Review - HR 4350 Reported in House – FY 2022 NDAA

HR 4350, the FY 2022 National Defense Authorization Act, was introduced as a mere framework for the final bill. Over the summer recess the subcommittees and full House Armed Services Committee did the complicated (and often politically challenging) process of fleshing out the details of that bill. A reported version of the bill is now ready for consideration by the House as are two Committee reports (original report and supplemental). The bill contains a number of cyber operational provisions, but none of particular importance here. There are three relevant cybersecurity provisions and one interesting counter-drone provision that will be covered here.

As I said earlier this morning, the House Rules Committee is meeting today to construct the rule under which this bill will be considered in the House this week. There have been over 500 amendments submitted to the Committee, but only a limited number (not that limited, probably between 100 and 200) will be allowed to be offered on the floor of the House.

A quick search of the amendments for the term ‘cyber’ revealed that just five amendments contained that term, and two of those were identical copies of S 658, the National Cybersecurity Preparedness Consortium Act of 2021, as introduced in the Senate.

The bill will almost certainly pass in the House. It will be interesting to see how many Republicans vote for the bill. In any case, the Senate will probably not consider the language produced in the House this week. While the Senate Armed Services Committee has yet to introduce their own bill, that will (when it is introduced) probably be the language considered in the Senate. Then a Conference Committee will craft a mashup of the two versions that could pass in both the House and Senate. I do not expect a final vote on this bill until December.

I will look at the Committee Report and Supplemental Report in a separate article.

For more details about the cybersecurity and counter-drone provisions in this bill, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/hr-4350-reported-in-house - subscription required.