Bills Introduced – 12-10-25
Yesterday, with both the House and Senate in Washington, there were 88 bills introduced. Two of those bills are likely to be covered in this blog:
HR 6584 To amend title 10, United States Code, to strengthen and enhance the Department of Defense cyber workforce, and for other purposes. Neguse, Joe [Rep.-D-CO-2]
HR 6605 To require the Comptroller General of the United States to report on the use of unmanned aircraft systems and on systems developed to counter such unmanned aircraft systems by Federal, State, local, and Tribal agencies. Vasquez, Gabe [Rep.-D-NM-2]
Cybersecurity Workforce
I can find no legislation in the 118th Congress that would appear to be similar to HR 6584. While I do not typically cover military matters in this blog, the military serves as a training ground for a portion of the civilian cyber workforce, so I expect that I will be covering this bill.
UAS and cUAS Report
I can find no legislation in the 118th Congress that would appear to be similar to HR 6605. It will be interesting to see if the cUAS reporting requirements in this bill include DOD, since that is the ‘Federal agency’ that should have the most experience with cUAS systems.
MIP Legislation
I would like to mention in passing one bill that will not receive additional coverage in this blog:
S 3416 A bill to prohibit public comments from governments and individuals designated as foreign adversaries. Lummis, Cynthia M. [Sen.-R-WY]
While foreign governments and foreign individuals outside of the United States are certainly not covered by First Amendment freedom of speech guarantees, it would seem to be extremely difficult for the US government to stop them from making public comments that are presumably offensive to some portion of the US government or population. If, however, the bill is attempting to stop American press from reporting of such foreign speech, or stopping American citizens from quoting or commenting upon such comments in their social media accounts, First Amendment protections are certainly going to come into conflict.
More importantly, preventing American citizens from hearing the opinions and pronunciations (even if they are vehemently anti-US) of adversaries seems to be contrary to the need for having an informed body politic. If we citizens do not know what our adversaries are saying about us, we will not be able to help guide our government, and it is still a ‘representative democracy’ no matter what some people think or hope, in formulating a strategy for dealing with those adversaries.
But then again, some people in Washington seem to think that they are better, smarter, and more empowered than the body politic to which they owe their jobs.