Sen. King: Cyber domain is a ‘hellscape’ that will be made worse by cuts

Sen. Angus King (I-ME) on Tuesday said that recent cuts across the government have weakened U.S. cybersecurity even as attacks against infrastructure and business skyrocket.

“The cyber domain is the hellscape right now, the number of attacks,” King said, speaking in an interview held at a Politico event in Washington, D.C. “This should be an all hands on deck, hair on fire kind of thing and I don't see the administration moving in that direction … I don’t think we have a strategy yet.”

King cited cyber job losses at the State Department, Justice Department and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA), saying that the U.S. is getting “the shit kicked out of us” at a time when the administration is “unilaterally disarming” cyber defenses.

King, a leading voice in the Senate on cybersecurity issues and a member of the Senate Intelligence and Armed Services committees, honed in on the thousands of staffers and experts laid off by CISA, saying the agency has lost 30 percent of its staff and most of its seasoned leaders. 

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The private sector accounts for 85% of the target space in cyber, King said, citing the elimination of the CISA office in charge of public private partnerships as a particularly concerning development. He also lambasted cuts to the State Department, saying it is striking that that agency’s international coordinator for cybersecurity position has been sitting empty.

Speaking on a panel held after King’s interview, David Harvilicz, Assistant Secretary for Cyber, Infrastructure, Risk & Resilience Policy at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, pushed back on the senator’s characterization of reckless cuts by the administration.

“Throwing money at the problem, it doesn't really work in cybersecurity,” Harvilicz said. “It's not something that we can just hire bodies to fill seats.”

Harvilicz said that by picking “world class executives” Sean Cairncross and Sean Plankey to run the Office of the National Cyber Director and CISA, the Trump administration has set itself up for “very sophisticated, very intelligent responses” to cyber threats.