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Floor Speech

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Ms. SLOTKIN. Mr. President, I rise today to talk about something that threatens nearly every American: cyber attacks.

I call on my colleagues to pass the Protecting America from Cyber Threats Act--a no-brainer step to defend our citizens from cyber threats.

This is a very wonky law, but it has a very, very simple objective: to encourage companies, private sector companies, to report hacks to the government so that together we can prevent it from happening again. This bill extends protections defined back in 2015 that encouraged companies to report cyber attacks to the Federal Government. It minimizes the risks companies once faced in reporting these hacks, and in doing so, it makes us all safer.

Extending these protections has never been more important. Today, cyber attacks are top of mind for Americans across the country and certainly across the political spectrum.

Two months ago, I traveled to Benton Harbor, MI, and Troy, MI--two communities--to talk about national security threats and what is keeping Michiganders up at night. Nearly every single person, regardless of profession or party, had a story about cyber crime: identity theft, robocalls, and scams robbing people of their life savings; hacks on hospitals for patient data; and shutdown access to electronic records.

As a former CIA officer and Pentagon official, I have responded to countless threats to American security, but never before have we seen American citizens so exposed to security threats here at home. In the age of cyber warfare, everyday Americans are quite literally on the frontlines. And Americans know the stakes. That is why they are scared. One Michigander said to me: Warfare is still on the ground--still things like rockets--but it has also changed; cyber warfare can be just as brutal.

But more than scared, Michiganders are frustrated. They don't believe that their government is taking the threat of cyber crime seriously, and if we don't renew this law, we will prove them right.

On October 1, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015 expired--this last October 1. That means that companies are no longer incentivized to report hacks to the Federal Government.

When a company self-reports a cyber attack, there is no longer a law to prevent the Justice Department from using that admission against them, and companies once again are incentivized to hide hacks from the government, which makes us all less safe.

Companies have to see the government as an ally, not as a threat, and our safety depends on it because, unlike other threats like tanks and nukes and subs, the weapons used in cyber crimes are not created, owned, and controlled by a government; they are from the private sector. So we have to work together to prevent these attacks.

This law has already been consequential. The Department of Homeland Security used it to respond to China's relentless Salt Typhoon campaign, which targeted every single American's unencrypted phone calls and text messages.

As long as the law remains expired, America is less safe. As long as we refuse to renew it, we are moving backwards in keeping the country secure.

Today, very simply, I am calling on my colleagues to renew these protections for another 10 years--they are renewed for 10 years at a time--so we can restore our cyber security defenses and better protect our Nation. There is no good reason not to renew it. Businesses support it. The Trump administration supports it. My colleagues on both sides of the aisle support it.

I know there is a proposal out there to extend the law--instead of 10 years--for just 5 weeks, in the House's version of the temporary funding bill, but it is such a pivotal time for something that is actually a bipartisan consensus idea, half measures shouldn't do. We have known that this was going to expire for 10 years. Americans deserve to have us not kick the can down the road for another 5 weeks. There is too much at stake, particularly given the losses among the American public.

Some things are bigger than party politics, and national security should always be one of them. This law is essential to keeping the country safe, to keeping Americans safe, so I urge my colleagues to renew it.

182, S. 2983; that the Peters substitute amendment, which is at the desk, be considered and agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

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