Security threats with cia director william burns, director of National Intelligence avril haines and fbi director christopher wray. They are joined with other leaders by the committee to talk about the importance of continued support for ukraine, the israel hamas war, competition with china, border security, and efforts to combat the spread of misinformation. Held by the Intelligence Committee this is about two hours and 15 minutes. Ukraine, the israelhamas war, ukraine, competition with china, and efforts to combat the spread of misinformation. This is about two hours and 15 minutes. Good afternoon. I would like to call this hearing to order and welcome to our witnesses. Director of National Intelligence avril good afternoon. I would like to call this h hearing to order and welcome to our witnesses. Director of National Intelligence avril haines, cia director bill burns, fbi director chris ray, assistant secretary for intelligence and research at the state department brett holmgren. Director of National Security agency general timothy hopp and defense intelligently dea director jeffrey kreis. Thank you for appearing today before the senate Intelligence Committees annual worldwide threats hearing. It is important for congress and for the American People to hear directly from the leaders of our Intelligence Community about the threats and challenges facing the United States. I would like to first acknowledge the women and men of the u. S. Intel community. Most americans will never see the work you do behind the scenes, but be assured that the members of this committee know its importance and we thank you for what you do to keep america safe. The threat environment today is perhaps one of the most challenging we have seen in recent years. We have seen nations backsliding from democratic institutions, authoritarian systems seeking to impose their will upon neighbors while looking to undermined the International System that has been guarantor of security and stability since world war ii. We see the rise in competition around new technologies. We must ensure our institutions evolved to meet these new challenges, which means in my mind redefining what we think of as National Security. The icy was built to collect measures of hard power. How many ships, planes and military personnel and adversary might have. The nature of strategic competition today revolves as much about not only traditional military power but around nontraditional tools and the ability to harness emerging dual use technologies. For example, advanced Communication Networks can provide ubiquitous connectivity but also ubiquitous surveillance. Artificial intelligence can excel accelerate Software Development but can also accelerate malicious Cyber Attacks or the spread of misinformation. Biotechnology advancements may lead one day to curing cancer or eliminating famine but also may create new pathogens or even genetically engineered super soldiers. Access to Rare Minerals may help determine who shapes the Energy Future for the whole world. Compounding all of this, the nature of conflict increasingly allows adversaries to project power through asymmetrical means. For example, Cyber Attacks can disable Critical Infrastructure from thousands of miles away and are increasingly available to a widening array of actors. An expensive, unmanned systems, drones can threaten multibilliondollar ships. We are now even seeing the possibility of foreign adversaries urbanizing space in ways that can be massively destructive, not only to our National Security, but to our way of life and useful tools such as gps and satellite communications. Similarly, misinformation and disinformation are increasingly deployed cheaply by an array of adversarial actors. We all know that more than 60 countries, over half the worlds population, will vote this year and i am deeply concerned that democracy, including in the United States, is under greater threat than ever from these foreign adversaries. Bad actors like russia are particularly incentivized to interfere, even whats at stake in ukraine. Poll after poll increasingly demonstrates americans are mistrustful of traditional sources of information. While ai provides the tools to spread sophisticated misinformation at an unprecedented speed and scale admits to these threats are ability to respond has been hamstrung. Recent litigation pending before the Supreme Court has had a Chilling Effect on the voluntary sharing of information related to foreign maligned influence threats between u. S. Government agencies and social Media Companies. Today, i would like each of our witnesses to report on how their agencies and the ic as a whole are prepared and poised to meet these technologybased challenges and what more needs to be done. Even with this new landscape, more traditional National Security challenges remain. Terrorist groups still threaten our homeland. Over the last couple of years we have seen authoritarian powers challenging democratic norms, undermining the International Order and intimidating their neighbors. The peoples republic of china under xi jinping has presented an unprecedented challenge. A technoauthoritarian behemoth whose economy is intertwined with our own. Challenging Democratic Values, u. S. Leadership and global institutions. Often using enormous government subsidies. China has used substantial investment power to lead or attempt to dominate a range of Key Industries whether it be telecommunications, social media or genomics. Another authoritarian adversary , russia under putin has continued his brutal invasion of ukraine. Illegally using military forces to seize territory. Ukrainians have bravely been fending off the Russian Military for over two years, supported by partners around the world. The Russian Military has suffered severe losses of men and equipment. Close to 87 of russias prewar Ground Forces have been taken out of the conflict either by being killed or wounded. Now, as a result of his aggression, putin faces what hes always feared, a nato more united than ever. That said, this war is in a critical phase with a serious imbalance of equipment. My fear is the decision thus far by the house of representatives not to even take up legislation that would support ukraine in their fight against putin aggression has been one of the most shortsighted decisions on a National Security issue that i can possibly imagine. Without this assistance, ukrainian defenses will be disastrously undermined as well as Global Confidence in americas resolve will be undermined. That will be the case whether it comes from putin in europe or the prc in taiwan. As we convene, we also face continued instability in the middle east. The horrific terrorist attacks against israel civilians by hamas on october 7th have been followed by an incursion by israel that has cost an estimated 30,000 palestinians their lives. While iran and its key partners appeared to be deterred from widening the conflict for now, other iranian proxies have attempted to expand their conflict and drag in our country. At the same time, israels war against hamas has shown the difficulty of using military force alone to eradicate a nonstate actor embedded in a civilian population, especially one that has been so adept at using underground tunnels. Nited. Tunnels. And i worry that Prime Minister netanyahus conduct in the water threatens to undermine support for israel in the long term including in the United States. This International Support has been key to israels security and as a longtime friend of israel, this has great concern to me, for even israels supporting the United States. In addition, we convene this timely hearing as Congress Faces a pressing deadline on achy National Security program, section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act provides unique and critical foreign intelligence necessary to protect our National Security, enabling the ic to prevent and thwart terrorist attacks, track foreign spies, uncover economic espionage, protects u. S. Troops, expose human and Drug Trafficking and disrupt foreign Cyber Attacks, allowing this program to lapse would critically damage our National Security. In closing, we face an increasing array of diversity of challenge but we also have an opportunity to reinvigorate americas Democratic Values in face of autocracies like china and russia. We cannot take for granted either democracy or the International System that has kept americans safe for decades point maintaining both requires leadership, a conviction, and sacrifice. With that, let me now turn to the vice chairman. Thank you mr. Chairman. Thank you all for coming here today and i extend my thanks to the men and women who work underneath you, who do the important work of keeping our country safe. What i think you could describe as one of those pivotal moments in history where what life will be like for a generation is being determined by whats happening now and in the near future while events are changing perhaps faster than any other time in human history. I think we have to remind ourselves if we are going to talk about the specific threats, the whats, the wife, the bigger outline picture of why things are happening the way they are happening because i do think they are all interrelated. From the end of the cold war, i dont know when the end date is but lets say by the late 2000, we lived in a unipolar world. The United States was basically the only country in the world that could predict power everywhere and anytime and we were called upon to do many things in regards to that but other nationstates requested during that stage and i still think america by far, by every measure you could imagine culturally, military, remains the worlds strongest nation and should remain that way for the foreseeable future if we make the right choices. That order that we just do described was being challenged. Is being challenged by nationstates that frankly dont like the way the world looks now. They think it benefits america and hurts them and they want to remake a new world, perhaps even replace the world they think is beneficial to america and our democratic allies, with an alternative, if not at least a replacement, this new order that they seek. The chinese, they believe we are in inevitable decline and that their rise is inevitable, as well. Like i said, they dont like the rules of the world as they believe were written by america and our allies so they increasingly are taking it upon themselves and every opportunity to challenge them. At every domain. They steal our ideas on innovation and so forth so that their companies can do the things that we do but of course do it cheaper and flood markets with those products. I dont need to tell this panel are the members of this committee and the general public that theyre expanding their military capabilities in an extraordinary way to include not just projecting power in the indo pacific but around the world. They imitate loopholes in our laws and systems in this country, to buy up land, buy up companies, gain strategic advantage and industries and undermine our industries in return. They are a major part of flooding this country with deadly drugs that are destroying communities and ravaging entire families. Theyve also gotten very good at hiring lobbyists and even deputizing Corporate America to come up here and lobby us for things that are beneficial to the chinese goals at the expense of this country long term, and i think its important to mention here today, they also happen to control anybody who says they dont doesnt know what theyre talking about his every company in china is controlled by the th Chinese Communist party. They happen to control a company that owns one of the worlds best Artificial Intelligence algorithms. Its the one thats used in this country by tiktok and it uses the data of americans to basically read your mind and predict what videos you want to see. The reason why tiktok is iso successful, the reason why its so attractive is because it knows you better than you know your self and the more you use it, the better it learns. The problem is not tiktok or the videos, the problem is the algorithm that powers them. Its controlled by a company in china that must do whatever the Chinese Communist party tells them to do and the only way that algorithm works is if the company in china under the control of the Chinese Government is given access to the data that tiktok collects. Tiktok does not work without that algorithm and that algorithm is controlled by a company thats controlled by the Chinese Communist party under the law of china. In the case of putin, he also actually sees america as decadent and in decline and he views russia as resilient. They view themselves as a great power and he believes that great powers have a right to buffer states. He believes that great powers have a right not just to have their own borders to control the countries around their borders as buffer states. I think they already have that in belarus, in his mind, and it is one of the reasons why he invades ukraine. In the case of iran, they want to export their shia Islamic Revolution to the entire middle east and the problem with this is two things standing in their way the state of israel and the United States of america. And so that is why they have proxy groups in places like syria and iraq and lebanon and n yemen and gaza, who they use for their purposes. One of their purposes is to use these groups now to attack america so we will say its not worth the trouble, we need to get out of there, and once we leave, then theyll move on jordan and on bahrain worker then theyll make israel an unlivable place and ultimately their ambitions are the entire region and most of the gulf kingdoms. Thats why i think its a mistake to view the horrific events of october 7 is simply the latest iteration of a long standing Israeli Palestinian problem. It is deeply tied to the head of the snake and the head of the snake is in iran and in tehran. Add to all of these three countries, north korea. We havent heard a lot about it yet. They have become increasingly aggressive. In fact, i would argue that we perhaps are closer to some armed hostilities than weve been in a decade or longer. Why . Why have they become so aggressive . They feel empowered. They feel empowered because putin is buying things from them and helping them to break their international isolation, and also because i dont know what percentage of their economy is powered by Ransomware Attacks and cyber hacking but its substantial. They generate a lot of money from that and add to all these i parades of horribles the fact that there is still a threat. Iran, as has been publicly reported, is still trying to kill former government officials that live in the United States of america. There are former government officials in this country no longer in office who require 24 hours a day security because iran is trying to kill them, inside the United States. Has below, an agent of iran, is also looking for ways to conduct terrorist attacks against american interests, israeli and jewish interests all over the world and here in the homeland, as well. By the way, isis and al qaeda are not out of business. They are still involved. Add alscher Bogdan Vechirko they also want to kill americans. They can do it in the homeland,h they love that and all of that happening in a time when perhaps the single largest, most eventful migration corridor in history is operating right off of our border. So i think its a mistake sometimes to divide all of these problems geographically because in some ways theyre all interrelated in keyways. Yes these individual states have ambitions but they share a common goal and the common goal is a world friendlier and better for them and their interest in the world in which america is weekend and less able to act. And all of these crises begin to interlock in a way to help them. For example, the chinese and the russians are probably seen great benefit. Not probably, they do see great benefit from whats happening in the middle east because they figure every dollar and every second of our attention thats paid there, we are not paying to whats happening with ukraine and we are not paying to the indo pacific. The chinese see great benefit in ukraine, as well, because they view it as the more time and money we spent there, the less time and money and focus we