LIVE: US House Committee on Intelligence Hearing on US Security | Rick Crawford | Trent | Elise

[00:00:00]think I'm better at pronunciation than some others on that issue. I wanted to ask you because I come from New York as you know and after having the worst terrorist attack in our nation's history. We're talking about 9/11. Uh you know, how could we be where we are 25 years ago? Uh I have friends I don't think I know anyone that didn't have friends who died on 911 uh in the towers. Uh a childhood friend died uh in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. I mean, these are these are really this these this hits home to so many. uh in New York in 2019, they passed a law that prohibited uh interaction and and use of uh for example DMV records, Department of Motor Vehicle records when there was a stop by local police. Uh and this meant if somebody was, you know, a wouldbe terrorist in our in our state coming across the border, there was no way to check or or to confer with federal and state agencies. Um, how would you rate that uh type of, you know, the so-called green light law? How would you rate that as as part of uh the problem that we have in and after the 911 commission famously said we need our federal agencies to work together. You're talking about synchronization and now here we are telling us them they can't work together. Kathy Hokll also just came out with an order our governor saying that we can't have uh our fed our local agencies working with ICE to determine if they're dangerous illegal immigrants in our communities. Uh they're prohibiting them from using the 287G program. These are all things that are tools for our police to keep our communities safe, the primary role of our government. Could you address those issues because I think they're really important to a state like New York, still the fourth largest state with a northern border which I and Representative Stefonic represent. Uh, Congresswoman, thank you for the question. I'm not exceedingly well-versed on on all of the uh developments here, but I can tell you NYPD is almost an intelligence service in and of itself and uh and have some of the best uh women and men in in service. So, I I I when I look back to 911, basically it was NYPD, LAPD, and everyone else.

[00:02:10]and it's not taking away from the everyone else because everyone else matters. Um, but all things said and done, yes, we need to do more to be able to get information into the hands of the the the frontline officers who can stop something before it becomes an issue.

[00:02:26]>> This is really just a common sense issue. I mean, the 9/11 commission said, "We need to work together." That's why we had lapses. That's why we something like this occurred. And now we have the situation where we can't even have our local police and our county police working with our federal agencies that are providing us with the data and a lot of the intelligence that may be from this committee. That's what worries me is that the intelligence sharing, the ability to know what's happening and the the really this cutting off the data.

[00:02:52]And I think this is an open door for countries and and adversaries and enemies like China, Russia to come in and actually take advantage of us. And I would just add not to sort of move to another top but but at the end of the day our fusion centers and some of the capabilities that we have they they need to do exponentially more in the cyber environment as well which is where I spend most of my time focused these days cuz cuz you're right I I mean at the end of the day I'm not even sure it's about collecting. It's all about the connecting and being able to to see the rich picture in terms of what that threat environment is about. I think we have a lot of collection.

[00:03:31]>> Thank you. I appreciate it. Just one last for General McN McMaster. Uh great book by the way. Uh you you have a concept in your book called Strategic Narcissism and I just wondered if you could maybe comment on that in the intelligence realm of how we could should approach I only have a couple seconds left. Approach our our foreign policy uh from that perspective using intelligence and and and being more strategic as opposed to more political.

[00:03:55]>> Thank you so much. I I think what's most important is to recognize that uh that our adversaries, enemies, rivals, they have aspirations that are that go far beyond anything that's in reaction to us. Often times we we we kind of get at each other uh because we we tend to see our engagement, our intervention or disengagement as being decisive toward achieving a favorable outcome. And so I think what's really important is to pay particular attention to the emotions, the ideology and the aspirations that drive and constrain our adversaries. For example, in this case, the theocratic uh you know military dictatorship in in in Iran uh or uh you know the the Chinese Communist Party with Xinping on it or or or Putinist Russia. we tend to think that well we maybe we you know that that we that we caused this problem you know with like the Putin's argument about the enlargement of of NATO no actually Putin has these aspirations to reestablish the Russian empire for example so I think it's important to have this term strategic empathy to pay particular attention to what drives and constrains the other rivals adversaries and and and enemies >> thank you appreciate it >> thank you gentleman yields Mr. Christian Morphy >> thank you Mr. chair and thank you to our witnesses for coming in. Really appreciate your testimony. Dr. Buchanan, you noted that you were the first ever White House special adviser for artificial intelligence, right?

[00:05:17]You have to answer.

[00:05:18]>> Yes, I was.

[00:05:20]>> So, let's starting out easy here. Okay, let's talk about deep fakes. Anyone can make convincing AI generated images, audio, and videos nowadays. I was actually able to make a few images of us just by plugging in pictures that are available online and within seconds I had a picture of us playing basketball.

[00:05:42]Dr. Buchanan, now just to be clear, you and I have never played pickup basketball. Right.

[00:05:48]>> No, we've not.

[00:05:49]>> Okay. AI can also make audio recordings.

[00:05:53]um like when someone pretended to be Secretary of State Rubio using an AI generated voice to contact several officials and videos like when a deep fake of Ukrainian President Zalinski um being used to try to convince Ukrainian soldiers to surrender. And this year, according to President Trump himself, he was even fooled by a viral AI generated video of Iran striking the USS Abraham Lincoln. He even called one of his generals to say it quote looks like it's burning down. M Dr. Buchanan, as you note in your testimony, the 9/11 commission concluded that the attacks revealed a failure of imagination.

[00:06:37]with such convincing deep fakes as the ones showing me and you playing basketball, which is kind of rather odd.

[00:06:45]We need to have an even larger imagination about how deep fakes are going to be used to confuse and mislead people going forward. Would you agree with that?

[00:06:53]>> I would. Yes.

[00:06:55]>> Let me turn to a a slightly different topic. General McMaster, one of the key recommendations from the 911 commission report was that we needed to improve in intelligence sharing between federal, state, and local authorities. Uh, isn't that right?

[00:07:10]>> Yes, Congressman.

[00:07:10]>> And I believe we can agree that intelligence sharing among these different levels of government actually improved after 9/11. Wouldn't you agree?

[00:07:20]>> Absolutely. Um, one of the reasons was, you know, joint terrorism task forces came into being, fusion centers. There are 80 fusion centers across the country. But, as I've mentioned before in this committee, unfortunately, the Trump administration has diverted our JTTF efforts to support the president's immigration agenda. And the president is now putting the funding of fusion centers at risk. General McMaster, this month, the New York Times reported that the administration is demanding that states change voting rules or lose their anti-terrorism funds. That's what this headline says, right?

[00:07:58]>> Yet. Yes, it does. And according to DHS, states must comply with the president's election agenda, including running voter roles through DHS's controversial citizenship verification database, or DHS will withhold 20% of their anti-terrorism funds. So, General McMaster, in this time of heightened threats, we should not be attaching strings to any anti-terrorism funding, right?

[00:08:25]>> Uh, not unless it's related, I think, to securing the nation, >> right? and this isn't necessarily that.

[00:08:31]>> And so, um, in my humble opinion, we certainly shouldn't be requiring the citizenship verification database that 30 states, including Republican and Democratic le states refuse to use because, as ABC News has reported, the very system that DHS is urging states to use, has unfortunately been found to be faulty itself. Let me turn to my final topic. Um, General McMaster, uh, in September 2020, before the November 2020 election, President Trump refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power, suggesting he could invoke the Insurrection Act to involve the military. And in response, you told Meet the Press uh, that it was quote irresponsible to discuss the military's role in the 2020 election. You said that, right?

[00:09:18]>> Yes, I did. And now, as we approach the 2026 elections, President Trump again is not ruling out sending the National Guard or ICE to polling, including in this headline, it says President Trump says he's willing to send those elements to the elections election polls this year. General, I assume it's again irresponsible to discuss the military's role in the upcoming 2026 election, right? Yeah, I I think it's really important to recognize that u our founders, you know, 250 years ago were most concerned uh about the military becoming involved in in politics and and George Washington set the example with the Continental Congress uh during our during our our revolution lately. I think again you know and not to say equivalence between what the president's saying what others are saying there has been a tendency to to lay out an expectation that the military should be a check on executive authority or should be an arm of executive authority uh in in in activities such as this which which threaten to politicize the military. I think it's extremely dangerous and damaging uh to that bold line that has to remain in place between our military and and partisan politics and and so whether it's some of your colleagues who who made a video about not following you know illegal orders with the subtext of which from my view uh was that the the military should be a check on executive power. I think any of this kind of activity is profoundly damaging and and and and we ought to all, you know, pledge uh to to avoid it.

[00:10:53]>> Thank you.

[00:10:53]>> Gentlemen's time's expired, Mr. Hill.

[00:10:58]>> Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank the panel for your expertise. We're grateful to have you back before the committee, and I'm glad we're paying attention 25 years later to what we learned from 911.

[00:11:08]And like uh everyone here, I share the loss of that day. know where I was and know my dear friend from working on the Senate Banking Committee Neil Leaven who ran the Port Authority in New York was lost at breakfast that morning. So I'm glad we're doing this. I thank the chairman for it. Um Mr. Sephilo, I want to focus on you though because there are two issues that I'm most concerned about. One, I think we are so far behind from a homeland security point of view on cyber risk and that we keep naming all these suspected and actual Chinese operations after various tal typhoons. I think with AI, we're going to have a tsunami that comes across the entire lower 48 and beyond. So, that's a big concern. Secondly, I'm not convinced that the the 911 reports been implemented as it relates to removing silos. I think everywhere we take testimony about remaining in silos no matter who the ODNI is or what good efforts we make through fusion centers and so uh when it comes to data about the homeland we've worked for three years in a classified and unclassified setting that TSA data uh uh CSIS data uh border CBP data is not fused with DOJ and FBI so I want to leave that out ask you to comment on that. But I want to also talk about something that is very important in a lot of questions for you about integrating cyber security into the counterterrorism type fusion centers that members have talked about. I just came back from cyber shield at Camp Robinson and uh Arkansas represent Lurac. Proud to represent the 19th Airwing at Lurac Air Force Base and Camp Robinson for the National Guard. uh we had,00 people 44 states and territories and 23 uh countries. They're working on a tabletop exercise on critical infrastructure.

[00:13:07]But with AI, would you agree that all infrastructure in the United States is now critical infrastructure? It's not just water and power dreads. That that firstly, Congressman, I love the it's moving from typhoons to tsunamis. That that's absolutely correct. And I think that is going to be the outcome. And I do think that AI will enable all of our critical infrastructures to be critical and and and and and not just to cyber attack but to kinetic attacks as well. Uh one of the earlier conversation around some of the Iranian activity they're targeting data centers through uh precision guided munitions through through kinetic means.

[00:13:46]So I I I do buy your philosophy, but let me just say one thing. When we look at critical infrastructure, it is not just an economic set of issues anymore. It is our national defense. We will not be able to project power or deploy forces.

[00:14:03]If we once you get outside of the wire of any military base, they're dependent upon civilian uh entities to be able to ensure that the power's on, that the transportation's working, and that logistics, which is ultimately what wins wars, can work. So, I I think we are a little slow to recognize that, but you cannot have a modern military without a secure critical infrastructure. And to me, they're inextricably interwoven. And the reason why I think the AI issue is critical is because let's say JP Morgan Chase is fully compliant with Mythos and is part of the tabletop exercise to review their own data. Good for them.

[00:14:45]What about their entire supply chain?

[00:14:47]Well said.

[00:14:47]>> What about every customer? And so I view this as a nation.

[00:14:50]>> We even know what's in our supply chains. Correct. We don't have visibility.

[00:14:54]>> And this is where I think that we uh Trent Kelly talked about integrating title 10 and title 50. I think our tabletop exercises are too rudimentary, too infrequent, and they don't engage our air guard, air reserves, and cyber squadrons around the country that should be able to be called out for a civil defense threat of a vault tsunami.

[00:15:19]>> And there's no integration between our offices of director of emergency management, our tags across the country, and civilian leadership on this point.

[00:15:28]So, uh, would you support broadening our fusion centers to bring in not only the usual suspects, but for the Air Guard, for example, our our agitant generals uh, in the states that could be working in a more direct way?

[00:15:44]>> You know, I I I do I think pre 911, the cy the the civil support teams of the National Guard played a key role in enabling our ability to respond to the horrific attacks. Clearly when you look at cyber you have the adjunct set of issues that I think uh ought to be ought to be considered because yes our tags ultimately our agitant generals are going to play critical roles here and uh and not just the the the the national guard bureau but down at the at the title 32 uh role. So I I do support >> I thank you. Thanks for the panel. I yield back.

[00:16:18]>> Gentleman yields. Um Mr. Quigley.

[00:16:20]>> Thank you Mr. Chairman. Uh gentlemen, I I take from your testimony two intermixed questions. Uh are we fighting and preparing for this war or the last war? And can we govern? And intertwined in that is the fact that we have large cumbersome bureaucratic military intel services trying to intertwine with the state and private sector. and we make slow decisions often political based on all of those uh can and can we govern while we tried to do all this? General, you just referenced a little bit about lessons learned from the Ukraine war?

[00:17:06]Can we adapt? Can we be nimble? And can we do so without being overtly political and get out of our own way?

[00:17:16]Well, these are these are great questions. You know, war is the great auditor of military institutions, Congressman, and and and I think we didn't act fast enough based on the lessons that that Seth pointed out on on uh on on Ukraine. He mentioned hardening infrastructure. Uh but also the the counter drone capabilities. We're doing that now. I think we we are racing.

[00:17:34]There are a lot of new capabilities that are that are being fielded and I'm encouraged by the Department of War's changes to a lot of the contracting and procurement procedures. I think that's going extremely well. And then I'm I'm hoping uh that Congress uh does pass the the the uh the emergency appropriations bill, you know, for the Department of War. I think what we're seeing in our military to a large extent is there's a huge bow wave of deferred modernization and I think a failure to procure weapons and and capabilities at scale. And so that's that's where I I think that we have you we have a lot of a lot of a lot of uh catchup to do there. In terms of the broader questions on on on uh on on uh the you know our civilian infrastructure that's at risk. I think what is encouraging is our in our there have been free market incentives that have led to the creation of some very significant civilian capabilities for defense and and for intelligence in in in in a lot of areas in terms of insider threat and espionage. But then being able to harden with you know the many great uh cyber security companies that we have with tiered and layered defense capabilities and I think now recovery capabilities which are really important if you're if it is going to be the tsunami of of AI maybe we have to assume you're going to get attacked something may get through but once it gets through what have you built in terms of resilience and the ability to recover and restore operations so I I think that encouraging those kind of private sector uh solutions because the government.

[00:19:08]There's no way the government can do it all. And I defer to some of our real cyber experts here, but I feel good about the private sector initiatives. I think from a defense capability and and and the threats associated with that, there is a bow wave of deferred modernization. There are mature technologies uh that that uh we can apply uh to these emerging threats, but they they have not been fielded at scale yet. So, >> can I just So, firstly, not to throw a bumper sticker here, but but technology changes warfare. It doesn't replace strategy. So, there are a number of things that I think we still have to get our arms around. There is a ruling right now. 2209 from a counter UAS perspective, a counter uh unmanned aerial vehicle. All the comments are coming in from hobbyists who obviously don't want to restrict any airspace, including some of our most critical infrastructure, including nuclear, chemical, and and and others. This is there's a I think the windows only open for another week. So, if if anyone's listening and you're a critical infrastructure owner, operator, this is the time to step in because ultimately that's what these companies are being asked to do, not just in cyber, but from a UAS perspective. and and to Seth's good points and General McMaster, these are all movies coming to a theater near you. We shouldn't be surprised. We've seen what can happen. This is coming, Mr. Jones.

[00:20:33]>> Yeah. Ju just on the AI front, you know, one of the things that's been interesting is uh uh I was out in Europe last week looking at uh some of the advances in technology used in the Ukraine war. There are now AI enabled drones that are launched and then able to hit targets uh with AI guiding uh uh able to identify uh uh potential targets night and day. I do not think we and we had hosted a couple weeks ago Kathy Laneir the vice president for the NFL security former police chief of Washington DC.

[00:21:08]She is not confident that our uh NFL stadiums other than the uh uh you know Super Bowl that level of tier can confidently have both the authority and the ability to conduct counter drone operations. It's a challenge let alone critical infrastructure and and and uh uh private industry. We have a huge challenge in the advances of technology including from drones and AI enabled drones. a huge threat and an inability right now to find a practical solution.

[00:21:44]>> Gentleman yields. Mr. Carson.

[00:21:47]>> Thank you, Chairman.

[00:21:50]General McMaster. One of the biggest failures before 9 before 911 uh was that the government had pieces of info but did not understand what they meant when when when brought together. What emerging threat is our current intelligence system least prepared to recognize and what would change um the way we receive warnings particularly from fusion centers. Um, I I served as a watch officer in a fusion center and I know how critical it is for state and local agencies to have access to federal databases as well as those federal agencies to have access to local law enforcement and state law enforcement who are actually on the ground getting intel about white supremacist threats, about uh so-called Islamic threats. um how can we better prepare um to avoid and avert the next 9/11, god forbid?

[00:22:50]>> Well, Congressman, I put this in my in my statement for the record. I'm very concerned about how AI is sort of creating this situation what you might call the democratization of destruction where you have non-state actors who can quite easily now gain capabilities previously associated only with nation states. I think this may be most severe in the area of bioengineering com combined with AI and so we and we don't have really the the biological surveillance capabilities at this time internationally to get early warning of any kind of a biological agent uh and then and then be able to of course rapidly develop and and prototype vaccines and countermeasures and that sort of thing. Uh obviously we had the searing experience of of co 19 uh I believe that came from the lab at Wuhan.

[00:23:37]uh I we know that our adversaries and uh are are developing these kinds of capabilities but now you know with with AI that could easily be transferred uh to an ISIS type or organization for for example uh or uh or any of the range of terrorist organizations that's supported by by Iran. So I I think that's the area that I would be most concerned about.

[00:23:57]And so surveillance and you know wastewater the the rapid you rapid blood tests that you can take and so forth as well as working forward uh to in our intelligence community to rapidly identify and then and then preempt as we if we can those threats as we did for example in the Euphrates River Valley uh against uh against ISIS uh when when they were developing the trying to develop this kind of capability. might now be the time, General, or anyone on the panel to really lean in into AI as it could as it relates to protecting our supply chain integrity and security.

[00:24:31]Yeah, this is a great this is a great opportunity here as well. Uh and and uh and and Frank already mentioned this. I I I do think that gaining visibility of that supply chain, hardware, software, OT, it uh and then also understanding the kind of vulnerabilities associated with China's control of critical parts of that supply chain uh where they can put in capabilities that could be meant to our our infrastructure later like we saw for example uh in in solar panels or or or cranes at uh at our at our port facilities. uh and and uh and so I I think that we now have the capability thanks to AI to gain a much greater degree of visibility on those supply chains, understand where the vulnerabilities are and and and work to reduce those vulnerabilities.

[00:25:14]>> Yes, sir.

[00:25:14]>> Thank you.

[00:25:15]>> Thank you. I yield back, chairman.

[00:25:18]>> Gentleman yields, Mr. Cohen.

[00:25:21]>> Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I guess I'm the last one, so I get extra time.

[00:25:25]>> Yeah, keep keep thinking that [laughter] there's so many questions I'd like to ask you. appreciate you being here. Um, do do any of y'all have any worries about the threat being in the United States? My concern Trump went to Pennsylvania during the election and all of a sudden about a week two weeks before the election, he kind of up there says, "Oh, we're okay. We're going to win. You know, we don't need any more votes." Uh, Musk knows all about these computers. He's just a genius.

[00:25:53]Especially these connected to getting the vote counts. Uh, Mr. Mc Masteraster, you dealt with Mr. Trump a lot. Do you think he was kind of signaling to us that that Musk has the ability to interfere with some of the elections?

[00:26:05]>> Well, I I have no I don't know have any knowledge about that statement or anything, but I know that you know with with our election machines the way the way I see it and and I looked at this pretty hard when I was national security adviser and I'm a bit dated because there's been even a lot more work done since then. You know, these machines are disconnected, you know, from the from the internet. There are paper backups, there are audit capabilities. I really think what's most important at this moment and and I kind of appeal to all of you really, you know, there is a way I think to make our our elections more transparent to make sure that only eligible voters vote without restricting access to those who are eligible voters.

[00:26:41]>> But you don't have a concern about anybody in America interfering with the election.

[00:26:44]>> No, I don't. I don't. Not to my knowledge. Not any >> You've got a lot of experience. I get another question about Iran. Have Have we had excuse me about Ukraine? I'm just amazed they've got these robots or whatever that do the even mil infantry work.

[00:26:58]>> Is our military anywhere near that capability in our I think Ukraine's offered us the some of their defensive drone capabilities and we've rejected it.

[00:27:07]>> We need them. They have cards to play so to speak.

[00:27:12]>> Yeah. Absolutely. If if you saw the the operation that was conducted uh maybe two months ago where Ukraine used exclusively aerial and ground drones uh and actually defeated and accepted the surrender of Russian uh soldiers with an all autonomous organization. What uh what you know what uh what Dr. Jones mentioned is is the next frontier.

[00:27:33]What's happening here is computing power at the edge, self-healing communications networks such that you'll go from one soldier controlling one drone to one soldier controlling many. And to be able to give missions to formations of of of drones, you know, and and to and they'll be able to learn. Take out the air defense system, for example, one will get shot down, the others will learn, communicate with each other. And so I think that's that's what we have to stay on top of there. And then also we have these capabilities, we have the technology, we have not demonstrated the ability to to produce and field them at scale and to have the innovation cycle that you see in Ukraine which is weeks.

[00:28:13]So the the Russians will develop a countermeasure. The Ukrainians will see that countermeasure they'll bring it back to for re re-engineering and they they'll have this open architecture where they can make changes to the software, sometimes the hardware and improve improve their own capabilities relative to the Russians. So that innovation cycle and the be able to field at scale but but I know that other members of the panel have have uh followed this closely as well. So Dr. Buchanan, you mentioned something about the um trying to my notes here. I wrote it down. You mentioned something about chips and the need to have chips. What what did we give up when Trump gave some chips to China? Were any of those that the central chips that you said we should not give to China?

[00:28:54]>> That's right. uh computing power computer chips are the lifeblood of AI systems and we have something called the scaling law in AI which is the more computing power is you used to train or develop the AI system the more powerful the AI system is as a result that's why computing chips are uh one of the most sought-after commodities in the world right now President Trump said he was willing to sell a particular generation of computing chips called the Hopper chip uh to China I disagreed with that decision I think President Trump in his first administration took um some very important actions denying China chipmaking equipment that was built on the Biden administration and my policy my my worldview is that given how important AI is to national security to the threats we have talked about here today we need to have a very clear lead for the United States in AI and therefore we need to have a very clear lead for the United States in uh computing power and chipmaking equipment >> so he gave away chips that were essential and you could give China an advantage >> he lifted the export controls on a certain class of chips That's right. And my concern is that uh chips like that would enable Chinese military operations and would enable some of the the models deepseek and and otherwise that your colleague was asking about earlier.

[00:30:06]>> Taiwan you could Taiwan has got great computer chips chips development. Do they have the chips that you're together >> the as far as the questions about uh the role of computing power in Taiwan. Yes, essentially all of the advanced computer chips in the world are made in Taiwan.

[00:30:34]The bipartisan chips act aims to bring uh some of that to the United States which is a terrific thing but all of the chips we are talking about here with with very narrow exceptions are made in Taiwan. Yes, >> Jim Jim's time's expired.

[00:30:47]I was delayed because they said >> Yeah. Yeah. This we're not we're not we're not doing stoppage time. No. No.

[00:30:55]You've He's He's He's answered your question, so we're going to move on.

[00:31:01]>> Okay. [laughter] All right. Mr. Perry.

[00:31:06]Thanks, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Jones looked into and kind of an expert on unrestricted and irregular warfare, especially in as it pertains to the Communist Party of China. Has our government taken a a um whole of government approach to combating unrestricted or irregular warfare? And do we have a comprehensive strategy agency by agency?

[00:31:36]I don't believe we do have a comprehensive strategy either at the federal level or just talking last week to members of some of our joint terrorism task forces and fusion centers where uh there is little uh activity at the state and local level to understand and and operationalize uh the threat from unrestricted warfare happening particularly by the Chinese but also the Russians and Iranians inside of our border. ers. So just out of curiosity, some of the top level stuff because maybe some people aren't familiar. Can you kind of just name the half a dozen of maybe the top unrestricted irregular irregular warfare whole of government approaches that the Communist Party of China uses against the United States of America. Uh there are far too many uh to to go through in detail uh for this testimony unless we add added another four hours. But they range uh from everything from um uh influence operations most recently uh the uh influ influence operations inside the United States about AI data centers uh to discourage the building of AI centers across the United States. Uh we've seen uh the Chinese Communist Party involved in uh activity in cities in the United States uh to pressure in some cases to to try to seize individuals from China that are um conducting actions on uh social media platforms that the Chinese Communist Party does not like. Uh there's uh espionage on university campuses. Uh there's offensive cyber operations, the vault typhoons and the salt typhoons uh that we've talked about. Those are just uh >> so it's almost quite literally anything you can think of. Almost anything you can think of that can be used as a weapon against this country, the Chinese Communist Party either considers or actually uses. I I think that's a fair characterization. As legislators, we're here in Congress, right? We're not the executive branch. Um, can you recommend legislative solutions, legislative efforts in that regard to to combat this unrestricted irregular warfare? The point is is what can we doing to assist the administration? What can we be doing to put ourselves uh in the window of success? I I think there are a few things in my written testimony. I go through some of the details. I think there should be an effort to broaden the mandate for the JTFs and the fusion centers to focus on some of these state sponsored threats particularly uh the Chinese Communist Party in the United States. Uh I think there could also be strengthening of the legislation against foreign agents operating in the United States. There has been some stronger legislation that criminalizes foreign agents that harass, surveil or conduct other types of actions but I think that can be strengthened. This gets into the FAR issues. Uh there are a few others. I think section 702 uh the reauthorization would actually be quite helpful as well.

[00:34:48]So those are a couple.

[00:34:48]>> How about how about their China's involvement in our financial markets and the difference that we give to them that we don't give to American companies and individuals.

[00:34:57]>> Yeah, I think that's a huge problem.

[00:34:59]Yes.

[00:34:59]>> And legislatively what we should uh I I have not thought and maybe others on the panel have thought about what legislation might look like. I have not thought and and put anything down on paper along those lines. So, I could certainly come back to you on that. I >> I think that people on this panel, certainly people in Congress are looking for, you know, everybody's busy, but we're looking for your expertise in this regard to point in the right direction so that we we can hit the target, so to speak. And so, so those things, if you could, um would be would be welcome would be welcome additions. And I would just finally say this, irregular unrestricted warfare. Also, it regards uh election meddling or or what have you. It was the Democrats that first brought it up, but once the president brought it up, this president, now you're actually playing into the hands of China, having questions about elections that are fraught with problems like counting on somebody's affidavit to prove their citizenship or their validity to to vote. Um, having questions about that is not playing into the Communist Party of China's hands. It is asking legitimate questions that are righteous. I yield. Gentleman yields. We had a miscue on the clock. So, that was the reason for >> Yeah, we we were watching. Believe me, we were watching. Appreciate it.

[00:36:20]Gentleman yields. M Stefanic.

[00:36:23]>> Thank you so much. For my second round of questions, I want to delve more into the specifics of AI. Mr. McMaster will remember this. General McMaster will remember in 2018 um I was chair of the emerging threats for the House Armed Services Committee and I wrote legislation called the AI Commission that was signed into law as part of the NDAA. This is when AI was just a buzzword that many members of Congress didn't know about. Now it is you can see how much it is taking up these questions. So to delve into AI this attack on data centers can you discuss maybe I'll start with Dr. Buchanan the importance of data centers and that the US be the leader when it comes to data compute power as data is the fuel for AI.

[00:37:10]Thank you Congresswoman and thank you for your leadership in creating that that commission. Yeah, as I said before computing power is the uh fulcrum of AI progress and computing power is very scarce right now in the world. So uh my position and I believe it's a a bipartisan one is that the United States needs to retain access to this computing power alongside democratic nations and that uh it should be denied to uh China given the ways in which China will use the computing power to advance its military to propagate some of the threats we we're talking about here today. So I think it's unmistakable.

[00:37:43]It's one of the core tenets of AI policy that the United States should lead um in the democratic world should lead in the development and use of computing power for AI.

[00:37:53]>> Yes. And last week my home state of New York in a policy that I vehemently disagreed with set a moratorum on data centers. Can you talk about the national security risks when you have a moratorum on data centers? My viewpoint is that allows China to win. We cannot afford to lose this race. Failure is not an option. We need to lead in AI and win this. How does the moratorium on data centers impact our ability to win this race?

[00:38:20]>> Certainly, I think if we were to stop constructing data centers, uh that would would impede America's AI development.

[00:38:26]There are legitimate community concerns and so forth that companies should address in my view. Uh one of the postures that we had in the Biden administration, an executive order the president signed was to make federal lands available. uh companies would pay for everything including the power and so forth, but to make federal lands available u for rapid data center construction uh for national security uh purposes as well uh to try to address some of the community concerns. But yeah, my my view here is computing power is central to AI. AI is central to national security and America must lead.

[00:38:59]>> And Dr. Jones, you referenced China's attempt to ferment this opposition to data centers. Can you add on that?

[00:39:07]>> Yes, there is evidence. It's been published in multiple media outlets of both Chinese and Russian attempts to fment concern in American communities about data centers. Uh it's not unlike uh the uh service a KGB doing in the United States for parts of the cold war, but along these very lines to ferment concerns in in American communities about data centers.

[00:39:31]>> And General McMaster, I want to get your thoughts on this topic.

[00:39:34]>> Yes. And the other analogy I would make is is how how Russians financed anti-fracking groups as well uh to prevent America from from achieving energy uh independence uh and challenging Russia's ability to apply course of power through control of energy supplies and uh and so I think this is is really important to understand they're trying to hold us back uh and uh and to do so with disinformation supporting these groups that oppose the development of data centers and the and the energy capabilities that that are so critical to it as well.

[00:40:01]>> Yes. Unfortunately, in New York state, we also have a moratorium on fracking, a policy which I also oppose. But going back to AI, generative AI, this is separate from data centers, but related generative AI can produce realistic text, audio, images, and video at enormous scale. What threat from your assessment? A highly convincing individual deep fake or the mass production of tailored content designed to manipulate different audiences and deepen social divisions.

[00:40:33]>> Is that for me, Congresswoman?

[00:40:35]>> Yes.

[00:40:35]>> Uh yes. I I'm worried about the the scale that AI can can enable in terms of especially personalization and the like.

[00:40:41]And uh when Gerald McMaster was talking about some of the the AI enabled threats earlier, the word that I kept thinking of was scale and breath and I think that that is a risk in the information space.

[00:40:53]It's also to his point from before I think a very significant risk in the biology space in which it is enabling AI is enabling u a diffusion of biological capabilities as well. So I think it shows up in a number of different categories of a AI enabled threat we've been discussing today.

[00:41:09]>> And Mr. Talfo thoughts on this in the last 15 seconds.

[00:41:13]>> So firstly to your first question, you cannot be AI dominant unless you're energy dominant. They're both in our national interest to be able to achieve those uh objectives.

[00:41:24]The the the challenge with the scale is you don't need so if you think about uh ransomware and if you think about some of these scams, all you need is one person clicking and it's a good day for the bad guy. If they send a thousand and you get two people hitting, that's success on their side. So, I think you got to deal with both. You got to deal with our grandparents are going to think that their kids or grandkids were kidnapped and it's going to look pretty darn real uh with our actual voices.

[00:41:52]That's a scary thought. But the flip side is is you're going to see this at scale where it is going to be targeted uh very specifically to different audiences to achieve very specific outcomes.

[00:42:03]>> Yield back.

[00:42:04]>> Gentleman yields. I want to thank our witnesses uh for your testimony today.

[00:42:08]It is greatly appreciated, very enlightening, and we hope to look uh to work with you on this uh subject matter in the future. Thank you all very much.

[00:42:15]This hearing is ajourned.

[00:51:44]Generative AI can produce realistic text, audio, images, and video at enormous scale. What is the greater national security threat from your assessment? A highly convincing individual deep fake or the mass >> [music] [music] [music] >> Heat. Hey, Heat.

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