Mike Pompeo: “I want to thank Chairman Rogers and Ranking Member Ruppersberger for all of their hard work over many months, now years…”

“I want to thank Chairman Rogers and Ranking Member Ruppersberger for all of their hard work over many months, now years, in bringing this to where we are today, and I want to thank all of the committee staff who worked so hard to bring it to this point as well. I'd like to keep things pretty simple. If there were a sergeant from the Chinese People's Liberation Army inside one of our power plants or inside one of our banks and if they were trying to steal stuff and if they were looking around, trying to figure out how to get in and how to access our systems or to take property or to do damage to our power grid, the American people would demand that the government do whatever it could, and they would be thrilled to learn that that company was permitted and, indeed, protected if it decided to share with others that potential threat to its piece of the infrastructure. That's what we're doing today. The world has changed just a little bit. In just this last month, the last M-1 tank left Europe. It's the first time we haven't had a tank in Europe since D-day when the great Kansan invaded on the great quest to free us from Nazi totalitarian domination. There are no tanks. We fight in a different world today. We use the word ``cyber,'' and sometimes folks forget what we're really talking about. We're talking about nation-states trying to do terrible harm to American interests, to American property and, indeed, to American civil liberties.…”