Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, the Senate is expected to vote this afternoon to confirm Jim Bridenstine of Oklahoma to be the Administrator of NASA, or the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. For more than 15 months, our national space agency has been without permanent leadership. This is far too long, especially considering the incredibly important work that NASA is undertaking on a daily basis.

The agency is currently working with the commercial space industry, for example, to resume launches of American astronauts to the International Space Station, rather than have to rely on the Russians to transport American astronauts into space. Additionally, teams at NASA are developing the Space Launch System, or SLS, and the Orion capsule. These are components of a rocket system that is the most powerful one built since the Saturn V that sent Neil Armstrong to the Moon. It will pave the way, hopefully, to one day landing astronauts on Mars.

Having a permanent Administrator in place is important not just so the agency itself can function but so NASA can have an impact on our entire country. Having appropriate leadership means NASA can continue to benefit Texans who work there, with jobs and opportunities to research, collaborate, and innovate across disciplines.

The Administrator is charged with selecting the Directors of each of the agency's space centers around the country. This, too, is important. One reason is because at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Dr. Ellen Ochoa, the current director, is stepping down next month, after years of distinguished service. It is critical that we have a competent replacement for her and ensure seamless transition after she leaves. Part of the way we do that is by making sure that this nominee is confirmed today.

We in Texas are, I believe, justifiably proud of the Johnson Space Center. The JSC heads the manned spaceflight program for NASA, which manages the U.S. presence at the International Space Station, among other operations. JSC employs roughly 10,000 people, and virtually all U.S. astronauts pass through it, at one time or another, to receive training. Currently, JSC is involved in developing the Orion capsule, which I spoke of a moment ago. One hundred sixty-nine companies are collaborating with NASA on its launch, creating nearly 800 jobs--not all of them in the Houston region. In fact, in multiple locations around the country, the commercial space industry is growing rapidly. In 2014, the Midland International Air and Space Port became the first federally licensed facility by the FAA for both airline flights and commercial space flights. That is just one of several examples.

Meanwhile, in Washington, we have to continue to do our part supporting U.S. space exploration. Last year, I was proud to have my legislation, called the MANIFEST Act, signed into law as part of the NASA reauthorization, and I hope to collaborate on similar legislation in the future with colleagues.

If we want to keep pushing toward the final frontier, our first step is to ensure that we have a strong Administrator at the helm, and that is why I intend to vote to support the nomination this afternoon. Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act

Madam President, I wish to switch gears to another issue. I have spoken quite a few times recently about U.S. relations with China, both the opportunities and the concerns that we should have. Last week, I held a hearing in the Finance Subcommittee on International Trade, Customs, and Global Competitiveness to examine the challenges that U.S. businesses, manufacturers, and service providers face when they are trying to access the Chinese market.

The President spoke about this issue in his State of the Union when he called for reciprocity. In other words, we expect to be treated as well as we treat Chinese investment in the United States when we and our companies invest in China, but that is not happening.

I have also been spending a lot of time looking at the long-term national security implications that China poses to our country, which is why I was proud to join our colleague, the senior Senator from California, Mrs. Feinstein, to recently introduce legislation that will strengthen the process by which the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, otherwise known as CFIUS, weighs national security risks. The CFIUS process was not originally designed, and is now insufficient, to address rapidly evolving technology, as well as the threats to our technological edge, particularly when it comes to dual- use technology that is important for national security reasons. The committee's current jurisdiction and the staffing is both too narrow and inadequate in order to address these evolving threats.

China, in particular, has proven adept at circumventing the current CFIUS process. It exploits gaps and creatively structures business arrangements within the United States to evade scrutiny. That can mean that there would be no scrutiny of those transactions on national security grounds, which is a troubling situation that our bill, the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act, or FIRRMA, is meant to address. The weaponization of trade and the use of coercive industrial policies are tools that China has been using for some time, and it is imperative that we give CFIUS the full authority it needs to ensure that our advantage in the U.S. military know-how and technology are not stolen from us and used against us.

It is important to note, in the wake of some critics' flawed objections, that my bill does not try to address all, or even most, outbound investments. Rather, it addresses a narrow subset--joint ventures where tech-related intellectual property and know-how are transferred. This is a threat to our industrialized base, or jobs, here in America. If somebody can acquire both the intellectual property and the know-how to make that technology in China, obviously, those are jobs we will not have in the United States.

It is true that these technology transfers are already sometimes covered under current export controls, but the problem is that the harm to our national security is occurring despite those current export controls. So we need to do more. We need to step up to the challenge.

Export controls are not an adequate solution to the situation we are now dealing with because of their inherent limitations. For example, the intellectual property that is at the heart of many of these joint ventures implicates technology that the Commerce Department has, in fact, decontrolled; that is, removed from the relevant export control list.

One last point I need to emphasize is that currently joint ventures are often carefully structured, as I suggested a moment ago, to circumvent this review process. These joint ventures are essentially acquisitions by another name, which is why CFIUS should be able to review them for national securities risks.

Let me be clear, though. Foreign investment is a good thing. These joint ventures are not inherently bad, but we do know that China has used them strategically as a vessel for its activities to try to undermine both our national security edge and jobs in America. Foreign actors know that CFIUS, under normal circumstances, would block their attempt to acquire certain business units outright. So they have been very creative in structuring transactions to obtain the very same industrial capabilities by other means.

To address the national security risks, what we need is an upfront U.S. governmental review, informed by our intelligence assessments, of the foreign partners that are involved. We need to ask whether these foreign partners are affiliated with the Chinese military, for example, or some other potential adversary.

In China, there is no separation between public and private sectors because the Communist Party sits atop the entire Government of China and is basically embedded within all of these Chinese companies. They have an ``all of government'' strategy focused at beating the United States, economically and militarily.

I believe the opponents of the reforms that I have just talked about are trying to perpetuate the status quo as long as possible--not to protect our national security interests but just the opposite--so they can bolster their bottom line, regardless of its potential negative effects on the rest of our country and on our national security.

We simply cannot afford to wait while China whittles away at our technological advantages. The time to act is now. Our national security demands that CFIUS and export controls be made to be interlocking and mutually reinforcing, rather than simply relying on export controls to address these national security risks, which would be foolhardy.

If we want our country to retain its technological advantage and remain the top military superpower in the world, enacting this bill is an essential piece of that. After all, if China supplants the United States--it is not only the top economic but military superpower in the world--the repercussions there will be enormous. We simply have not faced that situation where the U.S. Armed Forces were not the most powerful military in the world since before World War II. It is dangerous, as that war pointed out, when you have countries building their military, acting more belligerently, and inviting retaliation. Let's not start now.

The bipartisan bill that Senator Feinstein and I have filed has been endorsed by the White House and is supported by the current Secretaries of Defense, Treasury, and Commerce, as well as the Attorney General of the United States. Let's not hold it up any longer.

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Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain).

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