Transcript of Ranking Member Krishnamoorthi’s Opening Statement from Hearing on How to Deter Beijing’s Cyber Actions and Enhance America’s Lackluster Cyber Defenses

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) held a hearing to understand the opportunities for Congress to act against the People’s Republic of China’s cyber operations and identify the threat and opportunities to end its pervasive cyber operations against the U.S. homeland. The following witnesses provided testimony: 

• Mr. Rob Joyce, Former Director of Cybersecurity, National Security Agency
• Dr. Emma Stewart, Chief Power Grid Scientist and Research Strategist, Idaho National Laboratory
• Ms. Laura Galante, Former Cyber Executive and Director of the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center, Director of National Intelligence

Below is a transcript of the opening statement from the Ranking Member. Footage of the Ranking Member’s opening statement can be found here, and his questions to the witnesses can be found here.

This is a GPS tracking bracelet. The U.S. Government puts them on people charged with serious crimes, so we can see where these criminals are at all times.

But imagine if China had the very same capability to track and surveil our locations, but not just for criminals, but for every single American.

Last year, federal authorities confirmed that China - through a hacking group known as Salt Typhoon - broke into the networks of nine major telecom providers. That access allowed the CCP to – in the words of a former official – “geolocate millions of individuals” and even “record phone calls at will.”

If the CCP was listening in on Congress, they’d know the bills we were going to introduce, the investigations we were going to launch, and most importantly, the actions they needed to take to evade consequences.

I want to let the enormity of this sink in. Salt Typhoon was one of the worst hacks in American history – a truly unprecedented intelligence breach. And it comes just one year after this Committee held a hearing on Volt Typhoon – an equally devastating hack – where we learned that China has prepositioned vulnerabilities in our critical infrastructure that they could deploy at a time of conflict. 

These are hardly isolated incidents. From the theft of millions of Americans’ security clearance records in 2015 to the hack of the Treasury Department just last December, we’re essentially an open book for Chinese intelligence agencies. 

It’s time to slam that book shut and get the CCP out of our networks once and for all. 

First, we’re going to bolster our defenses and invest like never before in our nation’s cybersecurity.

An obvious place to start is edge devices – a fancy word for the hardware that serves as the entry point for a network, like a router. There is a common thread between Volt Typhoon and Salt Typhoon – and it’s the use of edge devices to break into our systems.

Second, we need to hone in on telecom.  Just yesterday, the Chairman and I sent letters to China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Telecom about their remaining operations in the U.S. As Reuters recently put it, these “firms could exploit access to American data through their U.S. cloud and internet businesses by providing [that data] to Beijing.”

But we can’t stop there. American telecom companies should also need to meet rigorous cybersecurity standards. Just like with oil pipelines after the Colonial Pipeline attack, Salt Typhoon is a wake-up call that we can’t just rely on telecom companies to police themselves. 

Third, we need to increase our cyber talent pipelines. We have 1.5 million cybersecurity workers, but we need 2 million workers. That’s a 500,000 person gap. 

And fourth, we need to hold the CCP accountable. Some people call this “defending forward.” It means imposing costs on the CCP each time they attack us. When Xi Jinping decides whether to launch another cyberattack, he needs to ask himself whether the costs are worth the benefits. With the full force of NSA, CISA, and other cyber experts, we need to make China think twice.

This is only going to become more important as AI makes cyberattacks more effective and harder to detect. 

Because of that, I’d like to close with a message created by AI – so you can see the power of this technology for yourself.

[DEEPFAKE VIDEO TRANSCRIPT]: Hello, I’m a deepfake of Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi. I was created using Generative AI technology. That’s right, I’m not the real Raja, I’m just an AI-generated video.

Using this same technology, it will become easier for the CCP to hack us – since they can automate work currently done by thousands of hackers.

But even if hacking becomes easier with AI, we can still deter it if we impose consequences.

Xi Jinping, you may have thought Salt Typhoon was a massive success. But consider yourself warned: we’re going to flip the script and make you regret this historic hack. When Congress channels its anger into action, and ups our cybersecurity game like never before, you will come to see your intelligence coup as a strategic bluster. 

Thank you, Deepfake Raja. And thank you to our witnesses for joining us. 

###