HR 9769 Passed in House – Chinese Cyber Threats

Today the House took up HR 9769, the Strengthening Cyber Resilience Against State-Sponsored Threats Act, under the suspension of the rules process. After seven minutes of debate, the House passed the bill by a voice vote. The bill would require CISA to establish an interagency task force to “detect, analyze, and respond to the cybersecurity threat posed by State-sponsored cyber actors, including Volt Typhoon, of the People’s Republic of China”. The task force would submit annual classified reports to Congress. No new funding is authorized by this legislation.

The bill now proceeds to the Senate. With the short amount of time left in the session, the only way that this bill will be considered would be under the Senate's unanimous consent process, but a single voice could cut short that consideration. 

Review - Committee Hearings – Week of 12-9-24

This week, possibly the next to last week of the 118^th Congress, with both the House and Senate in session, there is a fairly limited number of hearings on both sides of the Hill. Hearings include a look at drone defense and communications security. There are two bills of interest here that will be considered in the House under the suspension of the rules process. And we will probably see the House pass the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act.

Hearings

Drone Defense - On Tuesday, two subcommittees of the House Homeland Security Committee will hold a hearing on “Safeguarding the Homeland from Unmanned Aerial Systems”.

Communications Security - On Wednesday, the Subcommittee on Communications, Media and Broadband of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Technology Committee will hold a hearing on “Communications Networks Safety and Security”.

Suspension of the Rules

HR 9769 [removed from paywall] – Strengthening Cyber Resilience Against State-Sponsored Threats Act, and

HR 9689 [removed from paywall] – DHS Cybersecurity Internship Program Act

NDAA

There is a note on the bottom of the House schedule: “Legislation related to the National Defense Authorization Act is expected.” This will be the amendment to the Senate amendment to HR 5009 that I briefly discussed last night.

 

For more information on these hearings, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/committee-hearings-week-of-12-9-24 - subscription required.

Review - HR 9769 Introduced – Chinese Cyber Threats

Last month, Rep Lee (R,FL) introduced HR 9769, the Strengthening Cyber Resilience Against State-Sponsored Threats Act. The bill would require CISA to establish an interagency task force to “detect, analyze, and respond to the cybersecurity threat posed by State-sponsored cyber actors, including Volt Typhoon, of the People’s Republic of China”. The task force would submit annual classified reports to Congress. No new funding is authorized by this legislation.

Moving Forward

On September 25^th, the House Homeland Security Committee conducted a business meeting where twenty pieces of legislation were considered. Among them was HR 9769, which was passed by a voice vote. This means that there is substantial bipartisan support for the bill. This will probably clear the way for the bill to be considered by the full House under the suspension of the rules process; limiting debate, prohibiting floor amendments and requiring a super majority vote for passage.

Commentary

There is no mention of the intelligence community in either the composition of the task force or provision of intelligence information in support of the Task Force’s information collection. While CISA and the FBI will have some internally developed information on the topic of Chinese cybersecurity threats, the bulk (and widest scope) of such information will be held by the intelligence community. I suspect that this was deliberately overlooked by the crafters of the bill to avoid sharing congressional oversight with (or even surrendering it to) the House Intelligence Committee.

 

For more information on the provisions of this bill, including some additional commentary, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/hr-9769-introduced - subscription required.

Bills Introduced – 9-24-24

Yesterday, with both the House and Senate in session, there were 67 bills introduced. Three of those bills will receive additional attention in this blog:

• HR 9768 Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative Act Swalwell, Eric [Rep.-D-CA-14]

• HR 9769 Strengthening Cyber Resilience Against State-Sponsored Threats Act Lee, Laurel M. [Rep.-R-FL-15]

• HR 9770 Cyber PIVOTT Act Green, Mark E. [Rep.-R-TN-7] 

As I reported on Monday (subscription required), these three bills are scheduled to be included in a House Homeland Security markup hearing today.