South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem took aim at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) during her confirmation hearing for Secretary of Homeland Security on Friday, calling for major changes to the federal cybersecurity organization.
Speaking before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Noem criticized CISA's involvement in combating foreign disinformation campaigns, arguing that such work falls outside the agency's core mission.
"CISA needs to be much more effective, smaller, more nimble, to really fulfill their mission," Noem stated. "The mission of it is to hunt and harden. It's to find those bad actors and help work with local and state critical infrastructure entities so that they can help them be prepared for such cyberattacks."
Republican senators joined in the criticism, with Senator Rand Paul calling for an investigation into CISA's disinformation work. Several lawmakers argued that the agency's efforts to counter false information about COVID-19 and the 2020 election violated First Amendment rights.
Questions arose about Noem's own cybersecurity record as governor. She was one of two governors who rejected federal grants meant to protect state governments from cyberattacks. When pressed on this decision, Noem claimed the program would have forced unnecessary government expansion.
During the three-hour hearing, Noem touched briefly on recent Chinese cyberattacks targeting telecommunications and infrastructure. She acknowledged current challenges in cybersecurity defense, noting "We don't necessarily even know how some of these espionage attacks that have infiltrated our systems have happened. We don't know how to stop them yet."
If confirmed, Noem pledged to refocus CISA on its core cybersecurity mission while improving coordination with other intelligence agencies. Reports indicate she is likely to be confirmed as one of President-elect Trump's least controversial cabinet picks.