of gangs who
    are themselves involved in the distribution of that fentanyl.
        Vice Chairman Rubio. But you're also seeing and tracking
    local law enforcement arresting and, for example, the assault
    on the police officers in New York. All the reporting said they
    had ties to this gang in particular. But there's no doubt that
    people that were criminals in their country of origin have
    crossed that border and are now in the U.S. committing crimes.
        Director Wray. Correct.
        Vice Chairman Rubio. Is there now a black market emerging
    to sell? We've seen reports of a black market emerging selling
    fake Social Security cards, fake green cards. Have you seen
    reporting on that?
        Director Wray. Well, certainly on the Darknet, for example,
    there is a significant marketplace for different kinds of
    stolen identity information.
        Vice Chairman Rubio. What about in the street?
        Director Wray. I think as well, yeah.
        Vice Chairman Rubio. Okay. There are smuggling networks all
    over the world that specialize in moving people from all over
    the world, including from the Middle East, Central Asia, and so
    forth. Are we aware of any of these smuggling organizations are
    run by are conducted by people that have ties, for example, to
    ISIS or other terrorist organizations?
        Director Wray. So, I want to be a little bit careful how
    far I can go in open session. But there is a particular network
    where some of the overseas facilitators of the smuggling
    network have ISIS ties that we're very concerned about, and
    that we've been spending enormous amount of effort with our
    partners investigating exactly what that network is up to. It's
    something that's, again, the subject of our current
    investigation.
        Vice Chairman Rubio. So, there's a network we're concerned
    about that has facilitators involved in it that have ties to
    ISIS or other terrorist organizations?
        Director Wray. Correct.
        Vice Chairman Rubio. I talked about TikTok in the opening.
    Just to lay the groundwork here, TikTok is this American--
    TikTok US, American company, or headquartered putatively in
    America--and they have this platform which is fascinating,
    right? It's very effective, very good, has a lot of members.
    One of the things that powers it is that it is powered by an
    algorithm based on artificial intelligence where the more you
    use it, the more it learns about you. It in essence reads your
    mind. It knows the kinds of videos you like, and it feeds you
    more and more of them, causing you to go back. That algorithm
    is not owned by TikTok. It's owned by ByteDance, a Chinese
    company, correct?
        Director Wray. That's my understanding.
        Vice Chairman Rubio. And so, the only way that algorithm
    works is if that Chinese company has access to the data being
    generated by TikTok. The owner of the algorithm, ByteDance, has
    to have access. So, it doesn't matter where the data is stored.
    Ultimately, they have to have access to it in order to make the
    algorithm work, correct?
        Director Wray. Right. I think what you're getting to is the
    key point: that the parent company is, for all intents and
    purposes, beholden to the CCP.
        Vice Chairman Rubio. Well, the reason why I raised that is
    if ByteDance in China is the one that owns the driver that
    makes TikTok effective, isn't it true that under Chinese law,
    the Chinese Communist Party says that data that you're gaining
    access to in order to make your algorithm work, we want a copy
    of that data. If they said that to ByteDance in the future,
    ByteDance would have to give it to them.
        Director Wray. That's my understanding.
        Vice Chairman Rubio. And if they went to them and said we
    want you to change your algorithms so that Americans start
    seeing videos that hurt this candidate or help that candidate
    in the upcoming election, ByteDance would have to do that under
    Chinese law.
        Director Wray. That's my understanding.
        Vice Chairman Rubio. And if they said we want you to put
    out videos that make Americans fight with each other or spread
    conspiracy theories and get them at each other's throat,
    ByteDance can't go to Chinese court and fight the Communist
    Party. They would have to do it.
        Director Wray. That's my understanding. And I would just
    add that that kind of influence operation, or the different
    kinds of influence operations you're describing, are
    extraordinarily difficult to detect, which is part of what
    makes the national security concerns represented by TikTok so
    significant.
        Vice Chairman Rubio. All right. Thank you.
        Senator Wyden. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and my
    thanks to all of you and of course the people you work with
    every day.
        I'm going to start with this issue of government purchases
    of Americans' data. And former acting CIA Director Mike Morrell
    presents something of a different view on this. He has said
    that the amount of the information available for the government
    to buy would, quote, knock your socks off. And if it were
    collected through normal intelligence methods, it would be top
    secret information kept under lock and key.
        I believe Mr. Morrell is right. It is the Wild West out
    there in terms of sensitive information on Americans, and the
    government can buy it up. Unlike normal intelligence
    collection, there are apparently virtually no rules here. To
    take one public example, I want to go to you, General Kruse,
    not to be going after you especially. But you said that the
    Defense Intelligence Agency has acknowledged it obtains and
    purchases actual U.S. location data. So, my question for you
    and any other Members who would like to add to it, are there
    any Constitutional or statutory limits on your agency's
    purchasing of the location information of Americans?
    Constitutional or statutory limits, any?
        General Kruse. Thank you for the question, Senator Wyden. I
    would say, yes, there are absolute and very clear guidelines
    for all of us. And when we purchase the bulk data, the first
    thing we do is we exclude all of the data that is within U.S.
    territory and is on U.S. citizens as the very first step. Our
    teams have been here with the Congress talking through our
    attorney general guidelines, have been speaking with the
    concerns that you and others have voiced to us. I think we have
    built the processes around our purchasing of commercial data
    and use of commercial in partnership with----
        Senator Wyden. Respectfully, I didn't hear you mention what
    I asked about. Either Constitutional or statutory limits. So,
    why don't you just send that to us for the record?
        And I will just say, colleagues, this is the reason why
    Congress needs to pass legislation limiting government
    purchases of Americans' information. And I also believe that
    Congress needs to pass the bill that I introduced with the Vice
    Chairman, Senator Rubio, making sure this information isn't
    bought up by foreign countries, either.
        So, let's go now to Section 702. And obviously, the
    government needs to have Section 702 to focus on foreign
    threats. It is just essential that it be done without throwing
    aside the privacy rights of law-abiding Americans. There is a
    workable solution. Under a bipartisan proposal that I've been
    part of, the government wouldn't need a warrant to run searches
    on Americans to see who they're talking to. It's only when the
    government wants to read the content of those private
    conversations that a warrant would be required, even though
    there are also many exceptions that we have put into the bill--
    exceptions for emergencies, consent, cyberattacks--the list
    goes on. Now, according to FBI's data, the FBI looks at content
    in less than two percent of its searches on Americans.
        So, my question would be for you, Director Wray. As I've
    described it using your data, the data from the FBI, doesn't
    our warrant requirement only apply to a tiny fraction of the
    searches the FBI conducts when you factor in all of these
    exceptions? I mean, I can go through them, but I think you know
    them. You know, if there's any imminent danger, no warrant; if
    there are other dangers you have to go get the warrant later.
    But the exception list is very long.
        So, the question is, isn't it correct that what we're
    talking about in the bipartisan bill here in the Senate and in
    the House, it would apply to only a small fraction of the
    searches you're conducting?
        Director Wray. As a percentage, it's not a significant
    percentage. Certainly, the number is significant, and I think
    the fundamental problem with the warrant requirement before you
    can look at the content, is that it's the content that tells us
    whether or not it's an agent of a foreign power involved, so I
    think that's part of the problem that we have.
        [Interruption from a Member of the Public.]
        Chairman Warner. If the witness will pause for a moment.
        Continue.
        Director Wray. I think where I got cut off, was I was just
    explaining that the fundamental problem is that in the
    instances where we need to look at the content, the probable
    cause that's lacking at that point is what's established by
    seeing the content. That's what tells us more often than not,
    that there's an agent of a foreign power involved.
        And so that's what enables us to then act and go forward
    with the appropriate investigative steps.
        Senator Wyden. So, there's an exception for imminent
    danger. There's an exception in other emergencies. There is an
    exception to simply conversations with foreign threats. I'd
    like you to send to me, so we'll have this for the record, how
    having those exceptions will in some way obstruct you when
    you're trying to deal with a tiny number of warrants. This is
    all about Americans believing. You bet we have foreign threats.
    There's no question about it, but we can address those foreign
    threats in a way that's compatible with the liberty and the
    values that law-abiding Americans hold. I'm happy to work with
    you on it. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Chairman Warner. Senator Collins.
        Senator Collins. Thank you. Director Haines, you
    understandably spent considerable time talking about the
    significant threats that Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea
    pose to our country. Since the way that our disastrous
    withdrawal from Afghanistan unfolded, we've also seen a large
    increase in terrorist attacks conducted by ISIS. In fact, those
    number nearly 200 and have resulted in some 1,300 casualties.
    So obviously Afghanistan has shown that once again, the Taliban
    is either unwilling or unable to control terrorist groups.
        Are there threats of terrorist attacks from ISIS toward
    Americans a problem still? And how are you balancing the great
    power competition with the threats from ISIS? In addition, I
    would like you to comment on whether or not terrorist groups
    backed by Iran, such as Hamas and Hezbollah, pose a threat to
    our homeland.
        Director Haines. Thank you, Senator.
        In terms of the threat from ISIS, which you're absolutely
    right, remains a significant counterterrorism concern for us,
    most of the attacks that you're talking about, globally taken
    on by ISIS, have actually occurred by parts of ISIS that are
    outside of Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, there still remains an
    ISIS concern. It is one where, ironically, the Taliban is
    actually also concerned about it, because the ISIS group that
    is in Afghanistan is in fact going after the Taliban. And so,
    this is a place where, actually, the Taliban has taken action
    against that group in ways that are consistent also with our
    concerns and interests.
        So that is one piece. In terms of the terrorist groups that
    are backed by Iran, absolutely. That is a major issue for us
    and there are a number of them. Obviously, we often talk about
    Iranian-aligned militia groups that have been attacking U.S.
    forces and assets in Iraq and Syria in particular, but also in
    other parts of the region attempting to. And there have been
    just dozens and dozens of attacks that we've been looking to
    manage, and that continues to be fueled by Iran. They provide
    weapons, they provide training, they provide money to those
    groups, and we still obviously see them as a destabilizing
    force in the region. We also see Iran's support of Hezbollah,
    as you noted, and of Hamas over the years--and so considerably.
    Not to mention the Houthis, who are another example of this.
        But certainly, that's been a large issue and my colleagues
    may wish to add to this.
        Senator Collins. Thank you. Director Wray, we know that
    China is the primary provider of the predecessor chemicals and
    the pill presses for fentanyl. And you've pointed out in your
    testimony the extraordinary scope of the amount of fentanyl
    that has been produced. And indeed, 80 percent of the overdoses
    in Maine last year involved fentanyl.
        But what we're also seeing in Maine is a new phenomenon
    that was reported by some enterprising journalists. And that is
    that Chinese nationals are establishing illegal marijuana
    growing operations all over the state. One public report
    estimates there are more than 200 of them, primarily in rural
    Maine. They're unregulated. They're illicit. They're destroying
    homes because they're growing the marijuana inside. And the
    marijuana is very potent.
        What is the FBI doing to support local county and state
    officials? And why do you think the Chinese have sent their
    citizens to rural America to establish these illegal growing
    operations?
        Director Wray. Well, certainly we're observing the same
    phenomenon that you're describing. I know we've had a number of
    cases that have resulted in indictments of Chinese nationals
    involved with illegal marijuana grow operations here, and
    otherwise involved in different kinds of organized criminal
    activity. We are tackling that through working with our state
    and local law enforcement partners, through a variety of task
    forces. We're trying to share intelligence with them to help
    get ahead of the threat. I'm not sure that I could give you a
    reason as to why it's happening, but that is something that
    we're very focused on. And you mentioned the precursors to
    fentanyl, the pill presses, this issue. I would just add to
    that yet another one which is that an awful lot of the meth
    precursors to the labs in Mexico also come from China.
        So, it's fentanyl, it's also meth and so there is certainly
    a big degree to which problems that we are experiencing here in
    an acute way, source back to them.
        Senator Collins. Thank you.
        Chairman Warner. Senator Heinrich.
        Senator Heinrich. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        According to the annual threat assessment, Russian
    President Putin probably believes, quote, that his approach to
    winning the war in Ukraine is paying off and the Western and
    U.S. support to Ukraine is finite, end quote. For any of you,
    what lessons is Putin taking from the U.S. failure to further
    support Ukraine in its fight for national survival? And what
    lessons might China's Xi Jinping learn from this failure?
        Director Burns. Senator, I'd be glad to address your
    question. I just returned from my tenth visit to Ukraine during
    the course of the war, and I left convinced that we're at a
    profoundly important crossroads for Ukraine, for European
    security and for long-term American interests around the world.
    I think down one road, with supplemental assistance approved by
    the Congress, lies the very real possibility of cementing a
    strategic success for Ukraine and a strategic loss for Vladimir
    Putin's Russia.
        It's our assessment that with Supplemental assistance,
    Ukraine can hold its own on the front lines through 2024 and
    into early 2025; that Ukraine can continue to exact costs
    against Russia, not only with deep penetration strikes in
    Crimea, but also against Russia's Black Sea fleet, continuing
    the success which has resulted in 15 Russian ships over the
    course of the last six months.
        In other words, with Supplemental assistance, Ukraine can
    put itself in a position by the end of 2024, the beginning of
    2025, where it could regain the offensive initiative and also
    put itself in a position to negotiate from a position of
    greater strength and achieve an outcome in which Putin's goal,
    which was to subjugate Ukraine and to control its choices,
    would be denied. Where Ukraine could sustain itself as a
    strong, sovereign independent country, anchor itself in Western
    institutions and have the space and the security to recover
    from this terrible aggression. And leave Russia to deal with
    the long-term consequences of Putin's brutal and foolish
    invasion.
        Down another road, however, without Supplemental
    assistance, it seems to me lies a much grimmer future. Ukraine
    is likely to lose ground and probably significant ground in
    2024. I saw in the Battle of Avdiivka, which forced a rushed
    withdrawal of Ukrainian forces just a couple of days before I
    was in Kyiv on this last visit, the consequences of that. One
    senior Ukrainian partner described what happened to me. He said
    that, you know, our men fought as long and as hard as they
    could, we ran out of ammunition and the Russians just kept
    coming. And I think without Supplemental assistance in 2024,
    you're going to see more Avdiivkas; and that, it seems to me,
    would be a massive and historic mistake for the United States.
        Senator Heinrich. And what lesson do you think the CCP will
    take from that?
        Director Burns. I think the consequence of that will not
    just be for Ukraine or European security----
        [Interruption from a member of the public.]
        Chairman Warner. Witness will continue.
        Director Burns. I think the consequences of that are going
    to be felt not only by Ukrainians and in European security, but
    across the Indo-Pacific, where if we're seen to be walking away
    from support for Ukraine, not only is that going to feed doubts
    amongst our allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific, it's going
    to stoke the ambitions of the Chinese leadership in
    contingencies ranging from Taiwan to the South China Sea.
        So that's what I saw on this last visit. That's what I
    think is at stake for all of us. I think the truth is that the
    Ukrainians are not running out of courage and tenacity, they're
    running out of ammunition. And we're running out of time to
    help them.
        Senator Heinrich. Director, let's jump to the elephant in
    the room then. I want to thank you for your efforts to secure
    hostage releases and a ceasefire in the Middle East. Ramadan
    has now begun. Give us, to the best of your ability, a little
    bit on where things stand with those negotiations and what
    flashpoints you might be concerned could push us into a more
    regional conflict over the course of the next month.
        Director Burns. Sure. For the last few months, since the
    last hostage return and ceasefire in the latter part of
    November, the President has been working very hard to try to
    renew that process. And I've traveled eight times to meet with
    my Israeli, Egyptian, and Qatari partners, and returned most
    recently on Saturday night from the last such trip. What's on
    the table right now is a potential agreement that has three
    main elements. The first would be the return of about 40
    hostages. These are the remaining women hostages, older men,
    and hostages who are wounded or seriously ill--as the first
    step, as the first phase toward the return of all of the
    hostages, which I know the President has deeply committed. And
    that would be in return for a defined number of Palestinian
    prisoners held by the Israelis.
        The second element is a ceasefire of at least six weeks,
    again, as the first step toward what might be more enduring
    arrangements over time.
        And then the third element would be a major surge in
    humanitarian assistance, which under the circumstances of a
    ceasefire could actually be distributed effectively to people
    who so deeply need them.
        Director Burns. So, we're going to continue to work hard at
    this. I don't think anybody can guarantee success. What I think
    you can guarantee is that the alternatives are worse. For
    innocent civilians in Gaza who are suffering under desperate
    conditions, for the hostages and their families who are
    suffering also under very desperate conditions, and for all of
    us. So, we're going to keep at this.
        Chairman Warner. Senator Risch.
        Senator Risch. Mr. Chairman, I have a number of questions.
    But we've got a lot of ground to cover here, and mine really
    need to be in a classified setting because I refer to some
    classified matters. So, I'm going to reserve until we get into
    the closed session.
        Chairman Warner. All right. Fine.
        Senator Cotton.
        Senator Cotton. Senator Heinrich was going to address the
    real elephant in the room, which are some of our audience
    members accusing you of pretty serious conduct. So, Director
    Burns, I want to give you a chance to respond to what's been
    said. Is Israel exterminating the Palestinian people?
        Director Burns. Senator, all I can say is, you know, what I
    said before. I think there are a lot of innocent civilians in
    Gaza who are in desperate conditions right now. I think there
    are hostages and their families who are also in desperate
    circumstances, as well. I've learned a long time ago in crises
    like this, that you have to find a practical goal and pursue it
    relentlessly. And the goal the President has laid out, working
    with our Israeli, Qatari, and Egyptian partners, I think, is
    the most practical one I can see right now. It is to produce a
    ceasefire of at least six weeks, produce the return of the
    hostages--ultimately all of the hostages--and get desperately-
    needed humanitarian relief to people who need it in Gaza.
        Senator Cotton. So, is that a no? You do not believe Israel
    is exterminating the Palestinian people?
        Director Burns. I understand Israel's need, and the
    President has emphasized this, to respond to the brutish attack
    that Israelis suffered on the 7th of October, against Hamas,
    against a terrorist group. But I think we all also have to be
    mindful of the, you know, enormous toll that this has taken on
    innocent civilians in Gaza. And as the President has said, it's
    very important for Israel to be extremely mindful of that and
    to avoid further loss of civilian life.
        Senator Cotton. Director Haines, do you believe Israel is
    exterminating the Palestinian people?
        Director Haines. I really don't have anything to add to
    what Director Burns has said. I fully endorse what he's
    commented on.
        Senator Cotton. Okay. Israel--and you also stand accused of
    starving the Palestinian children. Is Israel starving children
    in Palestine or in Gaza?
        Director Burns. You know, I think, Senator, the reality is
    that there are children who are starving in Gaza.
        Senator Cotton. But is Israel doing that?
        Director Burns. They're starving, they're malnourished as a
    result of the fact that humanitarian assistance can't get to
    them. It's very difficult to distribute humanitarian assistance
    effectively unless you have a ceasefire, which is exactly why I
    think there's great value in what's on the table now--a return
    of hostages and a significant ceasefire enabling people to get
    that humanitarian assistance.
        Senator Cotton. Okay. For the record, I do not believe that
    Israel, nor any of you, or the United States Government is
    exterminating the Palestinian people or starving Palestinian
    children.
        Director Haines, there have been several news reports, you
    might say leaks, to the effect that Iran does not have full
    control of its proxy groups. That's the headline from Politico
    last month. The quote: While Iran is supporting the proxy
    groups financially and with military equipment, intelligence
    officials do not believe it is commanding the attacks. Its lack
    of control over the Houthis and the militias in Iraq and Syria
    has muddied the deliberations in Washington about how to
    respond to repeated attacks on U.S. interests in the region,
    including the attack in Jordan on January 28th that killed
    three American troops.
        But on page 18 of the assessment, the Intelligence
    Community writes: Tehran was able to flex the network's
    military capabilities in the aftermath of Hamas's attack on
    October 7th, orchestrating anti-Israel and anti-U.S. attacks
    from Lebanon to the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait while shielding
    Iranian leaders from significant consequences.
    ``Orchestrating'' is stronger than anything I've heard. It's
    not providing support or training or funding. So, it's your
    assessment, the Intelligence Community assessment, that Tehran
    has orchestrated attacks on Israel and against U.S. personnel
    and positions in the Middle East since October 7th?
        Director Haines. Yes. And I don't think that means that the
    proxy groups or that others are always listening to everything
    that they have to say or under their direct control. But I
    think orchestrating is an appropriate characterization of what
    they've looked to do.
        Senator Cotton. So, it has, to use the dictionary
    definition, arranged or directed the elements of a situation to
    produce a desired effect, especially surreptitiously. That's
    correct?
        Director Haines. [Non-verbal affirmative response.]
        Senator Cotton. Okay. Director Burns, on page 34 of the
    assessment, the IC notes that the FBI and the Department of
    Energy have concluded that the most likely origins for the
    coronavirus pandemic was a laboratory in Wuhan, but the CIA
    cannot agree with that conclusively.
        Why can't the CIA reach the same conclusion that the FBI
    and the Department of Energy have reached?
        Director Burns. Our analysts continue to look at this very
    carefully. They have not yet concluded that there's definitive
    evidence on either side of this, whether natural transmission
    or a lab accident as well. And we continue to pursue, you know,
    more intelligence, more information that might help them to
    reach a definitive conclusion. But right now, they haven't been
    able to reach that.
        Senator Cotton. Director Wray, why are your analysts so
    much more confident?
        Director Wray. Our analysts did very rigorous work
    involving a whole slew of experts of different sorts. We
    reached the assessment with moderate confidence, and we stand
    by that assessment.
        Senator Cotton. Thank you.
        Chairman Warner. Senator King.
        Senator King. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks to all of
    you. And as others have said, thank you to the people who
    operate under very difficult circumstances around the world to
    supply us with this important information.
        Director Burns, I just want to say your statement to
    Senator Heinrich about the impact and long-term consequences of
    our abandoning Ukraine is important and I think should be
    required reading around here.
        The implications are it's a 50-year mistake that would
    haunt this country, both in Europe but also, as you suggest, in
    the Indo-Pacific, including Kim Jong Un would assess that we
    didn't have the staying power. He's already making noises about
    the peninsula.
        Director Wray, you talked with Senator Rubio about TikTok.
    Just to reiterate, it's dangerous because it allows the Chinese
    Communist Party to have access to an enormous trove of data
    about Americans. That's number one. Is that correct?
        Director Wray. That's one of the pieces of it. There are
    several.
        Senator King. The second piece is the power that the
    misinformation and sort of policy direction, that it enables
    the Communist Party to exercise, correct?
        Director Wray. Well, I think the second piece is the
    algorithm, right? In other words, the first is the data. The
    second is the algorithm. The third is the software.
        Senator King. But the problem is not TikTok. It's the
    control by China. If TikTok were divested and owned by an
    American company or a Belgian company or a British company, we
    wouldn't have this level of problem. Is that correct?
        Director Wray. Correct.
        Senator King. Thank you.
        Who controls Mexico? Is the government of Mexico in control
    or are the cartels in control? And how do we get at the problem
    of the drugs, the fentanyl? By the way, I did a little
    calculation a minute ago. About 15 people have died in this
    country of overdoses, mostly fentanyl, since this hearing
    started an hour and twenty minutes ago. That's how serious this
    problem is. One a day in my state of Maine.
        How do we get control of this problem?
        Director Haines. I'll start in, because there are a lot of
    us, obviously, that are working to help support those who are
    on the front lines of this, which include the FBI, obviously,
    and DEA and DHS and others who are really focused on this
    question.
        But on the first point, Senator King, with respect to
    Mexico, I think there's no question that it is a challenge for
    the government of Mexico to deal with the cartels. And there
    are parts of the country that are effectively under the control
    of the cartels in certain respects. And yet at the same time,
    we'd say that our cooperation with them has improved over time.
    And I think Director Burns and Director Wray may have more to
    say on this, but this is an area where we've really been able
    to work with them to try to help to----
        Senator King. Obviously, we have been able to work, and
    it's improving, but this is a drastic problem that should be
    treated as such in terms of the impact on Americans.
        Maybe this is a DHS question. But Director Wray, do we know
    how fentanyl is actually getting in? Where is it coming from?
        Director Wray. You mean coming----
        Senator King. Yes. How does it get into the U.S.?
        Director Wray. It's coming through a variety of means,
    including at ports of entry, but there's a variety of ways it
    gets in. Part of the challenge of fentanyl is, of course, how
    small it is and how easy it is to conceal and how easy it is to
    be innovative in ways to get it across the border. The vast
    majority of the fentanyl that's killing Americans is, of
    course, coming from Mexico, and the vast majority of the
    precursors for that fentanyl is coming from China.
        Senator King. Well, I should mention that in the
    Supplemental that's pending in the House, which we've always
    focused on Ukraine, there's also a major fentanyl-blocking
    provision that would be very important to this country to have
    enacted as soon as possible.
        Director Haines, you're nodding, but the record doesn't
    show nodding.
        Director Haines. Yes, absolutely. It's not coming to the
    Intelligence Community in that case, but there are--funding
    obviously for the capacity to do greater detection and things
    like that that DHS would be deploying, I believe, among others,
    and I absolutely agree that this is a fundamental issue. And we
    are--yeah, we can also talk more in closed session about some
    of the organizational things that we're looking to do to
    improve our capacity.
        Senator King. But we have a major bill to address fentanyl
    in that Supplemental, if we can get that out of its limbo in
    the House.
        General, one question. I'm concerned about a gap. NSA can
    talk about foreign intelligence gathering not in the U.S.
    Here's my worry. A Saint Petersburg, Russia, troll farm sends
    or hacks information in the United States through a server in
    New Jersey or Pennsylvania or California. Does that create a
    gap? Talk to me about the relationship between yourself and NSA
    and the FBI. I just worry that there's a place there where we
    may lose contact.
        General Haugh. Senator, thank you for the question. So, if
    we think about this right now today in the context of threats
    to our elections, we spend an enormous amount of time
    collaborating across all the elements of the U.S. government to
    make sure that we're aligned and that we're appropriately using
    our authorities to be able to garner whatever information is
    required to be able to identify a foreign threat.
        First and foremost, we are going to collect that threat of
    a foreign intelligence target outside the United States. And
    so, one of those tools that really assists in this type of
    scenario is Section 702 and our ability, because--and by its
    very nature--if there's an origin of that threat that there's a
    foreign entity communicating within the United States with a
    communications provider, it offers us an opportunity under
    Section 702 to target that foreign intelligence threat outside
    the United States. And so, with the reauthorization of Section
    702, that would ensure one means by which we are able to see
    the foreign part of that communication.
        Senator King. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Chairman Warner. Senator Cornyn.
        Senator Cornyn. Director Wray, I wanted to ask you a little
    bit about some of your testimony about the border. Last year
    169 individuals on the terrorist watchlist were detained at the
    southern border. So far this year, it's been 58. We know there
    were, since 2021, approximately 1.8 million got-aways; in other
    words, not people that turned themselves in claiming asylum,
    not people paroled into the interior, but 1.8 million migrants
    who were evading law enforcement at the border.
        Can you tell us, can you tell the American people with any
    certainty, that there are zero people on the terrorist
    watchlist that were among that 1.8 million got-aways?
        Director Wray. Well, what I would say is you rightly
    highlighted the kind of what--You remember Secretary Rumsfeld
    used to refer to the known known, the known unknown, and the
    unknown unknown? And I think here in many ways the national
    security ramifications of the issues at the border are better
    reflected in some ways more by what we don't know about the
    people who snuck in, provided fake documents, or in some other
    way got in when there wasn't sufficient information available
    at the time they came in to connect the dots.
        It's almost more significant, in our view, than the actual
    number of so-called KSTs, because those people for the most
    part are stopped, detained, and processed appropriately.
        Senator Cornyn. And I guess you would answer the same way
    that people with criminal records, members of criminal street
    gangs, and other, being among that 1.8 million figure for
    migrants who got away. We don't know what that 1.8 million is
    composed of, do we?
        Director Wray. That's correct.
        Senator Cornyn. What we do know is that more than 37,000
    Chinese nationals were detained at the U.S. southern border in
    2023. That number is up ten times over the earlier tally. And
    these individuals who were of course detained, sometimes they
    claim asylum, sometimes they're paroled into the interior. But
    again, we don't know how many Chinese nationals that may be
    among that 1.8 million got-aways that have made their way into
    the interior of the United States. You would answer the same
    way, I assume?
        Director Wray. Right. We don't know what we're dealing
    with. In that particular context, it gets especially
    challenging because presumably within that group, you've got
    not only people who may mean us harm, but also people who are
    fleeing the CCP and share our concerns about their
    authoritarian thuggishness.
        Senator Cornyn. Of course, that's an important point. I'm
    not suggesting all of them are, but I'm just suggesting this is
    a huge, gaping vulnerability in our national security that we
    don't have answers for. I'm reminded that there were 26 co-
    conspirators in the 9/11 attacks against the United States,
    killing 3,000 people: 26 people killed 3,000 Americans on 9/11.
    I worry that among the people that are coming across the
    border, that are evading law enforcement, that there are some
    people among those that mean to do us harm. Do you share that
    concern?
        Director Wray. I do.
        Senator Cornyn. And, in fact, according to public sources,
    this is CNN, August 30, 2023, you alluded to this earlier about
    dozens of migrants from Uzbekistan that were being facilitated
    by a suspected ISIS agent in Turkey that was assisting those
    migrants to make their way to the southern border and into the
    United States, correct?
        Director Wray. So that's a threat stream that we're very
    concerned about. We're very actively investigating, working
    with DHS, on both people whose travel was facilitated, but also
    members of the facilitation network in some other way overseas.
    There's probably more I could share on that in closed session
    if you would like.
        Senator Cornyn. Thank you.
        Well, one of the things that I think this reveals is that
    our border situation, the illegal immigration, has changed over
    the years. It seems to me coming from a border state, years ago
    you would look at people coming across who wanted to work,
    wanted to provide for their family. Now of course, we
    understand people fleeing violence and poverty, things like
    that.
        But also, we see the pull factors, the fact that if you
    make it to the border, you can likely stay for the rest of your
    natural life, is an enormous magnet for people to come. But
    also, and not just people who have benign intentions toward the
    United States who want a better life, but also people that want
    to do us harm.
        I know sometimes people say, well, this is just a fantastic
    theory. It's no basis in reality. Do you consider that to be a
    frivolous consideration?
        Director Wray. I do not. And I've been, I think, very vocal
    about this. We, of course, are not responsive, FBI, for the
    physical security of the border. We work hard to be good
    partners with DHS on that. But there are a whole host of
    threats that emanate from the border, and some of them are
    criminal threats. We talked about fentanyl and violence.
        And then, of course, we have concerns that it could be a
    vulnerability that terrorist organizations could seek to
    exploit. I would add that we are not at the moment tracking any
    specific terrorist plot coming across the border in that
    regard. But it wasn't that long ago, as you will recall, that
    we had indictments of an individual who was trying to smuggle
    foreign nationals across the border to assassinate former
    President Bush.
        So it goes to your point that numbers are important, but
    numbers don't tell the whole story. It only takes a few people
    who can be responsible for a whole lot of harm.
        Chairman Warner. Senator Bennet.
        Senator Bennet. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you all
    for being here. Thank you for your service.
        Director Burns, the FBI Director just mentioned President
    Bush. I think you were our ambassador to Russia when he was
    President, is that right?
        Director Burns. Yes, sir.
        Senator Bennet. And you have one of the longest
    distinguished careers in American diplomacy and now you're in
    the middle of a negotiation in the Middle East that I think
    everybody up here hopes that you're going to be successful
    about.
        In that context, I want to ask you about the Supplemental
    bill that has the Ukraine funding in it. That's a bill that
    passed out of the Senate with 70 votes. We almost don't pass
    anything around here with 70 votes--a broad bipartisan
    recognition of the importance of that bill.
        I agree with your assessment and the Intelligence
    Community's assessment that Ukraine has the possibility to
    prevail in this conflict with Russia. Nobody two years ago
    would have believed that. But the way they fought, the way
    they've been able to be supported by our munitions and our
    intelligence, obviously has made a difference. But they have
    succeeded in ways nobody could have imagined. There are people
    here and there are people in the House that don't believe that.
    Their assessment is different than the Intelligence
    Community's, and their judgement is different and that's fine.
    We have different judgments.
        I would ask you, since you're here, a little bit about the
    negotiating posture that Ukraine, the West, NATO, wants to put
    ourselves in with Vladimir Putin. And considering that
    question, I wonder whether you could talk a little bit about
    whether or not our negotiating position, if you're somebody who
    believes in the end, that somehow Ukraine can't prevail--
    although I believe they can--and believes only that they can be
    in a position to negotiate an end to this, why it would be
    better for us to pass the Supplemental from that vantage point
    than to fail to pass the Supplemental?
        Director Burns. Thanks very much, Senator.
        I think today, first I'll start with Vladimir Putin and
    Russia. It's our assessment that Russia is not serious about
    negotiations today, in the sense that they may be interested in
    the theater of negotiations, but they're not really interested
    in negotiating in the sense of compromise right now, because as
    Director Haines said in her opening remarks, I think President
    Putin believes that time is on his side, that he can grind down
    the Ukrainians, and wear down the rest of us. So, if you look
    at the prospect of a more serious negotiation in the future,
    it's essential for Ukraine, first with our support, to disabuse
    the Russian leadership of that notion. In other words, to
    puncture his confidence that time is on his side, to
    demonstrate that for Russia also there are long-term
    consequences to this war. They've already suffered enormously
    in terms of their military: 315,000 plus dead and wounded, four
    times the casualties that the Soviet Union suffered in a decade
    of war in Afghanistan. The destruction of something on the
    order of two thirds of their pre-war tank inventory. And long-
    term economic consequences which is fast-making Russia the
    economic vassal of China. Not to mention a much stronger and
    bigger NATO that they have to face today.
        So, the challenge in 2024 is helping the Ukrainians not
    just to hold their own, but to continue to impose costs so that
    they'd be in a position of greater strength, greater leverage
    in a negotiation. And I think that would be my answer to that
    question. If you want to get to a serious negotiation, you have
    to help the Ukrainians demonstrate that Putin is wrong in his
    notion that time is on his side.
        Senator Bennet. That logic seems fairly compelling to me.
        Let me ask you another question, since you served
    Republican and Democratic Presidents over many decades. You
    hear people in this building say that the United States of
    America has to give up on our support for Ukraine in an actual
    conflict with Vladimir Putin, an actual conflict with Russia,
    because of the fear that we will not be able to afford some
    plausible, but nevertheless theoretical, conflict with China in
    the future.
        Do you believe the United States of America cannot handle
    our commitments with respect to Ukraine and NATO and be able to
    deter Beijing as well?
        Director Burns. No, I don't believe that. I think we're
    entirely capable. Senator Rubio said this earlier, I think the
    United States, while we may not have uncontested primacy in the
    world today, we still have a stronger hand to play than any of
    our adversaries or rivals. So, I believe we're entirely capable
    of continuing to support Ukraine in a conflict that has
    consequences well beyond Ukraine and European security. And I
    think sustaining that support for Ukraine not only doesn't come
    at the expense of deterring China, it actually helps to deter
    China, whether it's in Taiwan or the South China Sea or other
    places. It is our assessment that Xi Jinping was sobered by
    what happened, especially in the first year of the war. He
    didn't expect that Ukraine would resist with the courage and
    tenacity that the Ukrainians demonstrated. He didn't expect
    that the United States, whom he believes is a declining power,
    would step up in the way the President has led, with all of
    your support, to show solidarity with Ukraine as well. That's
    had an impact, I believe, far beyond Ukraine or European
    security, and that's really what's at stake today.
        Senator Bennet. And I would say we'd look back, Mr.
    Chairman, at that $60 billion and say that it was a bargain
    compared to what we would otherwise spend. Mr. Chairman, my
    colleagues, I think almost all of them went over a minute and a
    half. So let me just say in the last 15 seconds that I have,
    that our threat assessment----
        Chairman Warner. I think the record will stand corrected.
    You get a couple of seconds, but we've been holding here.
        Senator Bennet. Director Haines, I'll take it for the
    record but there is in the document, reference to the serious
    issues that we're confronting in space right now; and had I
    more time to ask you about that, we'd have a conversation.
        Chairman Warner. You'll get a chance in classified session.
    Senator Moran.
        Senator Moran. Chairman Warner, thank you.
        Director Burns, I was in Mexico about a year ago and met
    with President Lopez Obrador and my request, among others, was
    that he personally intervene with Chinese leadership and ask
    for the precursors to not be imported into Mexico, and thereby
    utilized, and ultimately end up as fentanyl in the United
    States. He committed to doing that. My understanding from his
    government, as well as public sources is that he did. And then
    there seemed to be some level of interest on the part of China
    in negotiating with us or having conversations with United
    States about that topic. I don't know that much has come from
    that, but you may tell me that I'm wrong.
        What explains the Chinese unwillingness to be more
    proactive in combating precursor chemicals coming to the U.S.?
    Do they have the capability? Are they intentionally inflicting
    harm on Americans and America? Is there some quid pro quo that
    they're looking for?
        Director Burns. I think, Senator, since the President met
    with President Xi in November in California, there have been
    some signs of greater Chinese seriousness about dealing with
    this problem, effectively enforcing their own law because
    that's all that we're asking. When I was in Beijing in late May
    of last year, I raised this issue very directly with my
    counterparts, as well. So, I think there are some signs that
    the Chinese are beginning to address the problem, not just of
    precursor chemicals, but also of pill pressing equipment.
    Certainly, they can do more, and I think that's why it's so
    important for all of us to continue to push as hard as we can,
    and to make clear, as you indicated earlier, that this is a
    problem not only for the United States but for Mexico and for
    others around the world.
        Senator Moran. So, what would be China's reluctance to
    actually crack down on those exports?
        Director Burns. I hope that what you're seeing now is a
    readiness to do more, I think, since November. But I think you
    know that's something that obviously from the President on
    down, we need to continue to reinforce as hard as we can,
    because they do bear some responsibility for what's happening
    in our own society.
        Senator Moran. General Kruse, how do you assess the current
    balance of military power in the Pacific today between the
    United States and China and others?
        General Kruse. I think I would describe the balance of
    power today as China is on a rise that it has been planning for
    multiple five-year periods, and it has executed that
    development, that training, that exercising in a way that has
    put them in a position that at some point in the not too
    distant future, in accordance with Xi's own goals, they will be
    a world-leading military power.
        The United States, though, is the world-leading military
    power today. And so, the imperative piece for us is to be on
    that same trajectory, to match them stride for stride and
    ensure we stay ahead of the growth that we see in China. There
    is no doubt of the growth that you see, and has been discussed
    today, in military power associated with China and their rise
    in all domains--cyber, space, as well as conventional.
        Senator Moran. Director Haines, has Iran sought to use our
    borders, our porous borders, to conduct terrorist activities in
    the United States?
        Director Haines. We have a very good example of Iran
    supporting, in effect, efforts to come across the border to go
    after a former ambassador from Saudi Arabia, for example. There
    was a case against Arbabsiar in that scenario. So, they have
    historically attempted this, but it's actually been very
    challenging for them and something that we consistently monitor
    on a regular basis. They prefer to go through--to the extent
    that they're able--criminal entities and other groups as a way
    of trying to achieve their goals.
        Senator Moran. Director Wray, there were reports of our
    military technologies being utilized in North Korean military
    equipment found in Ukraine, coming from Russia. How do we
    explain that?
        Director Wray. I'm definitely tracking similar incidents in
    terms of Iranian drones, for example, where U.S. technology has
    appeared as components. I think part of it has to do with dual-
    use technologies and companies here not being perhaps as
    vigilant as they need to be about the potential uses of their
    technologies.
        And so, we're trying to be very heavily engaged with the
    private sector to make sure that they're more thoughtful about
    who they're selling to and where their pieces and components
    may end up.
        Chairman Warner. Senator Casey.
        Senator Moran. Senator Warner, even though you gave Senator
    Bennet additional time, I'll not ask for any.
        Chairman Warner. You're a very generous Member.
        Senator Casey.
        Senator Casey. Mr. Chairman, thanks very much. I want to
    thank the panel for your testimony today and also for your
    public service.
        I'm going to follow up on the fentanyl, and I want to ask a
    related question about xylazine. And I know our colleagues have
    mentioned and asked questions about fentanyl.
        But I'll start with Director Wray, to direct your attention
    to this question about fentanyl. The threat assessment this
    year on page 36 says that, quote, China remains a primary
    source for illicit fentanyl precursor chemicals and pill press
    equipment, end quote. And then it goes on to talk about what
    the cartels do. It's noteworthy, I think, that the U.S.
    Sentencing Commission told us that in fiscal year 2022, 88
    percent of fentanyl trafficking offenders were U.S. citizens.
    88 percent. In fiscal year '21, 86 percent of fentanyl
    trafficking offenders were U.S. citizens.
        But we know how it gets here. We have a pretty good sense
    of how it gets here. We also know the Administration announced
    that it had made progress--they believe some progress--in
    reestablishing coordination with the Chinese government on
    countering fentanyl. I'm increasingly concerned, as well, about
    xylazine and other non-fentanyl synthetic opioids. Xylazine, as
    many people know, is a powerful veterinary sedative that is
    mixed with illicit fentanyl. And unfortunately, the City of
    Philadelphia has become almost ground zero for the
    proliferation of illicit xylazine. According to DEA, xylazine
    was detected in nearly half--half!--of all fentanyl related to
    overdoses in Philly.
        So, Director Wray, I wanted to ask you, is the Chinese
    government holding up its end of the bargain and cracking down
    on illicit fentanyl traffickers?
        Director Wray. Well, I would say the scale of the problem
    that we're continuing to see suggests to me that there's a
    whole lot of room for improvement from the Chinese government.
    Let me just put it that way.
        You mentioned xylazine. Certainly, xylazine is of concern
    to us. You're right that the Philadelphia area is a place where
    we're seeing a certain amount of that. We've got a lot of
    investigations in the Philadelphia and Newark areas. Of course,
    one of the problems with xylazine, as you I'm sure know, is
    it's not responsive to Narcan, so that just adds to the
    challenge. And certainly, xylazine has been found in drug
    combinations in, and I think, maybe 48 of the 50 states or
    something. And it's, you know, very easy to buy, unfortunately,
    online from China-based suppliers. So, I think that just adds
    to the problem. We are, in addition to our investigative work,
    trying to engage in your area and nearby areas with hospitals
    and state diversion groups and things like that to try to raise
    awareness about it. But xylazine is not a controlled substance
    currently under the U.S. Controlled Substances Act, so that's
    just an additional kind of aggravating circumstance.
        Senator Casey. And also, a related question. To what extent
    is regulation by China of xylazine and other non-fentanyl
    synthetic opioids part of U.S. law enforcement's discussions
    with their Chinese counterparts?
        Director Wray. Certainly, trying to work with the Chinese
    on their controlled substances listings is a key part of it.
    Now, part of the problem with precursors, of course, is that
    there's an almost infinite number of variations that people can
    come up with. So, even when they schedule things, you see new
    ones crop up in their stead.
        And so, I think that just adds to the challenge. You know,
    you asked how serious are they. I would just point to the sheer
    volume that we're contending with, and I think that tells you
    all you need to know about how serious the Chinese are so far,
    so far, in helping us address the problem.
        Senator Casey. And Director Haines, I want to ask you about
    Iranian evasion of sanctions. We know that since the imposition
    of increased sanctions against Iranian oil in 2018 and '19,
    Iran has been increasingly successful in finding ways to evade
    sanctions, and its oil revenues are increasingly rising. I know
    the Administration is focused on blocking Iran's oil exports.
        How is the Intelligence Community supporting the
    Administration's efforts to impose further costs on Iran,
    including by focusing on identifying and sanctioning so-called
    ghost-fleet vessels carrying Iranian oil and Chinese refineries
    purchasing Iranian oil?
        Director Haines. Thank you, Senator. We're very involved is
    the short answer. But the longer answer--And we actually do
    periodic reports to Congress that tell you about some of the
    work that we do in this area, where we're identifying where we
    see sanctions evasion, where we see opportunities for
    essentially additional targets for sanctions that might be
    acted on, things that are sort of third parties or others who
    are involved in these transactions so that the Treasury
    Department and others can, in fact, go after them in that
    respect. And it's a constant and critical issue.
        Senator Casey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Chairman Warner. Thank you. Senator Lankford?
        Senator Lankford. Thank you. Thanks to all of you. The team
    that you work around, please pass on our thanks and our
    gratitude to them. They work very hard. Most folks will never
    know who they are and not get a chance to be able to say thank
    you so please pass it on as well.
        I do want to continue some of the conversation about the
    border, because while we're dealing with worldwide threats,
    we're seeing the worldwide threats coming towards us and some
    obvious vulnerabilities in this.
        As has been mentioned, we've talked about in the past--
    well, in this fiscal year--58 people on the terror watchlist
    that have been identified and picked up. There's also a
    category called special interest aliens. Director Wray, I know
    you're familiar with that as well. The special interest aliens,
    many people may not know this definition. I'm just going to
    read it of what this designation is. It says: A special
    interest alien is a non-US person who, based on analysis of
    travel patterns, potentially poses a national security risk to
    the United States or its interests. Often such individuals or
    groups are employing travel patterns known or evaluated
    possibly to have a nexus to terrorism.
        Do we have a listing of how many people have crossed our
    southern border that we have identified in this fiscal year
    that are special interest aliens?
        Director Wray, do you know that number?
        Director Wray. I don't know the number, but we could follow
    up with you to see if that's something we could provide.
        Senator Lankford. It has been one of our challenges to try
    to identify that, while on the terror watchlist we can get that
    number and know that it's 58 exactly. When we ask the issue of
    special interest aliens, we're told often that is law
    enforcement sensitive. We know the number is in the thousands
    but have not been able to get a specific number nor a specific
    tracking on that. So, that'd be helpful to be able to know,
    because the next question is the obvious one. If those
    individuals that are coming in--and I'm just going to give you
    a number if it's in the thousands--is FBI contacted when these
    individuals that are coming across our border? Released into
    the country? Because the vast majority of the SIAs, we don't
    have criminal background information on them. We have a theory.
    So, they're released into the country currently.
        Is the FBI kept in contact, from DHS and others, who those
    individuals are? Or what kind of tracking and monitoring is on
    those individuals?
        Director Wray. I know that we work closely with DHS,
    especially CBP, on the issue of special interest aliens,
    including a whole lot of work on the other side of the border
    to try to prevent them from coming in in the first place. And I
    know there are instances where we're contacted, but I'm not
    sure that as I sit here right now, I can tell you that we're
    contacted in every instance.
        Senator Lankford. Ok, that's helpful.
        Mr. Holmgren, you haven't gotten a lot of questions today,
    and we need to give you some attention here.
        Obviously, the State Department is very engaged in this in
    trying to be able to figure out for the intelligence side, on
    the information sharing. Those individuals that are crossing
    the border right now from many of those countries, we don't
    have any criminal information on these individuals. Do you know
    just off hand how many countries that are coming into the
    United States, when they're crossing our southern border, we
    have criminal background information? Let me give you for
    instance Venezuela. We were talking about Venezuelan gangs
    earlier and those individuals that are crossing into the
    country, many of them being paroled into the country. Is
    Venezuela freely sharing their criminal records with us? Do we
    know if these individuals have a criminal record?
        Mr. Holmgren. Thank you, Senator.
        I don't know exactly if Venezuela is sharing specific
    information with us. What I can say, though, about Venezuela,
    obviously, is that we've seen over seven million Venezuelans
    emigrate from the country since 2017, a significant portion of
    whom obviously have emigrated to the United States illegally.
    But when we do get relevant information from our counterparts
    at DHS and FBI, our analysts use that to help inform their
    judgment.
        Senator Lankford. One of the challenges that we have as
    well for individuals, for instance--currently Nicaragua is not
    taking people back on that. And we are all dependent on State
    Department to impose some sort of consequences on Nicaragua to
    say you're a recalcitrant country. You're not taking people
    back on that.
        Do you happen to know any of the conversation right now
    between Nicaragua and the United States on trying to deal with
    recalcitrance? Because we do have a tracking of some that have
    criminal records that are coming towards us and consider that a
    threat.
        Mr. Holmgren. Senator, I don't have specifics on the
    details of engagement with Nicaragua. Happy to follow up with
    you offline.
        Senator Lankford. That'd be great. Thank you very much for
    that.
        Director Wray, let me come back to you and talk a little
    bit about CFATS. This is an acronym most people don't know: the
    Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards. We've had that
    since 2007. It expired in July of last year and has not been
    reauthorized yet. One of the aspects of that is for a chemical
    facility, refinery, whatever it may be, they have the ability
    to be able to check against the terror watchlist using this
    authority on that. With its expiration, there's about 9,000
    people a month that used to be checked on that, just in the
    hiring and the process of all over the country. We have about
    63,000 people we're estimating that have not been checked.
        My question for you is, do we have any idea how many people
    show up as a hit on the terror watchlist from the hiring in the
    past? That when we do that check on it, which now is not
    occurring because we've not reauthorized this, how many folks
    do ping on that terror watchlist?
        Director Wray. I'm not sure I can give you a number sitting
    here right now. But I will tell you, I share your concern about
    the lapse in the authorities. And one of the challenges of this
    particular space is, of course it doesn't take many for it to
    be a real problem. And we rely on that authority--or we
    historically have--to protect.
        Senator Lankford. Could you say that number is not zero as
    far as how many people have pinged on the terror watchlist when
    that has been run in the past?
        Director Wray. Correct.
        Senator Lankford. Thank you.
        Chairman Warner. I think you've given a number of the
    witnesses homework assignments there.
        Senator Gillibrand?
        Senator Gillibrand. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        In New York's Capital Region, the Albany Nanotech Complex
    is set to house some of our Nation's most advanced electronics
    research, development, and manufacturing in particular fields
    like wafer processing, manufacturing, and lithography tools.
        Today's annual threat assessment points out that China
    currently lags behind the U.S. in developing the most advanced
    chips, giving them cause to steal our technology, which we've
    seen them do over and over. I included legislation in last
    year's NDAA requiring DOD to establish a pilot program to
    enable collaboration between the NSA's Cybersecurity
    Collaboration Center and the U.S. semiconductor manufacturers
    to improve the cybersecurity and semiconductor design and
    manufacturing process.
        General Haugh, how is the NSA working with the FBI to
    create safeguards against espionage and cyber attacks at
    leading public research facilities and at semiconductor
    manufacturers?
        General Haugh. Senator, thank you for the question. In
    terms of how we think about the China cyber threat, it is clear
    that they are going to be relentless to intend to steal
    intellectual property. And so, from our perspective, part of
    what NSA is really focused on doing is illuminating that
    threat. So, we have done a series of unclassified advisories
    with a number of partners, elements across U.S. government, six
    other nations, multiple companies, to illuminate that threat in
    a way that allows us to get now unity of action against that
    threat. Unclassified reports to allow increased unity of
    action.
        So, from the FBI's perspective, they're a teammate in
    everything that we do that talks about the cyber threat within
    the United States. And from a specific look at semiconductors,
    critical technology that clearly China wants to catch up on,
    and from our perspective an area that we will continue to
    identify those threats and communicate those both through the
    FBI and then through unclassified advisories wherever we can.
        Senator Gillibrand. Director Wray.
        Director Wray. I would just agree with everything General
    Haugh just said. I would just add to that. We have set up
    counterintelligence task forces in all 56 Field Offices,
    including in the Albany area. NSA is a key participant with us
    in our national effort in that regard. And in addition to the
    unclassified information that can be shared through the good
    work that we do together, one of the advantages to the FBI
    engaging with private companies is because we get information
    from so many different sources. There are times when we can
    share information with a private sector entity in a way that
    helps protect NSA's sources and methods, just because it
    doesn't clearly get identified as this is something NSA told
    us.
        Senator Gillibrand. Research from the Center for Countering
    Digital Hate found that the leading AI image-generators create
    election disinformation in 41 percent of cases in which they
    are prompted, including images that could support false claims
    about candidates or election fraud, in spite of controls we've
    been told have been put in place.
        This is for the entire panel. Have any of you seen foreign
    adversaries with intent to use generative AI--either images,
    videos, audio--to deceive American voters? What are we relying
    on to advise the public when this inauthentic content appears?
        Director Wray, you can start.
        Director Wray. I want to think about what I can say here.
    Certainly, AI is something that all of our most significant
    adversaries are taking a hard look at to enhance their efforts.
    We have seen AI used in a variety of settings. Whether it's
    been used specifically to target voters, I'm not sure that I
    could say that. But we are actively concerned about that as the
    latest wrinkle in a longstanding effort to engage in
    information warfare.
        Senator Gillibrand. Director Burns.
        Director Burns. Another example is we've seen evidence that
    al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula has used AI to generate
    videos aimed at inspiring lone-wolf attacks as a result to the
    Gaza conflict as well.
        Senator Gillibrand. Director Haines.
        Director Haines. I think another example is Russia
    deploying AI tools in the context of their influence efforts in
    Ukraine. And there we've seen, for example--I think it was in
    March 2022 there was a deepfake of the Ukrainian President
    Zelensky asking Ukrainians to lay down their arms and
    ultimately had to be actually countered by President Zelensky
    in order to address it.
        Senator Gillibrand. Did we give them the information or
    capability to do that quickly?
        Director Haines. The Ukrainians? Yes, we worked with them
    on that.
        Senator Gillibrand. General Haugh.
        General Haugh. So, in terms of how we're thinking about AI
    security, NSA established an AI Security Center. Part of that
    is to be able to generate and communicate to anyone that is
    building a model in the United States. From an AI perspective,
    what are those threats and what are the security mechanisms to
    avoid misuse of those models? We're also using the AI Security
    Center for how we apply all of the ethical and safety standards
    of how the department will leverage AI. But really, the last
    component would be how do we communicate to those companies the
    threats that they will have of their technology and how it will
    be employed?
        Senator Gillibrand. Go ahead.
        Mr. Holmgren. Sure, Senator. Quickly, you're right to raise
    this as a threat and I think our view of it is that tools like
    generative AI will essentially lower the barrier for actors,
    state and non-state, with fewer resources to engage in
    potential election interference.
        Senator Gillibrand. And General Kruse.
        General Kruse. From a DIA perspective, I don't think I
    would add anything to what has been covered here, other than
    the counterintelligence portion of that, that has a touch point
    across everything that's already been mentioned.
        Chairman Warner. I would add, ladies and gentlemen, that at
    the Munich Security Conference, something I participated in,
    there were 20 tech companies that came together, most of the
    social media companies, on a voluntary basis to indicate both
    watermarking and willingness to take down AI-generated video
    and voice that were affecting elections, but it was voluntary,
    and the proof will be in the pudding.
        Senator Gillibrand. And just for the record, no one said
    they have a plan to tell the American people or to advise the
    American people.
        Chairman Warner. This Committee will be having public
    hearings on this subject very shortly that Senator Rubio and I
    have agreed upon.
        Senator Rounds.
        Senator Rounds. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of all,
    thank you to all of you for your service and to your teams as
    well.
        Director Wray, with regard to the PRC and some recent
    public reports of significant agricultural land purchases. If
    these land purchases are accurate, they may very well pose a
    threat to not only some military installations, but most
    certainly involved in food production that takes away from our
    ability to produce for our own country, as well. But just
    curious about whether or not you are aware could confirm land
    purchases by Chinese nationalists within the United States? And
    are you following them at this time?
        Director Wray. So, this is an issue that we're focused on a
    lot lately. I think what I would say is we're investigating a
    number of instances proactively, where we're seeing either
    commercial real estate or land being purchased by those with
    ties to the PRC near critical infrastructure. And I want to be
    clear, of course, foreign purchase of land including Chinese
    purchase of land is not itself inherently illegal. But the
    problem is the risk, and as has been discussed much here
    already in a different context, the hold that the Chinese
    government and the CCP have over its businesses in particular.
    And so, we're particularly concerned about situations where a
    purchase of land near a military installation, critical
    infrastructure, or something like that could be leveraged to
    enable anything from espionage, data collection, or worse.
        Senator Rounds. Do you know if the tools that we have in
    place today are strong enough or capable of stopping these
    purchases from moving forward?
        Director Wray. Certainly, a lot of types of transactions go
    through the CFIUS process, but I'm not clear on whether or not
    that fully extends to all the kind of land purchase situations
    that we're concerned about. We are working through the CFIUS
    process when that applies. We're working with the USDA to try
    to work towards maybe some kind of mandatory reporting regime
    that might apply. So, I think there is room for plugging gaps
    that may exist.
        Senator Rounds. Thank you.
        I'd like to also ask, with regard to AI in particular.
    Look, the bottom line is, is it's not going away. It's
    something that we're going to have to deal with right now. It
    appears as though we lead the world in regard to AI
    capabilities. But most certainly, our near-peer adversaries
    recognize that and they're going to do whatever they can as a
    shortcut to our capabilities--air, land, sea, space, and
    cyberspace.
        With regard to the advances with AI right now, I'm
    concerned as much about China and Russia and their capability
    to use AI to develop weapons systems that we have never really
    thought about as being in the forefront of a major and direct
    threat to the United States. And I'm going to talk about
    biologics, in particular. We know that China and Russia have
    significant capabilities with regard to AI, and that using AI
    you can make rapid advances, as you've noted on pages 30
    through 33 in your report, that with AI you can very rapidly
    develop your biologics. I'm concerned about the fact that it
    may very well be used as a weapon system.
        I'm not sure who to direct this to, but I'll start with
    Director Wray, and if you'd like to pass this on, that's fine.
    But it seems to me that this is an area that if we're not ahead
    in time to be able to identify and stop them, that this is
    probably as much of a threat to the United States as any other
    that we've got today.
        Director Wray. Well, I'll start, and others may want to
    chime in more from a military perspective. What I would say is
    that from an FBI perspective, one of our priorities is
    protecting American AI innovation from theft, especially from
    the Chinese. America leads the world in AI innovation and AI is
    often--to Senator Gillibrand's question, for example, about
    detecting deepfakes--one of the best weapons against AI is
    better AI. And so, we need to protect that innovation. And
    we're keenly concerned that the Chinese, which have, as I've
    testified repeatedly, a bigger hacking program than every other
    major nation combined--if they steal our AI to power it, it
    makes words like ``force multiplier'' sound like an
    understatement.
        Senator Rounds. And may I just, in one last thought, just
    on page 32 of your report, you make it clear that Russia,
    China, Iran, and North Korea probably maintain the capability
    to produce and use pathogens and toxins. And China and Russia
    have proven adept at manipulating the information space to
    reduce trust and confidence in countermeasures and U.S.
    biotechnology and research.
        Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Chairman Warner. Senator Ossoff.
        Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to our
    panel.
        Director Wray, I believe you noted this earlier, but do you
    share my view that the threat of terrorism associated with
    unlawful entry through the southern border poses a serious
    threat to U.S. national security?
        Director Wray. Yes. I've testified repeatedly that we are
    concerned about the terrorism implications from potential
    targeting of vulnerabilities at the border.
        Senator Ossoff. How would you assess the present level of
    threat and risk of a terrorist attack in the United States
    compared to past periods during your tenure?
        Director Wray. Well, even before October 7th, I would have
    told this Committee that we were at a heightened threat level
    from a terrorism perspective, in the sense that it's the first
    time I've seen in a long, long time the threats from homegrown
    violent extremists, that is jihadist inspired extremists,
    domestic violent extremists, foreign terrorist organizations,
    and state sponsored terrorist organizations, all being elevated
    at one time. Since October 7th, though, that threat has gone to
    a whole other level. And so, this is a time, I think, for much
    greater vigilance than has maybe been called upon of us before
    October 7th.
        Senator Ossoff. Is the FBI postured to understand the
    extent of the terrorist threat associated with the southern
    border? We've been briefed on some specific threats. Do you
    feel that you know enough to assure us that the FBI is as well
    across it as you can be, or do you need more resources, or do
    you feel you're flying blind and not able to define the
    potential scope and extent of the threat?
        Director Wray. I think we are working very hard with our
    partners, but there's no question that we need more resources
    to combat the threat. I'll just give a concrete example.
    Through working with DHS, they collect DNA samples, and we
    provide kits to DHS to collect DNA samples from the people
    coming across the border, that then get sent to the FBI lab.
    That's part of why we asked for a significant enhancement
    because of the sheer increase in people coming across means a
    sheer increase in the number of samples that need to be
    collected. That's what helps us identify those people if
    they're then committing crimes somewhere in the United States.
    Or as happens all too often, unfortunately, they go back across
    the border and tried to illegally reenter again. So, we need to
    be able to process those samples quickly. There's a backlog. We
    asked in the '24 budget for enhancement. Not only did we not
    get an enhancement, there was a 10 percent cut to the Terrorist
    Screening Center. So, whatever happened in '24 happened in '24,
    but I would urge Congress, as we look at fiscal year '25, that
    we can't double down on those cuts if we're going to be serious
    about protecting the border.
        Senator Ossoff. Well, speaking of Congress, I think it's
    worth noting that a serious, tough bipartisan border security
    measure was put forward in the Congress. In fact, coauthored by
    a conservative Republican Member of this Committee, which would
    have surged enforcement resources to the border; which would
    have provided substantial resources to fight cartels, and to
    crack down on fentanyl trafficking; which would have tightened
    asylum standards and expedited adjudication and therefore
    removal timelines for those who were trying to enter the
    country without a valid reason to. The former President put out
    the word that he wanted the bill stopped for political reasons
    and the bill was stopped. In fact, not only was the bill
    stopped in the Senate, it was denied even a debate on the
    Senate floor. And this speaks to the corrosive impact of
    extreme partisanship and polarization in this country on our
    national security.
        So, I'd like to ask you, Director Haines, how do our
    adversaries view the impact of political extremism and
    polarization and partisanship on America's strength and
    stability? We're talking about worldwide threats. Those threats
    can exploit our own frailties here at home.
        Director Haines. I think the best way I can answer that
    question is to point to the fact that we've seen that both
    Russia and China, for example, have taken the opportunity to
    highlight where there's political dysfunction or other issues
    that they see in the context of our governance and use it as
    part of their information operations globally. And both to
    highlight, for example to their own populations, that democracy
    is quite challenging and would you really want this at home
    kind of thing. And also, to demonstrate to our allies and
    partners that maybe we can't be relied on as effectively.
        Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Director Haines. Thank you all
    for your testimony.
        Chairman Warner. Senator Kelly.
        Senator Kelly. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you,
    everyone, for being here today. I've been sitting here since
    2:30. There's often maybe an advantage for going last in one of
    these hearings.
        I was going to say it was the elephant in the room until my
    colleague from Georgia brought it up. But as I've sat here,
    I've heard most Members of this Committee ask something about
    the southern border--not everybody but the majority. I've spent
    a lot of time on the border, perhaps more time than maybe
    anybody on this Committee, maybe with the exception of Senator
    Cornyn, who I've traveled to the border with. And I strongly
    agree with what most of my Democrat and Republican colleagues
    have said about the problems and the challenges. Fentanyl
    coming north, precursors often from China heading south,
    violent extremist organizations, Chinese migrants who might be
    in Maine selling rather strong marijuana, ISIS, Iran proxies,
    problems in Mexico. Over and over again, they've pointed out
    all these problems. And I've worked on this issue, providing
    more pay for Border Patrol, closing gaps in border wall along
    the southern border, where they make sense, and they certainly
    do in a lot of places. More money for NGOs to help Border
    Patrol.
        Director Wray pointed out, talking about how we need more
    resources to combat the threat, and it helps when DHS gets
    those resources. And we had the opportunity to do something
    about it. We really did. More money for technology, including
    fentanyl detection, more Border Patrol agents, more asylum
    officers, more authorities to rapidly expel individuals, a
    change in the credible fear standard, more money for detention
    facilities, more visas to reunite families. And this
    legislation was endorsed by the Border Patrol Union. And it had
    strong bipartisan support--until it didn't. And my colleague
    from Georgia points out why it didn't.
        Director Wray, is it in your assessment that more resources
    and stronger policy that could help your partners, not
    necessarily the FBI, but DHS. Is that your assessment, that
    that would help deal with all these things that were mentioned
    in this Committee hearing today?
        Director Wray. Well, I'll leave it to others to speak to
    policies. But certainly, in terms of resources, not just for
    DHS but for the FBI, we need more resources to deal with all
    the threats that emanate from the border that we're responsible
    for.
        Senator Kelly. Director Haines.
        Director Haines. I don't have anything to add to that.
        Senator Kelly. Director Burns.
        Director Burns. Nope, I don't have anything to add. I
    agree.
        Senator Kelly. All right. Well, I'm going to yield back the
    remainder of my time, because I think it's the failure of that
    legislation, that alone presents a national security threat to
    this country, in my view.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Chairman Warner. Well, thank you. Let me thank my Members.
    And let me also just say for a moment we have strong views on
    this Committee. But one of the things I think that we have
    always taken some pride in is that we can disagree without
    questioning each other's patriotism, without questioning each
    other's motives, and I hope that tenor will be maintained.
        Members on this side feel very strongly, I felt very
    strongly on the border bill. Members on the other side raised
    legitimate questions about the border, as well. I do hope,
    particularly as we deal with our intelligence professionals,
    the one thing we've tried to have this Committee always do, and
    frankly I learned from people like Richard Burr and Dianne
    Feinstein and Saxby Chambliss, is that that disagreement, at
    least in terms of the Intelligence Committee, should not go in
    terms of ad hominem attacks. I don't think I heard that. I
    heard huge policy differences. We ought to have those. But the
    one thing I hope and pray is that we maintain these notions.
    Because the intelligence professionals, who never get the
    recognition they need, look to this Committee to be I hope an
    island of sanity in an otherwise sometimes challenging
    political environment.
        That doesn't take away anybody's views; it doesn't take
    away anybody's right to have those views. But I have enormous
    respect for every Member of this Committee regardless of which
    side of the aisle they sit on. And we're going to go at it time
    and again, but I hope we owe our intelligence professionals
    that kind of notion, that just because we're on different
    political sides of the aisle, that neither political party has
    a monopoly on truth or patriotism. And we can have differences
    of opinion without questioning each other's truth or
    patriotism. And with that----
        Senator Risch. Mr. Chairman, I'd like to reclaim my time,
    please.
        Well, Mr. Chairman, first of all, I can't let this go, the
    last two speakers on the Democratic side, without responding.
    Look, I've been on this Committee for 15 years, and we do a
    really good job until politics do creep in. And that's what's
    happened here this afternoon with the last two speakers.
        These are the facts. The last President of the United
    States closed the border. He closed the border down to almost
    zero crossings by the time he left office. He did it even
    though he was sued over and over and over again by people from
    the other side of the aisle. But he shut it down and he shut it
    down under the law that's in effect today.
        Congress has done its job. It passed a law saying you
    cannot enter the United States without authorization. That's
    the law today. When the current President came in, we all know
    he took the policies of the former President, tore them up, and
    rescinded them, and now we have what we have.
        As far as the bill that's concerned, everybody's talking
    about the former President making phone calls. He never called
    me. But I can tell you this. I will not vote for any bill that
    allows any illegals to cross into this country. And everybody
    here knows that bill would have allowed 5,000 a day to come
    into this country. That's not for me. And I don't care if the
    President calls me or doesn't call me. My red line is not one.
        What we need to do is enforce the laws that we have. You
    want to talk about the front door and how we let them in the
    front door? I'm all in. But the back door has got to get
    closed.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Chairman Warner. And I would simply add that the former
    President and a number of my Republican colleagues had
    repeatedly said: to make the kind of changes you need
    permanently on the border, you need legislation. And that is an
    ongoing debate. It's a debate that we'll have here and
    elsewhere. And what we need, and the most important last
    comment I'll make because we will be breaking and going into
    closed Senate, is we need an Intelligence Community that's
    going to never be afraid to tell truth to power. And truth to
    power sometimes means telling us on both sides of the aisle
    what we don't necessarily want to hear.
        I think you, the witnesses, and frankly the men and women,
    literally thousands of them, who you represent, do that on a
    regular basis. And at the end of the day, while we may hassle
    and haggle over some of these policy things, the most important
    thing you've got to do is keep speaking that truth to power,
    even when we don't want to hear.
        We are adjourned until we move into the classified setting.
    (Whereupon at 4:52 p.m. the hearing was recessed, subject to
    the call of the Chairman.)

    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                                   [all]