During a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Tuesday, Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) questioned Katherine E. Sutton, nominee to be Assistant Secretary of Defense for Cyber Policy, about the federal cyber workforce.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00that Senator Rosen is next. Well, thank you, Chairman Wicker, Ranking Member Reed, for holding
00:07this hearing. Thank you to the witnesses for your willingness to serve your families I know are here
00:12today. I'm going to switch up a little bit. We'll give you a little bit of a break, Mr. Tata, because
00:18I want to focus on cyber intel capability with Ms. Sutton. And so the FY25 NDAA included a provision
00:26I helped champion to have the department establish a cyber intelligence capability to provide
00:32foundational, scientific, and technical intelligence support for cybercom and the rest of the joint
00:37force. So, Ms. Sutton, can you discuss how, if confirmed, you will address that requirement
00:42and what is your understanding of the department's current approach to standing this up, including
00:47the lessons learned from the recently completed cyber intelligence pilot with the Defense Intelligence
00:52Agency? Senator, I appreciate the question and also appreciate the attention that you've
00:59put on this issue. In all domains of warfare, intelligence is critical to being able to conduct
01:04our operations. But it is particularly critical in the cyber domain for a range of applications
01:12to develop capabilities, to build the accesses that we needed, to execute the operations, and
01:18to understand situational awareness of the battle space. As the demand signal for our cyber operations
01:26has grown considerably in response to the threat of malicious cyber actors, so has that need
01:32for intelligence. And unfortunately, we have not kept pace in the workforce needed to be able
01:39to support the intelligence, the growing intelligence need. As you mentioned, it is my understanding
01:45that there has been a recent pilot that has been completed with the command and the intelligence
01:50community. And if confirmed, I look forward to understanding the specific gaps that they
01:55were identified, as well as ensuring that we have the right organizational structure in
02:00place to be able to move out on those recommendations, and also to make sure that we can bring in the
02:06highly technical and deeply skilled talent that you're aware is necessary to be successful in
02:13this technical intelligence. Right. Well, as a cyber threat evolves, that means the evolution
02:18of our cyber forces as well. So that brings me to my next question about cyber workforce. Well,
02:23actually recruit and retention. But the DOD continues to struggle with recruiting and retaining cyber
02:29talent, particularly against this really highly competitive private sector. The issue undermines
02:34our readiness across all of our domains. And it is really a priority of mine to fix this issue
02:39as ranking member of the cybersecurity subcommittee. So if confirmed, what specific actions would
02:45you take to attract and retain the skilled cyber professionals, especially when you're competing
02:50with the private sector? And what barriers, cultural, structural, policy-based, do you believe
02:57you're preventing DOD from doing this? How can we work together to help you in this capacity?
03:05I share your concern about the importance of making sure that we have the best and brightest
03:10on our team. That is the only way we're going to be successful against the adversary. I believe
03:16that this is going to be a variety of approaches. There's not going to be one simple step we can take
03:20in the department. We're going to have to look at making sure we're bringing in the right talent,
03:24that we're incentivizing it appropriately, and that we're keeping it on mission. One key area that I
03:30think we have underutilized in the past is looking at how we leverage our reserve and national guard
03:36and bring in the talent that they have in private industry and apply it to our mission space. I've
03:42seen many examples in my time at the command where we will bring in an air force reservist who has an
03:48advanced degree in data science, works in private industry, and they come in and advise on our AI
03:54strategy and our AI roadmap, or where we have an army reservist who spent almost a decade as one of our
04:01most capable operators in the force, became a reservist, is now in private industry, and has been
04:07fundamental in advising our new force generation model. I think that that is a pillar that if
04:13confirmed, I look forward to being able to support further.
04:15Well, that's why we have the pilot program on my civilian cybersecurity reserve
04:19to really give us this capacity. I look forward to working with you on that.
04:25And I know you're working, thinking about the partnerships. We have issues like rotational
04:31programs with the private sector, pay flexibility, expedited clearing process, some of those things
04:36to improve workforce readiness. But we also have our academia. Like my home state of Nevada, we have
04:42UNLV, UNR, and Desert Research Institute. They're exploring innovative ways to grow our cyber
04:47talent locally. So how will you partner with our universities, if you will?
04:53Absolutely. We need to look across the nation's talent for how we can leverage it.
04:59If confirmed, I would look to further leverage the Cyber Center of Excellence program that today
05:04has been very focused on bringing a talented pipeline of students into government, and particularly
05:10the Department of Defense. But looking at how we could further leverage that to help us solve some
05:15of the hardest problems that our force faces.
05:19Thank you. I look forward to working with you on all of this. Thank you.