Good afternoon, Chairwoman Shaheen, Ranking Member Moran, and members of the subcommittee. Today, I appear before you on behalf of the men and women of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), who tackle some of the most complex threats every day with perseverance, professionalism, and integrity, sometimes at the greatest of costs. I am extremely proud of their service and commitment to the FBI’s mission and to ensuring the safety and security of communities throughout our nation. On their behalf, I would like to express my appreciation for the support you have given them in the past, ask for your continued support in the future, and pledge to be the best possible stewards of the resources you provide. I would like to begin by providing a brief overview of the President’s FY 2023 budget request for the FBI and then follow with a short discussion of key threats and challenges that we face, both as a nation and as an organization.
FY 2023 Budget Overview
The FY 2023 budget request proposes a total of $10.8 billion in direct budget authority to carry out the FBI’s national security, intelligence, criminal law enforcement, and criminal justice services missions. The request includes a total of $10.7 billion for salaries and expenses, which will support 36,945 positions (13,616 special agents, 3,287 intelligence analysts, and 20,042 professional staff), and $61.9 million for construction. The request includes 11 program enhancements totaling $324.6 million. These enhancements are proposed to meet critical requirements and close gaps in operational capabilities, including $52 million to enhance cyber investigative capabilities, $48.8 million for additional personnel and tools to investigate and counter acts of mass violence and address threats to public safety, $34.1 million to mitigate threats from foreign intelligence services, $20.6 million to combat crime and corruption, $17.8 million to address the increase in civil rights investigations, $36.9 million to enhance the FBI’s cybersecurity posture and protect internal networks, $25 million to address data analytics/technical tool development and technical surveillance, $27.4 million to support infrastructure needs related to the use of body worn cameras, $39.4 million for operations and maintenance of FBI-owned facilities, and $22.5 million to support the expansion of federal jurisdiction for crimes committed on tribal lands in response to the McGirt Supreme Court decision. When compared against the FY 2022 President’s Budget, the FY 2023 request level represents a total increase of $527.8 million, all of which falls in the salaries and expenses account.
Key Threats and Challenges
Our nation continues to face a multitude of serious and evolving threats ranging from homegrown violent extremists to hostile foreign intelligence services and operatives, from sophisticated cyber-based attacks to Internet facilitated sexual exploitation of children, from violent gangs and criminal organizations to public corruption and corporate fraud. Keeping pace with these threats is a significant challenge for the FBI. As an organization, we must be able to stay current with constantly evolving technologies. Our adversaries—terrorists, foreign intelligence services, and criminals—take advantage of modern technology, including the Internet and social media, to facilitate illegal activities, recruit followers, encourage terrorist attacks and other illicit actions, to spread misinformation, and to disperse information on building improvised explosive devices and other means to attack the U.S. The breadth of these threats and challenges are as complex as any time in our history. And the consequences of not responding to and countering threats and challenges have never been greater.
The support of this committee in helping the FBI do its part in thwarting these threats and facing these challenges is greatly appreciated. That support is allowing us to establish strong capabilities and capacities to assess threats, share intelligence, leverage key technologies, and—in some respects, most importantly—hire some of the best to serve as special agents, intelligence analysts, and professional staff. We have built, and are continuously enhancing, a workforce that possesses the skills and knowledge to deal with the complex threats and challenges we face today and tomorrow. We are building a leadership cadre that views change and transformation as a positive tool for keeping the FBI focused on the key threats facing our nation.
Today’s FBI is a national security and law enforcement organization that uses, collects, and shares intelligence in everything we do. Each FBI employee understands that, to defeat the key threats facing our nation, we must constantly strive to be more efficient and more effective. Just as our adversaries continue to evolve, so, too, must the FBI. We live in a time of acute and persistent terrorist and criminal threats to our national security, our economy, and indeed our communities. These diverse threats underscore the complexity and breadth of the FBI’s mission: to protect the American people and uphold the Constitution of the United States.
National Security
Top Terrorism Threats
Preventing terrorist attacks, from any place, by any actor, remains the FBI’s top priority.
The nature of the threat posed by terrorism, both international terrorism (IT) and domestic terrorism (DT), continues to evolve.
The greatest terrorism threat to our homeland is posed by lone actors or small cells who typically radicalize online and look to attack soft targets with easily accessible weapons. We see these threats manifested within both domestic violent extremists (DVEs) and homegrown violent extremists (HVEs), two distinct threats, both of which are located primarily in the United States and typically radicalize and mobilize to violence on their own.
Individuals who commit violent criminal acts in furtherance of social or political goals stemming from domestic influences, some of which include racial or ethnic bias, or anti- government or anti-authority sentiments, are described as DVEs, whereas HVEs are individuals who are inspired primarily by global jihad but are not receiving individualized direction from foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs).
Domestic and homegrown violent extremists are often motivated and inspired by a mix of socio-political, ideological, and personal grievances against their targets, and more recently have focused on accessible targets to include civilians, law enforcement and the military, symbols or members of the U.S. government, houses of worship, retail locations, and mass public gatherings. Selecting these types of soft targets, in addition to the insular nature of their radicalization and mobilization to violence and limited discussions with others regarding their plans, increases the challenge faced by law enforcement to detect and disrupt the activities of lone actors before they occur.
The top threat we face from DVEs continues to be from those we categorize as racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists (RMVEs), including those who advocate for the superiority of the white race, who were the primary source of lethal attacks perpetrated by DVEs in 2018 and 2019. It is important to note that we have also recently seen an increase in fatal DVE attacks perpetrated by anti-government or anti-authority violent extremists, specifically militia violent extremists and anarchist violent extremists. Anti-government or anti-authority violent extremists were responsible for three of the four lethal DVE attacks in 2020. Also, in 2020, we saw the first lethal attack committed by an anarchist violent extremist in over 20 years. These anti-government/anti-authority violent extremists have specifically targeted law enforcement and the military as well as institutions or members of the U.S. government.
The number of FBI investigations of suspected domestic violent extremists has more than doubled since the spring of 2020. A few months ago, we marked the one-year anniversary of the January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol, which has led to unprecedented efforts by the Department of Justice, including the FBI, to investigate and hold accountable all who engaged in violence, destruction of property, and other criminal activity on that day. To date, the department has arrested and charged nearly 800 individuals who took part in the Capitol assault.
The FBI uses all tools available at its disposal to combat domestic terrorism. These efforts represent a critical part of the first-ever National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism, which was released in June 2021, and which sets forth, for the first time, a comprehensive, whole of government policy to address the many facets of the domestic terrorism threat.
The FBI assesses HVEs are the greatest, most immediate IT threat to the homeland. As I have described, HVEs are people located and radicalized primarily in the United States, who are not receiving individualized direction from global jihad-inspired FTOs but are inspired largely by the Islamic State of Iraq and ash-Sham (ISIS) and al-Qa’ida to commit violence. An HVE’s lack of a direct connection with an FTO, ability to rapidly mobilize without detection, and use of encrypted communications pose significant challenges to our ability to proactively identify and disrupt it.
The FBI remains concerned that FTOs, such as ISIS and al-Qa’ida, intend to carry out or inspire large-scale attacks in the United States. Despite its loss of physical territory in Iraq and Syria, ISIS remains relentless in its campaign of violence against the United States and our partners, both here at home and overseas. To this day, ISIS continues to aggressively promote its hate-fueled rhetoric and attract like-minded violent extremists with a willingness to conduct attacks against the United States and our interests abroad. ISIS’s successful use of social media and messaging applications to attract individuals seeking a sense of belonging is of continued concern to us. Like other foreign terrorist groups, ISIS advocates for lone offender attacks in the United States and Western countries via videos and other English language propaganda that have, at times, specifically advocated for attacks against civilians, the military, law enforcement and intelligence community personnel.
Al-Qa’ida maintains its desire to both conduct and inspire large-scale, spectacular attacks. Because continued pressure has degraded some of the group’s senior leadership, we assess that, in the near term, al-Qa’ida is more likely to continue to focus on cultivating its international affiliates and supporting small-scale, readily achievable attacks in regions such as East and West Africa. Over the past year, propaganda from al-Qa’ida leaders continued to seek to inspire individuals to conduct their own attacks in the United States and other Western nations.
Iran and its global proxies and partners, including Iraqi Shia militant groups, continue to attack and plot against the United States and our allies throughout the Middle East in response to U.S. pressure. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF) continues to provide support to militant resistance groups and terrorist organizations. Iran also continues to support Lebanese Hizballah and other terrorist groups. Lebanese Hizballah has sent operatives to build terrorist infrastructures worldwide. The arrests of individuals in the United States allegedly linked to Lebanese Hizballah’s main overseas terrorist arm, and their intelligence collection and procurement efforts, demonstrate Lebanese Hizballah’s interest in long-term contingency planning activities here in the Homeland. Lebanese Hizballah Secretary-General Hasan Nasrallah also has threatened retaliation for the death of IRGC-QF Commander Qassem Soleimani.
As an organization, we continually adapt and rely heavily on the strength of our federal, state, local, tribal, territorial, and international partnerships to combat all terrorist threats to the United States and our interests. To that end, we use all available lawful investigative techniques and methods to combat these threats while continuing to collect, analyze, and share intelligence concerning the threat posed by violent extremists, in all their forms, who desire to harm Americans and U.S. interests. We will continue to share information and encourage the sharing of information among our numerous partners via our Joint Terrorism Task Forces across the country, and our Legal Attaché offices around the world. The FY 2023 request includes an additional 208 positions (including 55 special agents, 18 intelligence analysts, and 135 professional staff) and $48.8 million to counter terrorism and the increasing acts of domestic terrorism, including acts of mass violence and threats to public safety, occurring across the United States.
Cyber
Over the past two years, nation-state and criminal cyber actors took advantage of people and networks made more vulnerable by the sudden shift of our personal and professional lives online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, targeting those searching for personal protective equipment, worried about stimulus checks, and conducting vaccine research.
Throughout these last two years, the FBI has seen a wider-than-ever range of cyber actors threaten Americans’ safety, security, and confidence in our digitally connected world. But these threats will not disappear when the pandemic ends. Cyber-criminal syndicates and nation-states keep innovating ways to compromise our networks and maximize the reach and impact of their operations, such as by selling malware as a service or by targeting vendors as a way to access scores of victims by hacking just one provider.
These criminals and nation-states believe that they can compromise our networks, steal our property, and hold our critical infrastructure at risk without incurring any risk themselves. In the last few years, we have seen, and have publicly called out, China, North Korea, and Russia for using cyber operations to target U.S. COVID-19 vaccines and research. We have seen the far-reaching disruptive impact a serious supply-chain compromise can have through the SolarWinds intrusions, conducted by the Russian SVR. We have seen China working to obtain controlled defense technology and developing the ability to use cyber means to complement any future real-world conflict. We have seen Iran use cyber means to try to sow divisions and undermine our elections, targeting voters before elections and threatening election officials after. As these adversaries become more sophisticated, we are increasingly concerned about our ability to detect and warn about specific cyber operations against U.S. organizations. One of the most worrisome facets is their focus on compromising U.S. critical infr
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