'We Don't Flex Out Muscle Often?': Gimenez Asks Cybersecurity Expert About Offensive Cyber Capacity

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During a House Homeland Committee hearing before the Congressional recess, Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-FL) asked Dragos CEO Robert Lee about the Pentagon's offensive cyber attack capabilities.

Transcript

00:00We're going to start our second round of questions. So I recognize the second round,

00:04the gentleman from Florida, Mr. Jimenez, for five minutes.

00:08Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I'm going to pivot a little bit. So do you all know what MAD is?

00:15Mutually assured destruction. MAD is not really all that MAD. MAD kept us safe for about, you know,

00:2250 years, 60 years, right? And where, yeah, the Soviet Union had, you know, thousands of nuclear

00:28weapons, but so did we. And if they ever used it, then we would use it on them. And then that kept

00:32us safe in a frightening kind of way, but it did. It kept us safe. All right. And so my question to

00:39you is, is there is the Department of Defense, but part of the Department of Defense is the

00:45Department of Offense. So it's, if we were just a, well, we're, we're here to defend the homeland and

00:53we're going to play defense. Well, you're inviting attacks because there's no, there's no counterpunch.

01:00What's our offensive capability? What is your assessment of our offensive capability in this

01:06realm? I'll take first pass that we are very, very good at our offensive capability. I think

01:12some concerns I have, you have to be able to get to root cause analysis on determining if we were

01:17attacked for us to go back and do something. I'm aware of numerous cases the government is currently

01:22tracking as maintenance issues for explosions. Otherwise, there were actually cyber attacks.

01:26If we're not detecting what's happening, then we're just going to say, oh, it must have been

01:30something random and we're never going to get offensive. But sir, you know, putting my military

01:34hat on now, I, even just down the 91st Brigade alone, we've got a lot of offensive capability and

01:38I would not want to be on the other side of us, but we also have to make it extremely hard for our

01:43competition to come back at us and at least know when they do it so that we can unleash our warriors.

01:48Do we do that often enough? Do we flex our muscle often enough?

01:52I think just looking back to testimony and commentary from Joe Nakasone, General Hawk and

01:56others, I would say that we do not. I do not want to see an offensive world. I do not want to see

02:02targeting civilian infrastructure. But when our adversaries make it very clear that they want

02:05to hurt us and hurt our families, I think we have to be very serious about showing them that we can do

02:09the same. I agree. So, I mean, if we actually flexed our muscle every once in a while, I mean,

02:15the DOD flexes its muscle every once in a while, right? So, I guess you're saying we don't flex our

02:22muscle enough. I'm saying we don't flex it enough, but I would also advise that we have to be very

02:27serious on defense because we will see things back. Even if one agency in a government authorizes

02:33something at us and we are doing something that we view to be retaliatory, other agencies in that same

02:37government may not be aware of it unless we're able to call it out. And then all of a sudden you

02:41have a very escalatory situation. You know, we have a new realm of warfare, I guess, defense and

02:46offenses of space. And so, we created the Space Force, right? Should we create a cyber force?

02:54I'll stick with it and then open up to the other panelists. I think it's time. I was very against it

02:58when I was in the Air Force. I was very against it for the years after looking at how it was going to

03:02be orchestrated. I think it's time to do it. Sticking to its OT&E mission of organizing,

03:07training, and equipping. Let Cyber Command and the Combatant Commands be the actual Title 10

03:11authorities that we have. But we definitely need a dedicated service. But I think if you're going to

03:15do it right, you have to do it extremely big and right because the problem that you'll have is all

03:20that infighting and the stuff that people say, oh, we politely work together in interagency. No,

03:24we don't. People are very territorial and people will keep their best cyber warriors themselves.

03:28You're going back to my first round of questioning, right? That there's turf guarding.

03:32There's a lot of turf guarding. There is a lot of turf guarding. And so I would figure that now

03:39with Space Force and the Air Force, there's probably a lot of turf guarding there, right?

03:44I don't see it as much myself, but I did leave the Air Force a while ago. I will say the Army would

03:48be very happy to have a cyber force under it from a department level, but I'm not so sure that it

03:51shouldn't just be made a department level service. Okay, fair enough. Okay, that's all the questions I

04:00have and I yield back the rest of my time. Thank you.

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