Collaborate Disseminate
If elected again, the former president might draw both on returning officials and yet-untapped pockets of talent.
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A bipartisan group of senators sent a letter to both the Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security on Monday urging them to take more action to defend the U.S. healthcare sector against hackers that have been exploiting the coronavirus pandemic. The senators warned that if Gen. Paul Nakasone, the commander of U.S. Cyber Command, and Christopher Krebs, Director of Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), don’t take more action to deter hackers, they will continue to pummel the U.S. healthcare sector will continue to get pummeled with coronavirus hacking campaigns. “Unless we take forceful action to deny our adversaries success and deter them from further exploiting this crisis, we will be inviting further aggression from them and others,” Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.; Tom Cotton, R-Ark.; Mark Warner, D-Va.; David Perdue, R-Ga.; and Edward Markey, D-Mass. write. “The cybersecurity threat to our stretched and stressed medical and public health systems should […]
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US lawmakers asked intelligence to look into whether the app and others like it could pose a security threat or be used to influence opinion. Continue reading TikTok says no, senators, we’re not under China’s thumb
The Senate should have an annual tally of when its computers and smartphones have been breached in order to better inform congressional cybersecurity policy, a pair of bipartisan senators says in a letter sent Wednesday to the Senate Sergeant at Arms. Describing Congress as a perennial target for hackers, Sens. Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas, and Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, have asked the Senate Sergeant at Arms (SAA) to be transparent in providing lawmakers with information about the scale of successful hacks of Senate devices, including smartphones. They want annual reports sent to each senator with aggregate data on compromises of computers and other breaches of sensitive Senate data. The senators also asked the SAA to notify the Senate leadership, along with members of the rules and intelligence committees, within five days of breaches to Senate computers being discovered. Right now, lawmakers appear to be in the dark on the issue. “We believe […]
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A bipartisan trio of senators have asked the Department of Commerce to clarify that U.S. companies are welcome to remove products from their networks made by controversial Chinese telecom company ZTE. Republican Sens. Tom Cotton, Ark., and Marco Rubio, Fla., along with Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., say they strongly support the department’s April “denial order” barring ZTE from buying U.S. technology components for seven years. However, the senators are concerned that the order is ambiguous to the point of hindering the removal of ZTE gear from U.S. infrastructure. On Monday, they wrote Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross asking his department to issue guidance and waivers to help U.S. companies clear their networks of ZTE software and hardware. U.S. officials have long warned that the Chinese government could leverage technology built by ZTE and fellow Chinese telecom Huawei to spy on Americans – accusations the companies deny. The Commerce Department […]
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A bipartisan group of senators wants the Defense Department to explain how a popular fitness app apparently used by some U.S. military personnel, intelligence analysts and Pentagon officials led to the disclosure of secret bases and facilities around the world. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., wrote a letter to Defense Secretary James Mattis, questioning the department’s policy for employees using wireless networks and devices on military sites after. The app, Strava, inadvertently shared a heat map that recently detailed its users’ activities, prompting a DoD-wide review of personal electronics at its installations. The heat map revealed the locations of several secret U.S. military bases when the data was dumped in November. Patrick Shanahan, deputy secretary of Defense, was wearing a Fitbit watch up until last week, potentially exposing himself to this breach. If Android users using the fitness app don’t enable the “nomap” feature — which disables a Wi-Fi network […]
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Two senators have introduced a bill that would prohibit the U.S. government from contracting with companies that use equipment or services from Chinese telecommunications companies Huawei and ZTE. Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Tom Cotton, R-Ark., who are both on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said they are proposing the bill because of concerns that the companies enable Chinese espionage. The legislation is a companion to a bill proposed in the House by Rep. Mike Conaway, R-Texas, last month. “Huawei is effectively an arm of the Chinese government, and it’s more than capable of stealing information from U.S. officials by hacking its devices,” Cotton said in a press release. “There are plenty of other companies that can meet our technology needs, and we shouldn’t make it any easier for China to spy on us.” In 2012, the House Intelligence Committee released an investigative report that alleged that Huawei and ZTE have ties to […]
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Two senators have introduced a bill that would prohibit the U.S. government from contracting with companies that use equipment or services from Chinese telecommunications companies Huawei and ZTE. Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Tom Cotton, R-Ark., who are both on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said they are proposing the bill because of concerns that the companies enable Chinese espionage. The legislation is a companion to a bill proposed in the House by Rep. Mike Conaway, R-Texas, last month. “Huawei is effectively an arm of the Chinese government, and it’s more than capable of stealing information from U.S. officials by hacking its devices,” Cotton said in a press release. “There are plenty of other companies that can meet our technology needs, and we shouldn’t make it any easier for China to spy on us.” In 2012, the House Intelligence Committee released an investigative report that alleged that Huawei and ZTE have ties to […]
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