During a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Tuesday, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) spoke about U.S. offensive cyber capacities.
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00:00Thank you, Senator Rosen.
00:01Senator Kaine, it appears that you are finally recognized.
00:05I've been enlightened by the questions that have come before me
00:09and glad that I heard my colleagues.
00:11Ms. Sutton, in your testimony and response, I think, to a question of Senator Bud's,
00:16you talked a little bit about our allies and partners
00:18and how cybersecurity is something where there should be burden sharing.
00:23And there should be, but there's also real opportunities
00:25and work with allies and partners not just to share the burden
00:28but to take advantage of the expertise of other nations.
00:32I've been particularly involved in this committee
00:34and in the Foreign Relations Committee on the AUKUS framework.
00:38Could you talk a little bit about, you know, kind of your view about the upsides,
00:42not just in the sense of sharing the burden, but the capacities of some of our allies
00:48and how, you know, sometimes the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
00:51If we work with allies on cyber issues, we can be stronger.
00:56Senator, I appreciate that question.
00:57The United States has a strong innovative advantage with the talent that we have,
01:03but we certainly do not have a monopoly on that talent.
01:06And I think partnerships with some of our close partners and allies,
01:09particularly the Australians through the AUKUS Pillar 2,
01:12which allows us to do cooperative research and development agreements,
01:17is going to be really important so that we can ensure that we're able to share the latest
01:23and greatest technology, but also that we're able to prioritize our investments where
01:28that we're not duplicating efforts.
01:31And so working closely with all of our partners, but in particularly utilizing the AUKUS agreement
01:37will be critical in bringing the technology we need to our warfighters.
01:41I'm really glad that you brought up AUKUS Pillar 2.
01:44Pillar 1 is, you know, fairly discreet.
01:46It's about the production of Virginia-class subs,
01:49the training and the Aussies about how to operate and maintain them,
01:53and eventually working with the Aussies so that they can develop their own capacity
01:58to build nuclear subs of their own design,
02:00which would include a lot of U.S. technology.
02:02Obviously, Pillar 2 is a little more open-ended, which is good,
02:06but it also means we have to, you know, kind of define what are going to be some of the deliverables
02:11in Pillar 2, and I do think cyber cooperation is one of the areas that is probably the most fertile
02:17for Pillar 2 work, both with the Aussies and with the U.K.,
02:21and I'm encouraged to hear you bring that up.
02:24I want to follow up, too, on a discussion that Senator King and you had
02:28that I have heard many, many times in this committee,
02:31and I'm not really sure that we're as far down the road as we need to be,
02:35and that is the offensive nature of our cyber capacity.
02:39You used the phrase, we have the capacity to impose costs,
02:45but I often wonder if we are imposing costs.
02:50Your point that the defender has to be right every time,
02:54the attacker only has to be right once.
02:56We do have a good cyber defense.
03:00We're not perfect.
03:01We have a good cyber defense, and the fact that we're not perfect means
03:04a couple times a year there's a story about some cyber hacker
03:07getting into some part of the U.S. government
03:09or some critical infrastructure in the United States,
03:12and those stories are very public, and the public hears them,
03:15and the public's worried about cyber.
03:18We talk about offensive operations in other military domains,
03:21you know, the number of sorties we were flying against ISIL.
03:25We know when there's a U.S. bombing in Yemen against Houthis.
03:31We're aware of it.
03:32But we don't talk about what we do offensively in cyber very much.
03:36I think there's some reasons for that,
03:38but it ends up making the public very aware that we're under attack
03:44because the news story is a couple times a year about successful cyber attacks,
03:48but the public never hears about our use of the offensive cyber capacity
03:54to impose costs on those who are attacking us.
03:57Why can't we be a little more candid with the American public
04:02about our offensive use of cyber so that they're aware
04:05that we're not just playing defense all the time,
04:08but that we actually have an offensive capacity that we use?
04:13Senator, that's a great question.
04:15I appreciate the opportunity to address it today.
04:18As you mentioned, we have decades of experience
04:21talking about things like nuclear deterrence,
04:23and in the area of cyber, we are still going down that path of evolution,
04:29and I think there's a lot of work still to be done.
04:31A decade ago, we barely even mentioned the word offensive cyber.
04:36Today, many discussions, as you mentioned, in this area are just to start having
04:40the right discussions to ensure that we're understanding
04:49and that we set the right posture
04:50and look forward to being able to continue that dialogue.
04:54I think there's a bit of a culture change.
04:56Just as we've seen a culture change
04:58when we used to see threats in the cyberspace,
05:01we just kept them.
05:02Through establishment of things like the NSA Cyber Collaboration Center,
05:06we now work very hard to take what we see in the cyber domain
05:10and share it with industries so that they can defend.
05:13I think that same culture change needs to happen
05:15in how we discuss cyber deterrence.
05:17I look forward to working with you on this.
05:20Deterrence only works if it's public.
05:23That's part of what deters.
05:25People are aware there are going to be consequences,
05:27and they believe it.
05:28And our public needs to understand as well
05:31that we're not just the victims of cyber attacks,
05:33but that we have a well-developed capacity to impose costs.
05:36I look forward to working with you on that, and I yield back.