Back in July, Rep Underwood (D,IL) introduced HR 9797, the Resources for Emergency and Security Infrastructure Logistics in Every Neighborhood to Curb Extremism (RESILIENCE) Act of 2026. The bill would require CISA to “establish a one-year pilot program for appropriate State, local, Tribal, and territorial government officials to be trained by appropriate Agency officials regarding carrying out security vulnerability or terrorism risk assessments of critical infrastructure facilities.” No new funding is authorized by this legislation.
According to a press release issued by Underwood’s office:
“Keeping our communities safe means making sure the people responsible for protecting us have access to the resources, tools, and information that they need to do their jobs,” said Representative Lauren Underwood. “The RESILIENCE Act strengthens partnerships between the federal government and State, local, Tribal, and territorial governments, expands access to security training and resources, and helps communities better prepare for evolving threats.”
Moving Forward
Neither Underwood, nor her sole cosponsor, Rep Case (D,HI), are members of the House Homeland Security Committee to which this bill was assigned for consideration. This means that there is not likely to be sufficient influence to see the bill considered by that Committee. I do not see anything in the bill that would engender any organized opposition, and I suspect that it would receive some measure of bipartisan support were it to be considered.
Commentary
Legislation like this raises questions about whether security assessment should be conducted by the government, at whatever level, or by private sector businesses. Society as a whole has a certain amount of interest in ensuring that critical infrastructure is relatively security against terrorist attack. That would certainly seem to support governmental risk assessments. Unfortunately, that dumps the fiscal support for such assessments in the laps of the taxpayer; and that tends to overly limit the size of the bureaucracy that would be necessary to support such efforts. The other extreme, leaving the issue to the private sector to solve would limit the number of organizations that would spend their hard-earned money on activities that are not profit generating. In an environment where terrorist attacks are extremely rare, there does not seem to be a financial incentive for conducting these risk assessments.
For more information on the provisions of this bill, including additional commentary on the foolishness of providing security assessments without requiring mitigation efforts, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/hr-9797-introduced-sltt-risk-assessments - subscription required.
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