Rogers Opening Statement at Supply Chain Security Hearing  

WASHINGTON – Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), House Homeland Security Committee ranking member, today delivered an opening statement at a hearing entitled “Public-Private Initiatives to Secure the Supply Chain.”

The U.S. economy is the envy of many around the world. Our innovative spirit and technological advances have led the world for more than 150 years.

And, for almost the same period of time, our global adversaries and criminal actors have attempted to steal our innovations to enrich themselves and undermine our way of life.  They have sought every advantage to copy and extract information and intelligence about the U.S. government, our industry, and our citizens.

The latest front in this battle is the supply chain.  Our adversaries are actively exploiting vulnerabilities in our supply chain to undermine our economy and our national security.

These vulnerabilities have led to intellectual property theft, data breaches, and leaks of classified information.  

In recent years, the threat has intensified as our intelligence community has been able to link certain foreign companies with a strong presence in our commercial and government supply chain to foreign intelligence agencies. 

Protecting our supply chain from companies like Kaspersky Labs and Huawei that serve as intelligence fronts for Russia and China is a complex challenge.

We need to do a better job of identifying and prohibiting companies like these from infiltrating our supply chain.

 

But even if we were able to fully secure technologies in the United States, our citizens and companies still operate throughout the globe, in countries that make different choices about their supply chains.

 

For this reason, we must have a holistic approach to securing the supply chain.  I applaud the Information and Communications Technology Supply Chain Risk Management Task Force for taking such an approach.

 

The ICT Task Force is a great example of the public and private collaboration, working to identify and understand the problem and work systematically to equip the government and industry to mitigate risks.

 

While the task force is focused on the information and communications technology ecosystem, I hope their work will inform other areas of supply chain risk.  Our transportation systems, manufacturing, healthcare, and other critical industries are increasing vulnerable to supply chain disruption.

 

I think the Department of Homeland Security has the expertise to assist these industries and other government agencies as we fight this emerging threat.  I expect the Department to continue to play a central role in this effort.

 

I appreciate our witnesses for being here today to discuss their important work.  I look forward to their recommendations on how best to equip government, industry, and our citizens to secure our supply chain.

 

###