Good afternoon, everybody. Thanks for attending. I'm John Cockrum, head of the American Security Task Force. It's one of the seven task forces that Kevin McCarthy has stood up on day one want to get ready to advance the Republican agenda next term. And contrast that with the first several months of this term. The Democrats didn't really seem to have an agenda towards neighbor unable to execute it because of that. So we're we're doing a very different tack here myself and Tony Gonzalez behind me and a couple others are kind of head to toe Task Force on the chair.
You know, no, man can make my junior
Tony's chair of the subcommittee on cybersecurity. And he's going to talk more about that in detail. So I just want to give you the 30,000 foot view of what we're doing. And if you want to boil it down to its essence, there's three things that we're responsible for developing and legislative agenda. Number one is to secure our border number two is to strengthen our cyber defenses. And number three is to give back to law enforcement officers their ability to do their job effectively, which has been sapped from them right now. And that's really what this taskforce is about. We have specific recommendations as to each one. This morning I spent an hour with my colleagues presenting some of the some of the issues and recommendations to them that we have so far. And we're getting a lot of feedback. So the goal is to continue to coalesce that feedback into tangible work product and we are going to be have some already we have more to go and and then by August Have you have a real good blueprint so i When my colleagues go home for their August and September recess where they're campaigning hardcore on a trail. They have the issues in the playbook to give the American voters an opportunity to decide where they want to run the show next term. And I dearly hope even though I won't be there, that it's Republicans doing it and that they're implementing the agenda that Tony and I and others have developed. So with respect to the border, it's pretty clear. On January 20, the president completely transformed the border security and made it basically one of the most unsecure borders in our nation's history. And because of that, we have tremendous problems we have we have a record number of individuals coming across the border, but even perhaps more important, and that is some of the things that are deeply affecting our country. That is the number of drug overdose deaths, and I started my career as a federal prosecutor on the border. So I know what border security is and what it isn't. And Tony lives down to the border so he understands it as well. But on the border drugs are coming across at such record numbers because all the Border Patrol agents are being pulled off to deal with a human resource issue that's coming across the border. The cartels control the border, they know who to ship across the border. They know when to ship them, and you can't get across without paying a cartel at least 4000 a pop. The cartels are getting incredibly enriched by this and are controlling the flow. So when they send 100 People over one spot, all the other agents come off the border and they have to go deal without the human mass, and then they can walk the drugs across. We've seized enough fentanyl this year to kill every man, woman and child United States eight times over. And it stands to reason based on my experience based on logic, that at least that amount is getting into this country. And we know that's true because more than 100,000 people are died of drug overdoses this year for the first time in our nation's history. And the vast majority of his drug overdoses are because of fentanyl. And so with that, I really think that every city is a border city. Every county is a border County. Every state is a border state and that's how it's going to be going forward. I'll let Tony talk about the cyber issues and no offense being duplicative of what he's going to say. And then I would talk about law, law enforcement. We know the defunding police issues we know the impact it's had we've traveled all over. Give you one example I went to Portland, Oregon, five weeks after George Floyd's murder, they cut their police force by 10% and eliminated a violent crime unit. The result of that was a 566% increase in murders in one year. Think about that? Almost six times increase in murders and all across the country that we have violent crime skyrocketing because they do defunding the police but also an anti police sentiment and also I legislative effort to make it a lot easier for criminals to get back out on the street and stay on the street by committing criminal conduct and all those things. It's it's a perfect storm against law enforcement that we got to fix. We got a lot of things we can do with respect to that. And I'm gonna let Tony talk about the cyber issues and we'll take any questions you have.
You know, it's been a real privilege to serve with John Katko. You know, he's lived on the border in El Paso. He's done so much work, he understands it. No one works harder or understands the various different issues from cyber security and all of it and he is going to be sorely missed. But a lot of the work, you know that he has put over the years is going to come to fruition when we take back the House and that's what a big part of what this conference is about is what is the plan on day one for Republicans to move the ball forward. And I spent 20 years in the Navy, Navy intelligence as a cryptologist. So cyber is my expertise. And what we're seeing in the in the cyber industry in the cyber field is greatest threat we've ever seen. And the world is all interconnected. What happens in Afghanistan impacts the United States. What happens in Ukraine impacts the United States, you're seeing that with the administration highlight some of the different threats, but we got to go beyond highlighting the threats. And we got to give solutions to the problem. As a as a CaCO mentioned earlier, we've done these roundtables these taskforce to shake things out and in the cyber area. There's a couple of areas that kind of pop out one is the ransomware I mean this is a threat that is growing every single day. And it's not fair that you have businesses and corporations that are defending themselves against state sponsored actors, and this is only going to grow what we're seeing in these cartels. cartels are making billions of dollars record profits, and they're starting to diversify their portfolios. Into this ransomware on another aspect of it. You know, we're pushing how do we get more people in the fight? And part of that, you know, in Texas in February, there was this winter storm that knocked everything out that people were without power without water. In some cases, food didn't matter how much money you had in your bank account. Didn't matter if you lived in the city or rural town. Didn't matter the color of your skin. Everybody was in the same boat. I envisioned the next storm that's coming is going to be a Cyber Storm. And we have to be ready for the Cyber Storm. Part of that is exactly this taskforce putting together real legislation that empowers that we've got one piece of legislation in particular called the digital core Act, which which taps in to IT professionals and allows them to operate in the federal space. We need more essentially boots on the ground or computers to fight against this. So it's been absolute privilege and an honor to work alongside John Katko. He has led us and I look forward you know when we've been back the majority getting a lot of these objections object of a lot of these issues over the finish line and I'll turn it back over to John for questions.
Next questions comments.
Yes affordable
housing there's a bill that We've enacted, I need to go number one afterwards not enacted we've I introduced rather and, you know, that's gonna be one of the day one bills we're gonna have ready to go and we're gonna introduce it and it calls for simply finishing what we started and using both barrier technology as well as electronic technologies. And reinstituting and codifying the remain in Mexico policy, remain in Mexico policy, probably the single most important component, because that takes away the incentive for individuals to come here. They come here now. And whether they have asylum or not they just come across the border, raise your hands and say asylum as soon as they say that their vast majority of them are paroled into the country. This administration is repeatedly fighting the remain in Mexico policy they've been told by Cornish orders to abide by it. They buy it for wild and it's tested again and it's going to sunset soon and they're not going to reconstitute it. And once that happens, I think we're gonna see a chaos at the border we haven't seen yet we think we've seen some bad things. There's estimates as many as 1.7 million people are waiting for the remain in Mexico policy to sunset, the title 42 months at sunset. They're all coming. That's the Intel we're getting. So what's going to be a real problem going forward?
Yeah. I can hear some problems. On the issue of immigration. Do you suspect that Republicans will be putting together a proposal on that? And that obviously has been an issue where it's been hard to find consensus. So are you optimistic that there would be something that can unite?
Yeah, we have a bad friend Paul Ryan was Speaker We went through a very detailed five week exercise, crafting immigration legislation and we didn't get across the finish line and it's the highlights how difficult that issue is. So we're of the opinion on this taskforce. And I think leadership agrees with us that you can't even begin to have the immigration discussion again, unless and until the border is properly secured. Once it is secure. We can have that discussion, but that won't happen. So the more secure Yeah.
On that note, are you looking at legislation that you think could get 60 votes in the Senate where you would need democratic?
Oh, absolutely. Yes, we have to work. But listen, we don't know what they have to good question because we don't know what the political composition of the house in the Senate is going to look like. But someone would take over the House. We have no idea whether descendants going to have a democratic or republican majority. And obviously, that'll impact some of the contours of the legislation. We're going to we're going to try to work in a bipartisan manner to get it done. I mean, this top down take it or leave it everything's coming from this speaker. Practice that we have right now. isn't working, obviously. And we need to have more consensus driven legislation.
Policy points that you'd be willing to concede in terms that Democrats have asked for in terms of immigration, like DACA or something. Yeah, well,
obviously that comes next. Right. And I think we like I said, we're not going to get to that point of discussing immigration issues, unless and until the border secure. So they have Hobson's choice. He's gonna play ball with us and secure the border for the sake of our country, especially the kids that are dying. Record numbers of drug overdoses are they're going to continue to have this problem. So it's up to them if they want to have the real discussion, immigration. They're gonna have to help us secure the border. And so as a president
of places, you know, one thing I'll add is you have to have somebody to have a conversation with even start the Congress to even start to work on something. And right now there isn't on their side, an interest in immigration reform that I see in a bipartisan manner. You know, last week I had breakfast with the US, US Ambassador to Mexico and the Mexican ambassador to the United States. And it was myself and one other democratic colleague, Luke Herrera from California. That was it. So it starts there like people have to be willing to have a conversation, not give away the farm or give or just start the conversation. That's the part to me that's been very disappointing is there's not enough people that want to have a conversation to move the ball forward.
And the last thing I was saying I never take on the questions is the Democrats have been in charge in the house for almost four years before you're standing this year. And they had ample opportunity to cut to deal with DACA they haven't done it in respect to anything. So I think that speaks volumes. Yeah, anything else? Yes.
Thank you. I wanted to ask about the situation in Ukraine and how it's affecting us here. Obviously many different ways but in your point of view of homeland security, but also cyber, which you brought up. That is something that we have seen the Russian President Vladimir Putin do in the past. Try and hack different organizations, things like that. How are we prepared in this moment for a bigger attack? What should we be doing and what are some of those policies that you all hope to roll
out? Well, it's a premise your question, no question about it, that there's a very real threat of a Russian cyber attack. Against critical infrastructure, and critical infrastructure development pipelines are now on power grids, to our banks, for hospitals, whatever. But there's a threat is definitely heightened since Ukraine, especially since he's kind of getting backed into a corner because it's not going like a check. So a few years ago, we stood up an agency myself, Mike McCaul and others on homeland when we were in a majority, called the cybersecurity infrastructure security agency or system, and it's gone from zero to 60 quite quickly, and it's several billion dollar organization, it's probably got to be up to about a $5 billion organization to be as effective as it can be. But the best way to think of Sissa is how you looked at what they did after 911. After 911. We formed what's called the Joint Terrorism Task Forces or JTTF. And that really put federal, state, local and private sector together, working together to tamp down terrorism United States, and it's done a terrific job. The similar model with respect to Sissa in that, but not a regulatory agency, Sesa is not but it does work the private sector day in and day out. They have something on their website now called shields up any private sector, anywhere any individual can go on a website when the shields up and get help on how to harden their systems and make them as secure as possible. And what we did recently is pass what's called Incident Reporting legislation. That incident reporting legislation allows Sissa to get information on significant cyber attacks from any sector, that they within 72 hours have to report it to Sissa not to get themselves in trouble. Just let him know, hey, we've been hacked, here's a malware so they can experts can look at it and just send out a patch nationwide. So that will not only increase their hardening of their systems, but also make attacks themselves less effective because we respond quicker. So that's really important in building up system is critically important and doing that. Now, like 20 Anything else in WhatsApp?
You know, I'll say when there's a cyber attack, they don't care if you're a Democrat, Republican, if you're registered to vote who you voted for. They're attacking Americans and American interests. This is an area that should not be partisan in any form or fashion. It should bring us together and harden ourselves against those actors that want to attack America ultimately attack America. The other thing I would say is we're always playing defense. It's the wrong approach. We need to go on the offense. And I spent 20 years in the ice in the intelligence community. We have the the greatest offensive capability than any other out any other any other actor in the world and it's not even close. We need to prevent some of these attacks and hold those that are attacking us accountable. They can't let them know this peace through strength needs to echo in the cyber in the cyber field as well. So that way, we're not always playing on defense. The strongest defense is a the best defense is a strong offense.
As the bitumen administration is expected to announce plans for 10s of 1000s of Ukrainian refugees to enter the US fleeing their country. This comes as dozens of Russians activists, journalists have also fled their country trying to come through the US Mexico border. In your opinion, does this give House Republicans an opening or an opportunity to introduce border security
reforms?
I don't think so. Because the Ukrainians are coming through the refugee process. I know that because a family member, my daughter in law's grandmother took advantage of that. Mercifully, and so I think the refugee process is very different than the border. But some of the refugees are having a hard time getting here. And I feel like telling them all man, if you just walked across the southern border, they let you win. And that's a sad reality. And that shouldn't be the way it is. These Ukrainian refugees should be welcomed here with open arms. We should help them because of the tragedies they're experiencing. But we can't just have an open door policy on the southern border. There's two very different things and refugees are vetted refugees are thoroughly vetted before they get in here. A lot of times people walk across the border claim asylum and all of a sudden a paroled into the country we don't know who the hell they are, because I have no idea. They have nothing. We have no idea of the and that's very dangerous. So there's two very different processes and I don't think hardening the border is going to help or having border border reform is going to help. I think the biggest thing I can say with respect to the border is if you want to stop seeing record deaths from drug overdoses for your kids, you better start think hard about run and secure the border. The last one, that sounds good. Last one. That sounds good.
Thank you. I also just want to ask a little bit about visas. Do Republicans have any plans on allowing more foreign workers, guest workers or high skilled immigrants? Is that something you'd be interested in addressing?
We are interested in addressing that and I think it's something that needs to be addressed. So I come from an agricultural area. It's just a fact that they're there. They have critical labor shortages. My father in law was a potato farmer for Frito Lay so life and I saw firsthand how hard it was to just get people to help during the during the high season. So that is something we need to address. But like I said, it's hard to you're not going to convince Republicans to get involved with that type of reform. Unless and until the border secure. I know it sounds like a broken record, but I think that's what we got to do. Thanks, guys very much. Appreciate it.