Keystone XL Pipeline Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. KING. Mr. President, first, as an original cosponsor of the good
Senator's bill, I compliment him for taking the leadership position he
has on this issue, for bringing it forward and so eloquently expressing
his support for it.

This is an important bill. I think it is one we all can agree on, on
a bipartisan basis. Let's get it through and to the President.

Cyber Security

Mr. President, I start with a question, a basic question: Why are we
here? Why do we have those jobs? What is it we are supposed to do? The
clearest expression of the answer to that question comes from the
preamble to the Constitution, which lays out exactly what our
responsibilities are.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more
perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic
Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the
general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to
ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this
Constitution for the United States of America.

This is the purpose of the Constitution. It is the purpose of the
government. The most solemn responsibility of any government, I would
submit--any government, anywhere, any time--is to provide for the
security of its citizens, to provide for the common defense. That is
our most solemn and fundamental responsibility.

We are not doing that right now. We are avoiding, missing,
obfuscating, and not dealing with one of the most serious threats
facing our country. I refer to the threat of cyber attack. Every
intelligence official I have talked to in the last 2 years, every
military official, everybody with any knowledge of the defense and the
security, the national security of this country, has emphasized that
the most serious threat we face right now is cyber.

What does that mean? Cyber attacks. The disabling of critical
infrastructure, attacks on our businesses, financial systems. This is a
direct threat that is heading at us like a freight train on a track.
The problem is we see it coming, but we are not doing what we should to
deal with it.

To say it is coming is kind of an understatement. This is an unusual
chart, but it goes in time from 2004 until today. It is basically the
frequency and size of cyber attacks in our country. The bigger bubbles
are bigger attacks. The smaller bubbles are smaller attacks. From 2004
to 2006, a few but not many. It is bubbling up and it is about to boil
over. Each year we have seen more attacks, larger attacks, more serious
attacks. The evidence is overwhelming that this is a threat we are
facing. Sony was a wake-up call if ever there was one. What if the Sony
attack had been the New York Stock Exchange or the railroad system,
where cars bearing toxic materials are derailed, or the natural gas
pipeline system or any other of the critical infrastructure of this
country, financial or physical, would have disabled us?

I was at a hearing yesterday in the Armed Services Committee. We had
the testimony of two of the wisest men in America--Brent Scowcroft,
Gen. Brent Scowcroft, who was the National Security Adviser to
President Ford and President George H.W. Bush, and Dr. Zbigniew
Brzezinski, who was the National Security Adviser to Jimmy Carter--
talking about threats.

Brent Scowcroft said he believes the cyber threat was analogous to
the nuclear threat: People would not be killed, but our country could
be destroyed. He saw this as one of the two fundamental threats we
face. Yet what are we doing in Congress? Not much. It is as if we got a
telegram from Admiral Yamamoto in 1941 saying, I am steaming toward
Pearl Harbor and we are going to wipe you out, and we did nothing, or a
telegram or a text message from Osama bin Ladin saying, We are heading
for the World Trade Center, what are you going to do, and we did
nothing.

We have the notice. It is right in front of us. Yet we are not
acting. What are the risks? The biggest risk is in the nature of our
society. The good news is we are the most technologically advanced
society on Earth. The bad news is we are the most technologically
advanced society on Earth--because it makes us vulnerable.

It is what they call an asymmetric vulnerability. We are the most
vulnerable because we are the most wired. We are in the most danger
because of our technical advancement. What can they do to us? This
gives you an idea of how this risk is accelerating and how it fits.
This is the number of devices in the world connected to the Internet.
Back in 2003 it was very few. By 2010 we were up to 10 billion devices
connected to the Internet. The projection is, by the end of this year,
we will be at 25 billion devices connected to the Internet. By 2020,
not that long from now, 50 billion devices will be connected to the Internet and therefore vulnerable to cyber attacks.

Critical infrastructure, I have mentioned. The financial system, what
would it do to the country if all of a sudden everybody's bank account
disappeared? Most of us, many workers in America, have their--we do not
see cash money or a paycheck. It goes electronically into our bank
account. What if all of that just disappeared? Chaos would ensue.

The same thing with transactions on the New York Stock Exchange or
the great transactions of our banks. It would be chaos that would
tumble through the economy and then into people's daily lives.
Transportation could be paralyzed. The simply act of messing around
with how red and green lights work in a major city could paralyze a
major city for hours, if not days.

The transportation of toxic or volatile compounds could be
compromised. Of course, the energy system, the electrical grid, we do
not realize how dependent we are on these modern facilities until they
go down. Periodically in Maine, when I was Governor, we had an ice
storm where three-quarters of our people lost electricity for sometimes
2 weeks at a time. We learned what a disaster that was. One of the
things we learned was that home furnaces, heating oil furnaces, need
electricity to fire. People got cold. It was not just: Gee. I cannot
watch TV tonight. It became life threatening.

The second area of vulnerability is financial. Data breaches, that is
something that is happening all of the time. Then, finally, property
ideas, theft of ideas. Where are these threats coming from? All over
the place. North Korea, Russia, China, Iran. Terrorist organizations
are now looking into the cyber field--hackers for hire, somebody in
some country or somebody's basement somewhere in the world who hires
out to take advantage of the vulnerability, particularly of the Western
countries and particularly the United States.

We are already incurring huge costs, the cost of these data breaches,
the cost of protection against these data breaches. Our financial
system is spending a huge amount of money to protect itself from these
breaches. We have to act. We have to act. It is beyond time to act.

My favorite quote from Mark Twain--and there are many. But my
favorite is: History doesn't always repeat itself, but it usually
rhymes.

History doesn't always repeat itself, but it usually rhymes.

Nothing new ever happens. This would not be the first time in history
a great nation ignored threats to its existence. In August of 1939,
Winston Churchill, in talking about the House of Commons, but he could
have been talking about the U.S. Congress:

At this moment in its long history, it would be disastrous,
it would be pathetic, it would be shameful for the House of
Commons to write itself off as an effective and potent factor
in the situation, or reduce whatever strength it can offer to
the firm front which the nation will make against aggression.

Earlier in the thirties he said--and this is a perfect analogy of
where we are today:

When the situation was manageable it was neglected, and now
that it is thoroughly out of hand we apply too late the
remedies which then might have effected a cure.

We are at the line between manageable and too late. I would argue it
is almost over that line. Now is the time that we have to act, but we
aren't acting because of a variety of reasons: the complexity of our
process--four committees have to consider cyber legislation; the
differences with the House; the differences with the White House. There
are all kinds of complications in our system which seem to be
preventing us from acting.

Again, Churchill is appropriate:

There is nothing new in the story. It is as old as the
Sibylline Books. It falls into that long, dismal catalogue of
the fruitlessness of experience and the confirmed
unteachability of mankind.

Boy, that is a dark judgment. Continuing:

Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would
be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of
counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation
strikes its jarring gong--these are the features which
constitute the endless repetition of history.

Let's act before the crisis starts. Let's act while we still have
time.

There are at least three bills that I know of that are available. One
is a bipartisan bill that was heavily negotiated in the Intelligence
Committee, came out of the committee I think 12 to 3 last summer. That
is available. It is a new Congress, but the ink is barely dry. There is
a bill that came out of the Judiciary Committee. A bill that came out
of the homeland security committee in December of 2012--and lost in
this body by a couple of votes--from my friends Senator Collins and
Senator Lieberman also dealt with this problem. In other words, we
don't have to start from zero. We don't have to invent these solutions;
we just have to have the will to put them in place. Yet we don't act.

People say: Well, we have national security, Senator. What are you
talking about? We are spending almost $600 billion a year on the
defense of this Nation.

And the answer is yes, but in some ways it reminds me of the famous
Maginot Line of France in the thirties. The Maginot Line has come to
symbolize a faulty defense premise, which really isn't true. The
Maginot Line worked. The problem was that the Maginot Line stopped. It
went from Switzerland to the Belgian border. It stopped at the Belgian
border, and the Germans came around it and behind it and overwhelmed
France in 6 days. So the problem wasn't that the Maginot Line was not
an effective defense--and our defense budget certainly is not
ineffective; it is absolutely essential. But we are not defending the
whole frontier. There is a piece of it, like Belgium, that is
undefended, and that is our failure.

So what are we going to say when the crisis strikes? What are we
going to say when we go home to our citizens in our home States when
the financial system goes down and people can't get their money? There
are threats of violence and violence across our country when toxic
waste is spilled in our waterways. What are we going to say? ``Well, we
would have done something about it, but that was in four committees,
and that was really hard'' or ``You know, we just got in this argument
with the White House and couldn't work it out'' or ``Gee, we would have
solved it and your paycheck wouldn't have disappeared except the
House--you know how they are.'' Can you imagine trying to defend
yourself with that kind of argument? You would be laughed out of the
place.

Come on. Let's do this. I don't know exactly how to proceed, except
maybe those four committees should get together, talk to each other,
and say: Let's bring a bill to the floor.

I would like to see this body decide that we are going to pass cyber
protection legislation between now and May 1. There is no reason we
can't do it. The bills are drafted. We just have to pull ourselves
together and take collective responsibility for defending our country.

If we don't do this--a friend and colleague on this floor yesterday--
we were talking about it, and he said: It is political malpractice if
we don't get this done.

This is a threat we know about. It is important. It is serious. We
know at least some of the important things we have to do to coordinate
better between the government and the private sector. We know how we
can help to solve this; we just have to summon the political will to do
it. And it isn't even that controversial. There are differences here
and there, but this isn't one of the big fights in the Senate where we
have great ideological differences, this is one where we should be able
to come together. It is a lack of coordination and a lack of political
will.

I don't know how I can say this more strongly. I think this is one of
our most fundamental responsibilities. I go back to the preamble to the
Constitution--the primary reason that governments are established and
that our government was established, one of the basic reasons is to
provide for the common defense. If we don't do that in the face of this
threat, shame on us. This is one of the most solemn responsibilities we
have as Senators, as Members of the Congress, and as members of the
Federal Government of the United States.

I deeply hope that the next several weeks and months will be a time
of productive discussions and a commitment to at least an attempted
solution, the beginning of a solution to thisgrave threat facing the United States of America.

I yield the floor.

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