Video Looming staffing cuts to America’s security and intelligence agencies, if carried out, would “have a devastating effect on cybersecurity and our national security,” former NSA bigwig Rob Joyce has told House representatives.
Speaking on Wednesday to the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, Joyce said the elimination of said roles as part of President Trump’s massive cost-cutting drive to reduce the size of the federal workforce, could seriously harm the fight against the People’s Republic of China (PRC). House reps had earlier characterized the Middle Kingdom as the world’s biggest state cyber-spying operation.
I want to raise my grave concerns …
The Trump administration has been primarily targeting probationary workers within the federal government, an exercise overseen by the President’s éminence grease Elon Musk and his DOGE unit. There have already been 140 layoffs at Homeland Security’s cybersecurity advisory organization CISA.
Meanwhile, NSA and CIA staffers have been offered the opportunity to retire early in exchange for a payoff. This has some worried that deep cuts are coming, and in a congressional meeting ostensibly about the mounting cyber threat from Beijing, Joyce took time in his opening statement to highlight the dangers of losing staff.
“I want to raise my grave concerns that the aggressive threats to cut US government probationary employees will have a devastating impact on the cybersecurity and our national security at my former agency,” Joyce warned during a two-hour committee hearing you can replay below.
“Eliminating probationary employees will destroy a pipeline of top talent essential for hunting and eradicating PRC threats,” continued Joyce, who ran the NSA’s crack cyber-offensive team and was a White House advisor during Trump’s first term.
“Even if the positions are not eliminated, the pervasive uncertainty and doubt in the current environment is forcing them to seek and secure opportunities for their families outside national security. We need this talent to win in competition and conflict.”
The pervasive uncertainty and doubt in the current environment is forcing them to seek and secure opportunities outside national security
While it didn’t come up in the hearings, presumably Joyce wasn’t referring to the more than 100 NSA staffers who were fired last month. The workers were pushed out for discussing personal sexual matters using the agency’s internal messaging system.
Joyce was backed up by fellow panelist Laura Galante, a former director of the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
She warned not only was the intelligence community at risk of losing good people, it could also miss out on the ability to train up replacements.
“This will be a significant blow to the people who have come in over the last several years or have waited on clearances, sometimes upwards of a year or more, to come in for technically important roles where the training is limited on the outside in their doing core work to secure US networks,” she stated.
“This is a key issue that we need people to continue to come in, and we need the people who have been brought in to stay.”
The threat from the PRC against the US electricity grid was a major problem, warned Dr Emma Stewart, chief power grid scientist at the Idaho National Laboratory. She said she was concerned good staff could be lost in the efficiency drive. China had already extensively surveilled America’s complex and convoluted power system, and the US needs talented security folks to manage this “unprecedented and multifaceted threat,” she said, and that cuts would lead to a “loss of knowledge that we’ve gained over a number of years.”
The threat is everywhere, particularly in your router
Dr Stewart said that last year’s Salt and Volt Typhoon attacks on communications networks have shown the extent of China’s reach when it comes to infiltrating critical infrastructure. But Joyce reminded the committee that some threats were closer to home, in the form of Wi-Fi router maker TP-Link.
Joyce said he believed TP-Link had grown to control 60 percent of the US wireless router market – compared to 10 percent in 2019 – by selling equipment at a loss. The Chinese manufacturer has a legal requirement to work with its government, such as hiding remote-control backdoors in its firmware to enable spying on millions of Americans, and he would like to see his fellow citizens “eliminating TP-Link’s footprint from our nation.”
Some of these devices just aren’t securable
Dr Stewart agreed, and pointed to the “rip and replace” policy of removing Chinese equipment from telecommunications networks. She agreed with Joyce that these programs to remove Middle Kingdom tech from key parts of the United States need to be properly funded, or the results could be very expensive for those having to replace their gear.
“Unfortunately, some of these devices just aren’t securable, which is what we’ve really been talking about today,” she opined.
“But in making good choices on what equipment they’re buying, things that have actually been certified to certain standards, not going unfortunately for the cheapest option is actually one of the best things people can do.”
As for reports that the US was pausing cyberattacks on the other big adversary, Russia, Joyce said he didn’t know the full facts – having left the NSA last year – but said he believed doing so would be a grave mistake.
“It’s very clear to me that unilaterally exiting the cyber battlefield would be a bad decision,” he said. “I don’t know if we have or haven’t. But I would hope we do not.” ®