Source: United States House of Representatives – Congressman Michael McCaul (10th District of Texas)
WASHINGTON – At today’s House Homeland Security Committee hearing, Congressman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) — chairman emeritus of the committee and chairman of the committee’s Task Force on Enhancing Security for Special Events — asked Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin about the status of security preparations ahead of the first FIFA World Cup match next week.
As chairman of the Congressional Artificial Intelligence (AI) Caucus and the original author of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Act that created CISA, McCaul also discussed the need for DHS to retain a leading role in the Treasury Department’s new AI clearinghouse.
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Full Exchange:
McCaul: Thank you Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Mr. Secretary. In such a short period of time, [the] leadership you brought to the department [has] been really phenomenal. Getting the funding, working with members of Congress, your accessibility means a lot to us. And when you met with us privately to talk about the funding, you got it done. We still have to get CBP and ICE, but it has allowed you to do a lot of things that I was concerned about as chairman of the special events task force with respect to the FIFA World Cup and the 250th anniversary.
As you know, while these are great entertainment and sporting games, they also provide a high threat environment. I also want to commend you [for], when we spoke at the Weapons of Mass Destruction office, how quickly you were able to restore that, and [for] working with Congress. And I think that’s the way it should be. So I just want to thank you at the outset for that.
I wanted to see if you could expand, to the extent you can in this room, given the funding that came through, [on] what you’re able to do now to make sure these games are safe. My biggest concern are the drone threats — as we’ve seen from Iran Shahed drones to Ukraine and Russia, that kind of attack here in the United States.
Mullin: Congressman, I want to say, first of all, thank you for your leadership in the WMD program. You see the threat there, and our conversation was very helpful, and your leadership on making sure that we were able to realign it and have the funding to do so is not unnoticed throughout all DHS. So thank you for that.
Drones are my biggest concern too. We have spent a tremendous amount of ability and money to be able to be very offensive with drones, but on the counter-drone measures, everybody’s a little behind. I will tell you, all 11 of the facilities do have counter-drone equipment at the facilities. We have CBP that has five stadiums, United States Coast Guard has two, FPS has one, and FBI has three. So we’re well prepared for it.
And we learned a couple things lately too. At the F1 in Miami, we had eight drones that entered the space that shouldn’t be there. We were able to bring them down and find out where they came from and find the individuals, or arrest them [on] some occasions. During the Augusta golf tournament, we had 12 that entered a no-fly zone. We were able to bring those down too. Every single day we improve, but that is a huge concern that we have within the stadium.
I also have concerns outside the stadium, in the fan fest area, in the soft areas that’s outside security. The lone individual that’s got this crazy mindset about him, maybe it’s because of too much alcohol, maybe it’s because of the temperature, maybe it’s because his team lost, maybe because he’s too excited, whatever it is. Those areas do concern me, but we have a lot of partnership with our local law enforcement that is going to be out there in that area to make it as hard of an area as it can to take the soft look away.
McCaul: On cyber, I authorized CISA many years ago into the law. The idea was to make it the civilian interface [from] the private sector to the federal government. There was a debate in Congress at the time about NSA taking this over. We didn’t think that was the right place for this; they’re offensive. It’s worked, and I think we’ve built up CISA’s capabilities.
I’m a little concerned… I know in the latest executive order on AI that the president is putting the Treasury Department in the spearhead role as the clearinghouse for that effort. While I understand FinCEN and the financial sector being threatened by a lot of cyber models out there, I just want to reiterate the intent of Congress was for DHS to be the point agency on this.
Mullin: CISA interacts with just about every other agency out there. When we started looking at the biggest threats that AI is used for, it is through financial gain. But there isn’t a single agency that DHS doesn’t have counter operations with. [This is] why Treasury [Secretary] Scott Bessent and I talk all the time. He is very capable. We are very comfortable with what’s happening there with him leading in this area, because we’re partnering with CISA and our tools, with the unique authority we have. And then, he has separate authorities, so because of the coordination, I think we’re better prepared than just leaving it within DHS.
McCaul: Excellent. Thanks for that answer.