Senate panel advances Trump’s national cyber director nominee

The Senate Homeland Security Committee advanced Sean Cairncross to be national cyber director under President Donald Trump in an 11-4 vote on Monday, bringing him one step closer to confirmation in the full Senate.

Sens. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich, Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., John Fetterman, D-Pa. and Andy Kim, D-N.J. voted no. 

Cairncross is a former Republican National Committee official and was CEO of the Millennium Challenge Corporation agency under Trump’s first term. As national cyber director, he would be tasked with overseeing an office first stood up under Biden that has served as a key public-facing White House cyber policy interlocutor between federal agencies and Capitol Hill. 

His nomination was announced in February. Earlier this month, he appeared before the Senate homeland panel and received numerous questions about how he would coordinate responses to various cyberattacks, cybersecurity information-sharing and his relative lack of direct cybersecurity policy experience.

Lawmakers like Slotkin appeared skeptical of Cairncross at the time of his testimony, citing concerns that he’d be backing an administration that has cut many of its federal cyber workers as part of cuts to end purported government spending waste under the Department of Government Efficiency.

“Just be honest about it. You can’t say you care about an increasing and more sophisticated set of attacks while cutting the very people who help defend against those attacks,” Slotkin told Cairncross at the time. “You’re going to be the guy. If we have our cyber 9/11, you’re going to be the guy who’s sitting there saying, ‘Holy crap, we just cut all this money.’”

Cairncross does not have direct cybersecurity policy experience, but said his past roles involved engagements with different parts of the U.S. cyber community.

“I don’t have a technical background in cyber,” he told committee Ranking Member Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., adding, “but in my roles running private organizations and national party committees, I’ve been on the user side of this. We’ve had to deal with foreign nation attacks on our systems. We’ve worked with the FBI and the intelligence community to learn about them, to stop them and to monitor those attacks.”

A group of former cybersecurity and national security officials sent a letter to the Senate Homeland Security Committee earlier this month expressing support for Cairncross’s nomination. 

“His impressive combination of experience in both the public and private sectors, as well as his ability to navigate government, build coalitions, and implement strategic approaches to the challenges facing the United States make Sean situated particularly well to this role,” the letter said.

He would replace Harry Coker, who led the office until departing with other colleagues in January when Trump returned to the White House.