SUMMER’S OVER — Both the House and Senate come back into session this week after more than a month of recess, and multiple cyber and tech-related issues are high on the to-do list for the returning members. — China, China, China: This includes House votes this week on around two dozen bills aimed at countering Beijing, with votes taking place as early as tonight, and continuing on through Wednesday. Among the measures up for consideration are the Securing Global Telecommunications Act, which would require the State Department to create a strategy to promote the use of secure telecoms globally. Another bill on the list is the Foreign Adversary Communications Transparency Act, which would require the Federal Communications Commission to publish a list of groups owned by adversary nations that have been given authorizations or licenses by the FCC. The ROUTERS Act is also up for a vote and would require the Commerce Department to conduct a study of national security risks by consumer routers and modems. Voting will also take place on legislation that would require foreign cranes constructed by adversarial nations to be inspected by U.S. authorities for cyber risks prior to use at U.S. ports. And another bill on the agenda would authorize $325 million per year through fiscal year 2027 to counter Chinese malign foreign influence efforts. — Secure the vote: With less than two months until the U.S. elections, ensuring that the process stays secure and disinformation campaigns are prevented is also a topic for both sides of the Capitol. The Senate Intelligence Committee plans to hold a hearing sometime later this month on election security concerns, which will feature representatives from social media and tech companies. A spokesperson for Committee Chair Mark Warner (D-Va.) did not respond to a request for comment on an exact date for the hearing. But given the ramp-up in concerns around efforts by foreign nations such as Iran and Russia to interfere in portions of the elections, such as spreading disinformation and targeting presidential campaigns, it’s a key topic. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Friday put out an update on the foreign threat space around the upcoming elections, noting that while the intelligence community has “not observed any foreign actor seeking to interfere in the conduct of the 2024 elections,” threats from Iran, China and Russia are high. Warner applauded the public update from the ODNI on Friday and called for a “whole-of-society effort” to protect the elections. “Today’s update underscores the extent to which a range of foreign actors — but most notably Russia, Iran, and the People’s Republic of China — remain intent on undermining confidence in the election, stoking divisions among Americans, and even seeking to shape outcomes of election races,” Warner said. — In the House: In addition, the House Administration Committee plans to hold a hearing Wednesday on “American confidence in elections,” featuring testimony from the secretaries of state of Florida, Ohio, Michigan and Arizona, who are the lead election officials for those states. — CrowdStrike in the frying pan: The House Homeland Security Committee is set to hold a hearing Sept. 24 on the massive global outage in July linked to a faulty update from cybersecurity group CrowdStrike to Windows computers. This led to major disruptions for flights around the world, interruption of operations at companies and federal agencies and many other problems. While the committee had invited CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz to testify, Adam Meyers, the senior vice president of counter-adversary operations at CrowdStrike, will instead appear before the committee. The company could face further congressional interest, as both the House Oversight and Reform Committee and the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee were looking into the incident in the weeks after it occurred. “Recognizing that Americans will undoubtedly feel the lasting, real-world consequences of this incident for some time, they deserve to know in detail how this incident happened and the mitigation steps CrowdStrike is taking to avoid the cascading impacts of outages like this across sectors,” House Homeland Security Committee Chair Mark Green (R-Tenn.) said in a statement when Meyers was announced as a witness. — Shut it down: Looming over the entire month is the threat of a government shutdown on Oct. 1 if the House and Senate can’t agree to compromise language on the 2025 appropriations package, and if no continuing budget resolution can be pushed through. House Republicans last week unveiled a stopgap appropriations package that would keep the government funded through the end of March, but it includes a provision banning non-citizen voting in U.S. elections, something Democrats are strongly opposed to. So, stay tuned for wrangling this month.
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