Mike Rounds Questions CIA Director John Ratcliffe About Spectrum Auctions And National Security

2 days ago

At Tuesday's Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) questioned CIA Director John Ratcliffe about spectrum and national security.

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Transcript

00:02Senator Rounds.

00:03Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

00:04First of all, thank you to all of you for your service to our country.

00:07With regard to the issue surrounding Signal,

00:10I'm going to address it, but I'm going to address it in the closed session

00:15so that we can get more in-depth into that issue.

00:18In the meantime, I want to direct my first question to Director Ratcliffe.

00:22As the debate continues in Washington regarding Spectrum,

00:27what can you share in this unclassified setting regarding the critical nature of Spectrum

00:32to national security interests generally?

00:38Thanks for the question, Senator.

00:42I know this is an issue of great interest to the Senate

00:47and the potential auction of commercial space on Spectrum.

00:55Those, as you correctly point out, the discussions about Spectrum,

00:59I will start out by saying there are national security implications

01:03from such an auction to take place to both the DOD and the IC.

01:09I think the discussions that we need to have in a classified setting,

01:16I can relate to you that the direction from early meetings that we've had

01:21is that the discussion about where that might take place

01:25would not affect specifically CIA or IC equities,

01:29and I hope that's the case and where the discussion goes.

01:32But I think we need to be concerned that a public auction at bands at certain levels

01:38would have an impact on our ability to deliver an accurate intelligence picture.

01:44In other words, there are parts of the Spectrum

01:47which simply cannot be shared with the commercial.

01:50That's correct.

01:51All right. Thank you.

01:52And we can talk about the specific reasons about why in a classified setting

01:57that would cause a diminishment of our ability to deliver a good threat picture

02:04to the Commander-in-Chief.

02:05And in some cases, life or death consequences involved.

02:09Absolutely.

02:12Director Patel, first of all, I just want to thank you for what you are doing,

02:17and I know that there's a number of items that in your previous life you did

02:20that simply can't be discussed,

02:22but nonetheless we've appreciated what you have done for your country already.

02:26Today I just want to talk to you about we've seen a series of public news reports

02:31about ISIS threats within the United States,

02:34and there have been several successful interdictions, Oklahoma City, Philadelphia, New York.

02:42Although the question remains as to the total number of ISIS operatives

02:45who were able to breach porous borders in the months and years before policy changes in this January,

02:52January of 2025, to what extent is the FBI tracking operatives who remain in the United States today,

02:59and what is the FBI doing to track them down?

03:03Thank you, Senator.

03:04I appreciate your question and your comments.

03:06So the priorities at the FBI since I took over have been violent crime and national security,

03:11and this speaks directly to national security.

03:14The direction for the FBI is to track down any individuals with any terrorist ties whatsoever,

03:21whether it be ISIS or another foreign terrorist organization,

03:24and now to include the new designations of the cartels down south and elsewhere.

03:28So the FBI is utilizing our Joint Terrorism Task Force, which are situated in all 55 field offices,

03:35but the key to success there is our partnership with state and local law enforcement

03:39who have the ground-level intelligence on some of these operatives.

03:42And as you've highlighted, we've already shut down numerous threats,

03:45and we've identified publicly where permissible these threats and individuals and where they're coming from.

03:51And I think the FBI is doing a very good job right now in collecting this information through our interagency process,

03:58and we will continue to thwart every bad actor affiliated with a terrorist organization or otherwise.

04:06And, Director Hawk, first of all, you've talked a little bit already about Salt Typhoon,

04:12but what I want to really get into is the things that are moving right now that you haven't had a chance to address,

04:17and in particular, Cyber Comm 2.0 and the need to accelerate that particular plan moving forward.

04:23Can you talk just briefly, I've got 40 seconds left,

04:26talk to us a little bit about how critical 2.0 is in terms of countering the cyber activity that's going on through nefarious actors.

04:35Well, Senator, what we were asked to do by Congress was to look at what's the force generation model for the Department of Defense

04:42to be able to generate cyber forces.

04:44Based off of that request, I produced a recommendation for the Secretary that outlined three critical things,

04:51which is really how we manage the talent, how we develop the talent in the department,

04:55and also how we equip that talent underpinned by computing AI.

04:58We've brought that plan initially back to Secretary Hegseth.

05:01He told us to go faster.

05:03We've delivered him that plan, and now, based off of his guidance,

05:07we will now begin to move forward with the rest of the department.

05:10Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mike Rounds Questions CIA Director John Ratcliffe About Spectrum Auctions And National Security

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