[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 215 (Friday, December 18, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7701-S7702]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             Cyber Security

  Mr. President, in the last few days we have learned that the United 
States was subject to one of the most brazen cyber hacks in history. 
Based on press reports alone, the hackers appear to have breached the 
Department of State, the Department of Commerce, the Department of 
Energy, the Department of the Treasury, the National Nuclear Security 
Agency, and the Department of Homeland Security--including the agency 
responsible for our cyber security.
  On top of that, the hackers also managed to breach major American 
companies like Microsoft and compromised several State governments and 
other foreign governments all at the same time in this process.
  While we are learning more about these breaches, the level of 
resources and sophistication bears all the hallmarks of Russia. Reports 
suggest that the hackers have been in the system since the spring and 
perhaps much longer. According to public reports, they may still be in 
our system tonight.

[[Page S7702]]

  We have heard literally not a word from the White House about this, 
not a single word from the President about this. I suppose this should 
come as no surprise. After all, this is the same President who, to this 
day, refuses to acknowledge that the Russians interfered in our 2016 
election even though our intelligence agencies unanimously agree that 
Russia meddled.
  This is the same President who went to Helsinki and, on foreign soil, 
sided with Russian President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer, over 
the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, and all of our other intelligence 
organizations.
  The same President who spends the lion's share of almost every day 
criticizing everyone from the National Football League to Greta 
Thunberg, who is 17 years old, to the Secretary of State in Georgia for 
upholding the rule of law can't bring himself to utter one word of 
criticism for Vladimir Putin--the same President who, instead of 
challenging Putin, proposed creating a joint cyber unit between the 
United States and Russia. That would be like asking a burglar to design 
the locks on the front door of your house.
  The Trump administration is not known for its consistency, but here 
is the one place they have been resolute and consistently weak, 
coddling dictators and abandoning our democratic allies.
  As a member of the Intelligence Committee, I can't say for sure today 
whether this weakness emboldened or enabled our adversaries. We are 
going to have to study the facts. But the administration's abject 
fecklessness certainly hasn't helped.
  To understand how weak the Trump administration has left us, it is 
important to appreciate the wreckage of their total war on the Federal 
Government. They came into office with a promise to dismantle ``the 
administrative state,'' but what they ended up doing was dismantling 
our national defenses.
  Over the past 4 years, the administration drove thousands of 
qualified public servants to the exit, including cyber security experts 
in agency after agency critical to our national security.
  Back in March, I asked the Department of Homeland Security to detail 
its plans to shore up our cyber security. They responded by telling me 
that they still had hundreds of vacancies for cyber security.
  President Trump eliminated the top coordinator for cyber security at 
the National Security Council. There is no one, therefore, coordinating 
our cyber defenses across the Federal Government or engaging the 
private sector to make sure we are working together to shore up those 
vulnerabilities.
  If you put it all together, we have been left with a gutted 
bureaucracy without the necessary leadership to respond to cyber 
threats and espionage in a coherent way. And a few weeks ago, the 
President fired Chris Krebs, just to make matters worse, our top 
Department of Homeland Security official for domestic cyber security--
the very person who would be leading our response to the hacks right 
now.
  But he is gone. He is gone not because he did a bad job but because 
he refused to repeat the President's baseless claims about fraud in the 
election, claims the President is still making as we meet here tonight 
more than 6 weeks after the election and 4 days after the electoral 
college confirmed Joe Biden's election.
  In the last few days alone, the President has tweeted at least 25 
times about fraud in the 2020 election, something he has completely 
invented in his mind, but he hasn't said one word about the most far-
reaching breach of cyber security in our history by a foreign 
adversary.
  As we meet here again tonight in the land of flickering lights, 
uncertain whether we will pass a budget to keep the lights on in our 
exercise of self-government for the weekend, all across the globe there 
are public servants, the men and women of our intelligence services, 
who are working to repair the damage that has been done and to keep us 
safe. They deserve and the American people deserve a President who 
makes clear that we won't tolerate intrusions like this, a President 
who rallies our allies to our common cause.
  If we have learned anything this year, it is that our government has 
proven itself woefully unprepared to deal with emerging threats, not 
only a cyber attack but also a global pandemic. This year has also 
taught us that the cost of ignoring these threats is much, much greater 
than the cost of addressing them head-on.
  But to do that we need a President who doesn't bury his head in the 
sand or his face in Twitter, a democracy that can think beyond the next 
commercial break on cable news, that can put aside festering 
partisanship and forge an enduring national security policy for the 
21st century.
  And Russia is not our only concern. I can assure you that China is 
not chasing the latest controversy on Twitter or cable news. They are 
building roads and bridges and airports across the globe. They are 
laying fiber-optic cables beneath the ocean. They are competing with us 
in space. They are forging new alliances and pioneering new 
technologies every month. They are making considered choices to shape 
the 21st century while we are struggling here to keep the lights on.
  This lack of concern from the White House about this breach is a dark 
moment, but soon we will have the chance to take another approach. I 
hope everyone in this Chamber will seize the opportunity to work with 
one another to secure the promise of our great country for the next 
generation and America's role in the world.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kansas.

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