Top Senate Intel Dem warns of ‘catastrophic’ cyber consequences of Trump admin national security firings, politicization

Politicization of intelligence in the Trump administration, as well as the “hollowing out” of government expertise, is leaving the United States dangerously vulnerable to cyberattacks and other threats, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee said in a floor speech Thursday.

Mark Warner of Virginia chastised the president over what he called the politically-motivated personnel decisions that he said jeopardized national security, including layoffs of one-third of the workforce at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency, the firing of a top FBI cyber official and the vacant leadership at the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command.

“One-third of CISA, the agency established for the absolutely explicit purpose of protecting our critical infrastructure — water, power, our elections — to prevent those entities from being attacked by cyber tools, a third of that agency, fired,” Warner said. 

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