As Washington faces the prospect of divided government and legislative gridlock, opportunities for bipartisan action to tackle the many difficulties we face as a nation must be seized without hesitation. The problem is, in this hyperpartisan political atmosphere, the temptation of both parties in this scenario of shared power will be for each party to play to their base by offering up red meat instead of practical proposals.
For Democrats, that means pushing “Green New Deal,” healthcare, and tax proposals that have no prospect of making it through a presumably GOP-led Senate; for Republicans, it means an agenda of pure obstruction designed to frustrate any and every initiative of a Biden administration.
If that’s going to be the partisan playbook, the average person will lose as the urgent problems we face continue to fester and our political leaders whistle past the graveyard. Foremost among those urgent problems is the growing foreign cybersecurity threat. Foreign-sponsored cyberattacks have become so endemic that we now run the risk of failing to recognize the grave significance they hold for our national security.
Just this week, a leading cybersecurity firm, FireEye, reported being the victim of a “highly-sophisticated” hack from an unnamed nation-state. Earlier this month, the Washington Post reported that foreign hackers have been actively attempting to penetrate the cyber codes protecting our new coronavirus vaccines, jeopardizing vaccine technology and supply chains. Former cybersecurity chief Chris Krebs also confirmed several weeks ago that adversaries have attempted to steal intellectual property related to the coronavirus vaccine.
“The big four, Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, we have seen to some extent all four of those countries doing some kind of espionage or spying, trying to get intellectual property related to the vaccine,” Krebs said.
This isn’t the first warning that the foreign cyberthreat is compromising our coronavirus response. In March, “hostile foreign actors” attacked the computer system of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Soon, reports began to appear that foreign-sponsored hacking of U.S. hospitals had “significantly increased.” By summer, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security were issuing urgent alerts warning of the ongoing efforts of foreign-backed hackers and spies to steal research related to vaccines and treatments.
And what has the U.S. response been to the rising cybersecurity threat? Thus far, nothing much of substance, which is why foreign-sponsored hackers continue to victimize U.S. companies and private citizens with impunity. Malicious foreign actors currently face no consequences for cybercrimes that damage our national security.
As it happens, Congress already has the means to address this growing threat — the bipartisan HACT Act. With almost 70 co-sponsors, the bill already passed the House overwhelmingly by a 336-71 vote back in July. It would, for the first time, give victims legal recourse in the cases of malicious hacking conducted by foreign governments or their agents. It would do so by carving out a cyberattack exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which currently shields foreign state actors from U.S. lawsuits, protecting them from any form of accountability in the cases of state-sponsored cyberattacks. The bill is the most viable means of addressing the epidemic of foreign-sponsored hacking of U.S. citizens and institutions.
Now there is an effort to get H.R. 4189 passed by attaching it as an amendment to the coronavirus relief bill. That makes perfect sense: Without this essential national security measure to protect the U.S. government, our healthcare system, and U.S. citizens from the continuing cyberthreat, our virus response remains crippled and our national security compromised.
In addition to that, it makes perfect political sense and is a model for how working across the aisle in good faith can break up the gridlock to actually address serious issues facing the nation. Pushing through a massive bipartisan effort (maybe the only important bipartisan bill out there right now) to address the imminent threat of foreign hackers continuing to take advantage of the coronavirus crisis presents the real opportunity of an important legislative win for the public in this lame-duck session of Congress. If the effort to incorporate the HACT Act into the next coronavirus relief bill proves successful, it could stand as an example of bipartisan policymaking going forward in a polarized Washington.
Kirk Thompson is the president of Redshift Strategy and a board member of Americans for Transparency and Accountability.
