Opening Statements

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Representative Don Bacon (R-NE), Chairman of the Cyber, Information Technologies, and Innovation Subcommittee, delivered the following opening remarks at a hearing on the review of the Department of Defense's cyber posture for Fiscal Year 2026. 

Stream the hearing here.

Rep. Bacon's opening remarks as prepared for delivery: 

Good morning everyone, and welcome to today’s hearing on the Department of Defense’s cyber warfare enterprise.

Since taking the gavel, many of you have heard me refer to this panel simply as the cyber subcommittee.

This is not a reflection of our other core responsibilities, but rather that our oversight of the military’s cyberwarfare posture is the most operational mission under the Subcommittee’s jurisdiction. 

We are at war in the cyber domain.  

In just the last two years, the United States has been directly and deliberately attacked by the Peoples’ Republic of China and other nation-states in the cyber domain.  

VOLT TYPHOON, SALT TYPHOON, FLAX TYPHOON and countless other cyber-attacks have taken aim at U.S. transportation, energy, water, telecommunications, and other critical infrastructure.  

It’s time to stop talking about preparing for conflict because we are already in one.  

I, for one, believe that it’s now time that we start acting like it.

However recent actions by this administration raise concern for me as to whether they truly believe it.

First, is the issue of leadership.  

A few weeks ago, the Commander of U.S. Cyber Command and director of the National Security Agency – the two most important cyber organizations in the United States Government -- was relieved from command without any explanation.  

General Haugh was the most cyber-experienced officer to ever hold this position…he was widely respected by his people and his peers and feared by our enemies.  

Removing him from the cyber battlefield in this way served absolutely NO national security interest.  

All this did was help China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea do what they could not do themselves.     

Second, is renewed speculation about the separation of the “dual-hat,” relationship between CYBERCOM and NSA, a construct that proves its value to our national security every minute of every day.

This issue has been studied exhaustively but somehow there are still those who believe they know better.

I’ve spoken to my colleagues on this panel and our friends in the Senate, and on a bipartisan and bicameral basis, the Armed Services Committees are strongly opposed to ending the dual hat relationship.

I want to take this opportunity to make very clear to the Department’s leadership that if they believe they have allies on this issue who sit on the Pentagon’s Congressional oversight panels, they do not. 

Third, I remain very concerned about the state of our cyber training and readiness.

General Hartman’s statement noted that the Service Cyber Components only recently attained “foundational readiness standards”.  

Foundational readiness has a very specific meaning, and the fact that it took us more than a dozen years to reach this point is not something to celebrate.  

To succeed in the cyber domain, we need far more than “foundational readiness” and I am particularly interested in hearing from you what you need to create and sustain a high level of readiness across the cyberwarfare enterprise.  

I believe a good starting point is to ensure the cyber readiness metrics reported to Congress are meaningful, accurate, and honest.  

As we discussed with your teams at the last cyber quarterly brief, we don’t request these numbers to hear good news, but to understand ground truth and focus our finite time and effort on what we need to improve.

I say all this because our adversaries are clearly NOT deterred from acting against us, and we are clearly NOT meeting our potential in developing the cyber capability, capacity and posture that is commensurate with the threat.  

Over my last eight years on this committee, I have often heard how “we are getting better”.

That may be true, but it’s been 15 years and we should be there by now.  

I ask both of you here today to help us chart a course to get us there quickly.

With that, I want to introduce our witnesses, Ms. Laurie Buckhout and LTG Joe Hartman.

Ms. Buckhout and I actually served together in the Pentagon a lifetime ago dealing with electronic warfare matters, and I’m excited to be working with her again in her present role, performing the duties of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Cyber Policy.

LTG Hartman is the Acting Commander of U.S. Cyber Command and Acting Director of the National Security Agency.

He assumed this role after his predecessor, and my friend, Gen. Tim Haugh was relieved by the President nearly two months ago. 

I now turn to Ranking Member Khanna for his opening remarks and then we’ll hear from our witnesses.