Today, Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-MO), Chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, made the following opening statement on the hearing, "Assessing DOD’s Assured Access to Micro-Electronics in Support of U.S. National Security Requirements:"
"The Department of Defense is highly reliant on acquiring customized and commercial off-the-shelf computers, communications equipment, integrated circuits, application software, and other information communications technology to maintain its crucial advantage over our adversaries, and in support of partner nations and allies around the world. The Department strives to develop cutting edge technology that provides superior capabilities to the warfighter to fulfill critical mission operations. In order to achieve that goal, the Department is dependent, in part, on its ability to incorporate rapidly evolving, leading-edge microelectronic devices into its defense systems, including technologies for which there is little or no commercial demand. More concerning, and with increasing frequency, commercial business trends are forcing the Department and its commercial supplier base to rely on foreign owned companies to produce some of the most advanced technology solutions.
Although the globalization of the semi-conductor industry has increased the pace of technological innovation, it also raises national security concerns for the United States. The functionality of the Department’s mission-critical systems and networks extensively leverages commercial, globally sourced microelectronics. However, this consequently provides state and non-state adversaries an opportunity to corrupt our supply chain. At one end are counterfeit microelectronics, which can have detrimental performance impacts on our systems, all the way to systems specifically designed to introduce malicious code into the supply chain, and otherwise gain illicit access to the Department’s military systems and networks.
In 2003, the Defense Science Board Task Force on High Performance Microchip Supply concluded that the Department had, and I quote, 'no overall vision of its future microelectronics components needs and how to deal with them. Technology and supply problems are addressed as they arise. An overall vision would enable the Department to develop approaches to meeting its needs before each individual supply source becomes an emergency', un-quote. Not until six years later, in 2009 and in response to legislation contained in the fiscal year 2009 National Defense Authorization Act, did the Department develop a strategy to address the issue of assured access to secure and reliable microelectronics. But even today, the implementation and successful execution of that strategy is questionable, and the uncertainty of the Department’s ability to maintain military superiority in critical leading-edge microelectronics technologies is in doubt by many on this committee.
Recently, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, approved the acquisition of IBM’s microelectronics foundry, the Department’s sole-source, U.S.-based supplier for leading-edge microelectronics, by a foreign-owned company. Now that the IBM is no longer available as a guaranteed source for the Department’s needs for trusted microelectronics, the Department is facing potentially alarming vulnerabilities as a consequence of relying on a sole-source supplier for leading-edge microelectronics for the past 10 years.
The risks to the Department’s increases dramatically with the loss of IBM’s Trusted Foundry, and will be further exacerbated as long as no clear solution exists for how the Department plans to mitigate this challenge. Together, we must solve the challenges confronting the Department’s assured access to trusted microelectronics in a long-term, sustainable, efficient, and most important, affordable fashion.
Today at this hearing we hope to learn more about the risks and issues confronting the Department in acquiring secure, trusted leading-edge microelectronics, and we hope to understand more about the Department’s strategy, and any course corrections needed, to address these issues."
