Review - HR 278 Introduced – Cyber Defense National Guard

Earlier this month, Rep Jackson-Lee introduced HR 278, the Cyber Defense National Guard Act. The bill would require the Director of National Intelligence to conduct a study on “the feasibility of establishing a Cyber Defense National Guard”. No funding is authorized by this legislation.

The language of this bill is identical to HR 119 that was introduced in the 117^th Congress. There was no committee action on that bill in the last session.

Moving Forward

Jackson-Lee has not yet received any Committee assignments. This means that it is too early to determine if she would have sufficient influence to see the bill considered in the House Intelligence Committee, the committee to which this bill was assigned for consideration. Since this is a report only bill, I see nothing that would engender any organized opposition. I suspect that the bill would receive some level of bipartisan support if it were considered in committee.

Commentary

While it would seem odd that the DNI is tasked with the conduct of a study on the expansion of the National Guard, I think we can see the reason for that in the language of §2(b)(8):

“(8) the impact of the effectiveness of a Cyber Defense National Guard of the possibility that the population of potential recruits may be dominated by men and women without military, intelligence, law enforcement, or government work experience;”

The organization that Jackson-Lee envisions is not directly intended to be another branch of the NG, but probably an extension of the National Security Agency/Cyber Command with some level of support for State level cybersecurity operations. That would be an interesting construct, but I think that a direct integration with the National Guard Bureau would provide for some level of administrative and logistic support that would have to be stood up for a stand-alone cyber national guard agency.

 

For more details about the study, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/hr-278-introduced - subscription required.