February 14, 2019 - Issue: Vol. 165, No. 29 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 1st Session

[Pages S1368-S1372]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                         Russian Hybrid Warfare

  Mr. President, today I rise to continue my series of speeches with 
regard to Russian hybrid warfare and, specifically, to provide policy 
recommendations in response to the threat from Russia, particularly the 
threat from information warfare, which was exhibited so substantially 
in the 2016 election.
  The first part of the speech I gave on January 24 of this year, but 
let me briefly recap. As I described in my previous speech, Russia is 
prosecuting an ongoing, persistent campaign of information warfare 
targeted at the United States and Western democracies. These 
information operations are conducted along specific lines of effort and 
employ tactics, techniques, and procedures that Russia has developed 
over years of experimentation. Russia has been particularly effective 
in adapting its information warfare playbook to the digital age, 
weaponizing social media to magnify fear and mistrust, create chaos, 
and undermine our ability to respond effectively.
  There are four steps we must adopt to more effectively counter 
Russian information warfare. First, we need the President to fulfill 
the obligations of his office and unite the American people in 
confronting this national security threat. Second, we need a 
coordinated strategy across our government and society to counter those 
threats. Third, and flowing from the coordinated strategy, we need to 
ensure our government and society are organized and have the right 
capabilities to manage this ongoing confrontation in the information 
space. Finally, we need to develop, in coordination with our allies and 
partners, our own playbook to fight back.
  Let me address each of these proposals in turn.
  First of all, we need the President to be straight with the American 
people. The President's own national security officials and 
intelligence community agree about the existence and seriousness of the 
attacks being conducted by Russia against our democracy. The President, 
as our Nation's leader, must embrace the same conclusion. By conveying 
to the American people the urgency of this national security threat, 
the President can ensure that as a nation we are responding with the 
same level of commitment as we would to a military threat. This will 
elevate the urgency and gravity of the matter and help ensure we are 
committing the necessary level of resources for both military and 
nonmilitary measures to counter the Russian threat and build resilience 
against these malign activities.
  Presidential leadership is necessary to help us move past domestic 
parochial politics. We have already seen how the failure to put 
national security over partisan politics all but decimated our ability 
to counter Russian information warfare during the 2016 election. The 
German Marshall Fund concluded in their policy blueprint from last year 
that ``removing partisanship from the calculus in responding to this 
threat is critical.'' This is not a Democratic or a Republican problem. 
This is a national security problem, and it is severe. If we are going 
to overcome Russian efforts to magnify fear and distrust, we need our 
President to put our national security first.
  Presidential leadership is just as imperative beyond our borders. The 
President speaks to the American people. His words must send a clear 
and consistent message to the Kremlin that we will not tolerate attacks 
against the United States. A real opportunity was missed when the 
President did not use his platform during the State of the Union to 
denounce Russian attacks on our democracy and showcase to the world the 
depth of his commitment in countering this threat.
  The world must understand that the President is serious and committed 
to protecting the United States, its allies, and its partners against 
information warfare and will do so for as long as required. As a recent 
report by the Treasury Department on efforts by the United States to 
combat illicit finance noted: ``Russia must . . . realize that the 
United States and its allies will not waver in our determination to 
prevent it from undermining our democracies, economies, institutions, 
and the values on which these pillars of global stability--ensured by 
United States leadership--will continue to stand.''
  The President should heed his own administration's guidance. He 
should do so publicly and with the resolve expected of the Commander in 
Chief.
  Unfortunately, the President's history on this subject to date is far 
from encouraging. His policy positions do not follow dictums outlined 
by the Treasury Department and others in his administration but, 
instead, mirror Russian strategic objectives. His foreign policy goals 
and those of Russia seem to overlap. The President's devastating 
threats to withdraw from NATO and his denigration of the European 
Union, our trading partners, and those he considers his domestic 
political adversaries create or exacerbate internal divisions. The 
President must be made to realize that Russia supports his approach to 
foreign relations and domestic politics.
  The President is, of course, by no means alone in demonizing those 
with whom he disagrees, but his voice is far more powerful as a result 
of the office he holds, and it is his obligation and duty to lead. Not 
only must the President distinguish his policy positions from those 
that Russia promotes overtly and through disinformation campaigns to 
tear up the fabric of the West, he must wholeheartedly reject those 
tactics and defend our Nation against them.
  The President needs to get on the same page with much of the rest of 
the U.S. Government and Congress. The heads of the Department of 
Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of 
Homeland Security, and the Director of National Intelligence all came 
together to send a tough message to Russia ahead of the 2018 midterm 
elections. Congress has been united, as well, as evidenced by the 
overwhelmingly bipartisan passage of the Russia sanctions bill as part 
of the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act or 
CAATSA.
  Yet this tough messaging to Russia is completely undermined when the 
President fails to confront Putin over Russian malign activities and, 
instead, repeatedly downplays the significance of Russian interference 
with our democracy and society.
  It is further undermined when he mirrors Putin's talking points and 
dismisses the Russian nationals indicted by the special counsel, 
including 12 Russian military intelligence or GRU agents, as merely 
``bloggers from Moscow.'' It is further undermined when the 
administration unwinds sanctions against a business of Putin crony Oleg 
Deripaska. I would note that this deal went forward in spite of 
bipartisan action in the Congress to try to block it. The President's 
mixed messages and failure of leadership in mounting sustained and 
credible deterrence must end.
  Despite the lack of Presidential leadership, there is work underway 
to counter Russian hybrid warfare--and

[[Page S1369]]

specifically information warfare--at the Departments of Homeland 
Security, State, Treasury, Justice, the Federal Bureau of 
Investigation, as well as the National Security Agency, Cyber Command, 
and broader elements of the Department of Defense.
  These efforts include standing up task forces between DHS and the FBI 
to target foreign influence within our borders, reorganizing the 
internal structures of DHS, and establishing the Russia Influence Group 
across several national security agencies. NSA and Cyber Command also 
established a working group called the Russia Small Group to counter 
Kremlin information warfare campaigns.
  We must recognize the results these efforts have yielded to date. As 
authorized by this year's National Defense Authorization Act, or the 
NDAA, Cyber Command has undertaken offensive cyber operations. Treasury 
has sanctioned more than 270 Russian individuals and related entities. 
The Department of Justice has used our legal system to expose GRU and 
the Kremlin-linked troll organization activities.
  These efforts signify that our capable civil servants and military 
officials have developed ways to mitigate aspects of the threat against 
us, but what is lacking is a synchronized campaign, prosecuted in a 
unified manner, to counter Russian hybrid warfare against the United 
States, our allies, and our partners.
  General Scaparrotti, the head of European Command--who is on the 
frontlines of this threat--testified to the Armed Services Committee 
last March: ``[I] don't believe there is effective unification across 
the interagency, with the energy and the focus that we could attain.''
  The Trump administration's national defense strategy emphasizes the 
``reemergence of long-term strategic competition,'' including with 
Russia. I agree that this is an appropriate place to focus attention, 
but I have yet to see the changes needed to align with those 
priorities.
  We must develop wholesale, scalable strategy to counter these threats 
below the level of armed conflict, including on the 21st-century 
battlefields of information and cyber space. It must be noted that 
Congress, including in the NDAA, has repeatedly urged the 
administration in this direction.
  Two years ago, I secured a provision, along with my colleagues, to 
require the Department of Defense, in conjunction with the Department 
of State and other Agencies, to craft a Russian malign influence 
strategy. That strategy was finally delivered a few months ago, and it 
highlights the various efforts U.S. Government Departments and Agencies 
are undertaking. However, as I have said before, the administration 
must build on and implement that strategy, and these efforts must be 
conducted in a unified manner at the direction of the President both 
operationally and also as the chief spokesperson to the Nation and to 
the world.
  This year's NDAA authorized the appointment of a foreign influence 
coordinator on the National Security Council staff. This would be a 
good step toward organizing a whole-of-government approach to counter 
Russian information warfare. However, it remains to be seen whether the 
administration will stand up such a position.
  Once we have laid out a comprehensive strategy, we must ensure that 
it can be successfully executed. This will require the support of the 
right organizational structures across the government and the whole of 
society.
  The National Defense Strategy Commission concluded in its report that 
Russia ``developed national strategies for enhancing their influence 
and undermining key U.S. interests that extend far beyond military 
competition . . . [C]omprehensive solutions to these comprehensive 
challenges will require whole-of-government and even whole-of-nation 
cooperation extending far beyond DOD.
  As the Commission notes, we need to be institutionally capable of 
anticipating Russian information warfare developments. As a nation, we 
have been too slow, too late, and too divided in acknowledging the 
severity of these attacks on our governmental institutions and society. 
We watched Kremlin-directed information attacks in the Ukraine, the 
United Kingdom, and elsewhere, but we didn't conceive that this Russian 
playbook would be deployed against us.
  What is more, we are starting from a deficit in terms of the way our 
government is organized. After the Cold War, we dismantled the 
apparatus in place to recognize and counter threats from the Soviet 
Union. More recently, we found ourselves embroiled in two long 
counterinsurgency wars, which reoriented our planning, our systems, and 
our weapons to counter those threats of insurgents in Iraq, 
Afghanistan, and elsewhere. We took our eye off the growing challenges 
to the international order in Europe, and frankly we were late to 
realize that the Russians had either pushed past any reset in U.S.-
Russia relations or had never actually stopped seeing us as their 
enemy. So we need to rebuild our capacity to challenge this threat.
  First, we must ensure that we have the intelligence capabilities in 
place to yield a more complete understanding of the nature of the 
threat. One of the reasons that the Kremlin caught us off guard is 
because we significantly downsized the office in the CIA unofficially 
called Russia House, which was tasked with countering Russia during the 
Cold War.
  While the number of Russian analysts has grown in recent years, we 
must make sure that we grow and retain the expertise and the budget 
dedicated to analyzing, attributing, anticipating, and exposing Russian 
information warfare campaigns on a persistent basis.
  As I quoted in part 1 of this speech, the senior vice president of 
the Center for European Policy Analysis, Edward Lucas, explained that 
we ``are still playing catch up from a long way behind. We are looking 
in the rearview mirror, getting less bad at working out what Russia 
just did to us. We are still not looking through the windshield to find 
out what's happening now and what's going to be happening next.''
  If we are ever going to get out from looking at this problem through 
the rearview mirror, we need to understand the patterns of Russia's 
aggressive behavior and be able to anticipate the next attack.

  In addition to ramping up Russia expertise, there needs to be a 
coordinating body across the national security apparatus to provide 
intelligence and analysis sharing. This body would work to provide a 
common operating picture for our government and help with strategic 
coordination across U.S. Government Agencies involved in countering 
hybrid warfare.
  A proposal to stand up an interagency fusion cell similar to what I 
am describing was recommended in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee 
minority staff report from January 2018. That report envisioned that 
such a center ``should include representatives from the FBI, CIA, the 
Departments of Homeland Security, State, Defense, and Treasury, and it 
should immediately produce a strategy, plan, and robust budget that 
coordinates all current and projected government programming to counter 
Russian Government interference and malign influence.''
  Similarly, the Defending American Security from Kremlin Aggression 
Act, or DASKA, a bill that Senator Menendez indicated was reintroduced 
yesterday in a bipartisan fashion--Senator Menendez and Senator Graham 
are leading this effort--includes language to establish such a fusion 
center. I urge my colleagues to support this type of a center. It will 
go a long way toward further integrating a whole-of-government 
approach.
  In conjunction with standing up such a center, Congress may need to 
examine the authorities of some intelligence agencies, as it becomes 
harder to detect and counter Russian operations that look increasingly 
``American'' in nature.
  Our military institutions also need to be structured to counter 
Russian information operations--in particular those conducted by the 
GRU. As laid out in part 1 of this speech, these operations are 
persistent and ongoing, reflecting current Russian military doctrine, 
and follow discernable lines of effort. We must bring appropriate 
military tools to counter this threat.
  Last November, General Nakasone, who serves as both the head of Cyber 
Command and the Director of the NSA, explained that America's 
adversaries, including Russia, ``are looking to take us on below the 
level of armed conflict. Our military must be able to . . . compete 
below the level of armed conflict.

[[Page S1370]]

This is what great power competition looks like today, and it's what we 
will look at as we look to the future.''
  Indeed, this type of conflict requires new tools in cyber space, 
including offensive cyber operations and updated protocols for using 
them.
  It should be noted that Cyber Command took important steps to 
safeguard the 2018 midterm elections. Several days prior to the 
election, National Security Advisor Ambassador John Bolton acknowledged 
this role, stating that the United States was ``undertaking offensive 
cyber operations . . . aimed at defending the integrity of the 
electoral process.'' Similarly, the Department of Defense explained 
that it worked to ``frustrate and prevent adversary interference in the 
2018 election cycle.'' It appears that these cyber operations 
contributed to more successful deterrence or a blunting of the Russian 
information warfare campaign than during the 2016 Presidential 
election.
  That said, we also must acknowledge that the Russians have not 
stopped their operations against us, and they don't undertake 
information warfare campaigns only at election time. As we learn to 
counter their operations, they learn better methods to attack us, often 
with increased sophistication and less detectability. In order to stay 
up to speed, we must institutionalize the temporary arrangements that 
the Department of Defense assembled for addressing information warfare 
operations in the midterm elections and make them permanent. Our 
efforts must be persistent and scalable to ensure we have the 
operational capacity to respond to these attacks against our democracy.
  Along those same lines, in last year's NDAA, we required the 
Secretary of Defense to establish a process to integrate strategic and 
cyber-enabled information operations across the Department. While 
information operations were a feature of military operations during the 
Cold War, today they are sometimes an afterthought. Having better 
integrated procedures for these types of operations would be a good 
start for getting organized inside DOD to effectively counter Russian 
information warfare below the level of conventional conflict.
  Just as important as ensuring that we have the right military and 
intelligence tools, is ensuring that we have the appropriate 
nonmilitary tools to counter the threat. An additional castoff after 
the Cold War was the U.S. Information Agency, which was devoted to 
advancing public diplomacy, building narratives, and extolling American 
virtues to foreign audiences. We should consider carefully whether it 
makes sense to revive some of these capabilities for today's 
information age.
  One important step toward reestablishing such a capability was 
enlarging the mission of the State Department's Global Engagement 
Center in the fiscal year 2017 NDAA to ``lead, synchronize, and 
coordinate efforts of the Federal Government to recognize, understand, 
expose, and counter'' foreign state propaganda and disinformation 
targeting U.S. national security interests. However, the Global 
Engagement Center has been under resourced and slow to execute its 
mission. We need to accelerate this effort.
  We also need to look at our tools and tactics for informing our 
domestic audience, including how best to address concerns about the 
integrity of elections arising as a result of Russian meddling.
  As a recent report from CSIS on election security stressed, 
``Credibility is as important as accuracy.'' We should examine what 
approach would best serve the American people in terms of validating 
the integrity of election results, as well as mobilizing to respond 
should our elections come under attack.
  This effort could be centered around a dedicated office or assigned 
to a group of current or former trusted government officials. Their 
mission would be to rapidly communicate to the American public 
regarding the integrity of elections in response to Russian efforts to 
undermine the public faith in democracy, including through information 
warfare attacks.
  The administration has taken steps in this direction, including the 
President's Executive order regarding election interference from last 
September, which requires a 45-day report assessing attacks from 
foreign adversaries. But this won't be fast enough to counter 
information warfare campaigns in real time. These attacks are moving at 
the speed of the internet. We don't have 45 days to wait.
  As we look to the 2020 Presidential elections, it is imperative that 
we invest more in election security. While progress has been made since 
2016, it has paled in comparison to the magnitude of the challenge.

  Last Congress, I was disappointed when an amendment to provide an 
additional $250 million in election security grant funding was blocked 
by my colleagues on the other side. This funding would have built upon 
the $380 million that was appropriated for election security grants in 
the fiscal year 2018 Omnibus Appropriations Act. At the time of the 
vote last summer, the initial funding was already committed to the 
States, and 91 percent of those funds had been disbursed. We will need 
to provide the funding necessary if we are to claim that we are 
committed to improving election security. In addition, the Kremlin 
exploits the existence of insecure or outdated systems to promote 
information warfare operations against us, furthering the narrative 
that there are so-called cracks in our democracy.
  Our government is not the only actor that must play a role in meeting 
these threats. We must also look to our society and the private sector. 
As I discussed, the government failed to have the imagination to fully 
realize the extent of the coming threat. Unfortunately, the ways in 
which the social media companies responded to these attacks mirrored 
the government's failure of imagination. Social media companies were 
held up as beacons of innovation with a view that technology could 
bring people together in common cause, but these companies failed to 
conceive that these same tools could also be used for malign purposes--
to misinform as well as to inform.
  When originally confronted with the notion that the Kremlin had had 
an impact on the 2016 election, Facebook founder and CEO Mark 
Zuckerberg dismissed out of hand any role his company may have played. 
He said: ``To think . . . [Facebook] influenced the election in any way 
is a pretty crazy idea.'' Yet we now know that the manipulation of 
social media is one of the primary lines of effort used by the Kremlin 
and Kremlin-linked actors to mount their information warfare campaigns 
against us.
  Certain social media companies have made some reforms and worked with 
law enforcement and DHS to take down fraudulent networks--or what the 
companies deem as inauthentic accounts. For instance, late last month, 
Twitter announced that before the 2018 midterms, it removed 418 Russian 
accounts whose behavior mimicked that of the Kremlin-linked troll 
organization. However, we just can't assume, going forward, that these 
companies will act in the best interest of U.S. national security and 
continue to cooperate without some guidance or, perhaps, even 
regulation. These are private, for-profit companies, and like any 
company, they are worried how reputational damage will affect their 
bottom lines. If they cannot organize themselves effectively to combat 
warfare campaigns, Congress will have to legislate solutions.
  Such an effort is already underway in the European Union, which has 
worked on several fronts to protect users of social media. The EU has 
established data privacy rules, known as the General Data Protection 
Regulation, or GDPR, that seek to strengthen individual rights for the 
protection of personal data. In addition, the EU has worked with online 
platforms which are developing voluntary standards to fight 
disinformation, known as the Code of Practice on Disinformation. As 
well, EU member nations have also made threats of regulation and fines 
if social media companies do not do more to address disinformation and 
fake accounts. It would make sense to look closely at what the EU is 
implementing to see what might be appropriate for our purposes.
  As I discussed in part 1 of this speech, one of the main issues in 
the 2016 election was that social media companies didn't have the 
visibility into what had occurred across platforms, including Twitter, 
Facebook, YouTube, and others, making it harder to detect and combat 
Russian information warfare operations. As mentioned

[[Page S1371]]

previously, two independent reports commissioned by the Senate 
Intelligence Committee examined a subset of data provided by the social 
media companies relating to the 2016 election, and they identified 
significant Russian activity across social media platforms that was not 
discovered at the time.
  As we look at how society must organize to counter this threat, we 
need greater visibility across platforms so that we can more 
effectively anticipate these operations coming and defend against 
future interference. One approach to further that goal could be the 
establishment of a social media repository to compile data relevant to 
identifying and countering foreign information operations. This 
database would be a tool for trusted independent researchers and 
academics to gain insight into cross-platform trends and provide an 
analysis of attacks.
  To this point, last month, Cyber Commander General Nakasone testified 
before the Senate Intelligence Committee that the analysis of the 
independent reports, based on the limited data provided by a few social 
media companies, was ``very effective.''
  He added:

       As we prepared for the 2018 midterms, we took a very, very 
     close look at the information that was provided there. We 
     understood our adversary very well, and we understood where 
     their vulnerabilities also lie.

  Imagine how helpful it would be if this repository were ongoing and 
comprehensive.
  America's intelligence and defensive capabilities are vast and 
adaptable. To be sure, there is considerable work ahead to restructure, 
realign, and focus efforts across the government and society, but 
America will only be best postured to prevent these attacks in the 
future once we move from a defensive posture to a strategy that plays 
to our strengths.
  We must come up with our own American playbook to counter Russian 
information warfare. The Kremlin has resorted to these dirty tricks 
because it knows it will not win in a fair fight. We should not try to 
play by their rules or be symmetric in our response. We should counter 
Russia in the arenas where we have strategic advantages. We should 
counter Russia in ways that uphold and enhance our democracy and the 
rule of law. We should counter Russia in ways that show our strength 
and credibility.
  As President Reagan stated: ``The ultimate determinate in the 
struggle now going on for the world will not be bombs and rockets but a 
test of wills and ideas--a trial of spiritual resolve, the values we 
hold, the beliefs we cherish and the ideas to which we are dedicated.''
  As I have explained, Kremlin and Kremlin-linked propaganda and 
disinformation seek to amplify fear and mistrust and convince the 
American public that our democracy is no better than the autocratic 
regime in Moscow. To push back against this moral equivalence promoted 
by Putin and other authoritarian regimes, we must promote and highlight 
our values. In doing so, we can showcase our adherence to justice and 
the rule of law by exposing Russian aggression against us, our allies, 
and our partners.

  We must assist and protect journalism, including in countries where 
criticizing the Kremlin and exposing the truth may put reporters in 
danger. In concert with allies and partners, we must encourage and 
support civil society groups here and abroad to protect human rights 
and enhance rule of law protections. We can use sanctions as a tool to 
expose Kremlin abuses and raise reputational costs to Putin and his 
cronies, such as the sanctions provided in the Magnitsky Act.
  Our American playbook must also include options for responding to 
Russian malign activities in cyberspace. The Russians are weaponizing 
information stolen from our government officials and candidates for 
public office. We must define and harden our cyber doctrine and clearly 
understand how to use our military in these new domains. Our responses 
are likely to be asymmetric rather than employing the same dirty tricks 
from the Russian playbook. Ultimately, the integrity of our electoral 
campaigns should lead all U.S. political parties and actors to pledge 
not to use hacked or stolen materials to attack or smear each other.
  The media, too, should contemplate what its responsibilities are to 
the citizens of this country when covering elections. They should be 
wary of covering aspects of political campaigns in ways that may aid or 
abet foreign information operations. While we must always protect the 
constitutional right of freedom of the press, the media may come to 
conclude that covering hacked materials without appropriately framing 
the source of those materials or including comments from Kremlin-linked 
trolls claiming to be American citizens is no longer appropriate.
  Further, as I discussed in part 1 of this speech, a major line of 
effort for Russia is Kremlin-directed deception operations using social 
media to penetrate our political and social debates and magnify 
feelings of fear and mistrust. Our American playbook must also include 
ways to educate our citizens with knowledge of these plots and provide 
additional media literacy tools, including teaching our young people 
how to evaluate what they see online and further make the case to the 
public for the importance and value of democratic institutions.
  In addition, we must strengthen support for one of our greatest 
strategic advantages--our alliances and partnerships globally. We must 
take steps to educate the American public about the central role 
alliances play for our national security. We must also look outward, 
supporting our alliances and stepping up our diplomatic outreach to 
help resolve longstanding regional conflicts overseas so that Russia 
may no longer use information warfare campaigns to exploit those 
situations to their advantage.
  Our responses to Russian information operations are most effective 
when we act in concert with allies and partners. The sanctions levied 
on Russia after their illegal annexation of Crimea were effective 
because they were implemented together with the EU. We have also 
witnessed the effects of the more than 25 countries expelling Russian 
diplomats in solidarity with the United Kingdom in response to the 
Skripal poisoning. The United States worked closely with Greece to 
blunt Russia's attempts to undermine an agreement between Greece and 
North Macedonia that would open the door for North Macedonia to join 
NATO. As these examples show, the cost to Russia is greater when they 
aren't simply dismissed as a unilateral shunning by the United States.
  As the former Estonian Foreign Minister and Ambassador to Russia 
stated:

       Joint initiatives are more likely to deter hackers. If they 
     don't take seriously one country, they will take seriously 30 
     countries when they will jointly blame a hacker or foreign 
     nation for an attack.

  Last week, the Acting Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland 
Security certified that our government ``concluded there is no evidence 
to date that any identified activities of a foreign government or 
foreign agent had a material impact on the integrity or security of 
election infrastructure or political/campaign infrastructure used in 
the 2018 midterm elections.''
  However, we should not take that certification as a reason to let 
down our guard. We seem to be getting better at responding to the types 
of attacks perpetrated against the United States in 2016, but that is 
no indicator that we have become better at anticipating future attacks. 
The Director of the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and 
Infrastructure Security Agency warned last November:

       The [2018] midterm is . . . just the warm-up or the 
     exhibition game. . . . The big game for adversaries is 
     probably 2020.

  This statement was reinforced by DNI Coats, who testified to the 
Senate Intelligence Committee late last month: ``Our adversaries and 
strategic competitors are probably already looking to the 2020 U.S. 
elections as an opportunity to advance their interests,'' and also 
``Moscow may employ additional influence toolkits--such as spreading 
disinformation, conducting hack-and-leak operations or manipulating 
data--in a more targeted fashion to influence U.S. policy, actions and 
elections.''
  We must think creatively to ensure that we are ahead of this curve. I 
am confident that this is a challenge that we can meet and conquer with 
Presidential leadership, a whole of government approach, and the energy 
and resources necessary. We can and we must do this.

[[Page S1372]]

  As President John F. Kennedy said: ``We are not here to curse the 
darkness but to light the candle that can guide us through that 
darkness to a safe and sane future.''
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.