Ed Markey

Thanks to Ranking Member Peters, and I thank all the witnesses.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, very much.

If we revised the War Powers Act, it would not relate to the targeted killings policy that...

I think that the bill put forward by Representative Schiff with regard to notification on ground forces used in a combat role is an example of an appropriate balance.

I think it is appropriate for a new AUMF to create a most stringent notification requirement for the President's use of ground forces in combating terrorist groups.

So you suggest that we revise the War Powers Act.

All politics is local.

And in your expert opinion, would it be possible for refiners to replace the BTEX in gasoline with ethanol and deliver consumers a high octane premium gasoline that costs the same as regular?

In order to create a higher octane fuel that allows engines to run more efficiently, petroleum refiners add benzene-based aromatic hydrocarbons known as BTEX.

I was the chairman of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming back in 2007, when we created that new law with regard to cellulosic.

Is this because more and more of the oil we are extracting today is coming from hard-to-reach sources like deep ocean drilling, shale, and tar sands?

We are concerned about the carcinogen effects of BTEX. We are also concerned about the toxic impacts of aldehydes.

These vehicles will be very dangerous. These vehicles will be hacked.

I believe that has to be mandatory. You can't just leave it up to any one auto manufacturer to do it.

By ignoring that discussion, we ignore the central concerns that families will have about safety and there will be a lot of concerns families are going to have about autonomous vehicles and the safety of their children in those vehicles.

So you need to have, you know, those protections so that there is that minimum standard.

I think the history, though, shows that with airbags and with seatbelts, et cetera, unless there's a mandate, it's just not accomplished unless you actually pass laws out of this committee nationally.

The balance should be that it can't be hacked and that the constant high standard that the industry has to meet is one that protects against that.

The standard could keep getting raised, but to have no standard would be extremely dangerous.

We should not have to choose, as Americans, between being connected and being protected.

Rather than addressing the cybersecurity problems after a hack has occurred, we must ensure that robust cybersecurity protections are built into the design, the construction, and operation of these transportation technologies.

Autonomous vehicles are just computers without drivers. That's all they are.

I want to follow up on Senator Kaine because following the WannaCry attack, Microsoft's President, Brad Smith, called the attack a wakeup call for the world's governments.

It is time for the intelligence community to develop features akin to the permissive action links that ensure that our nuclear weapons cannot be used except when authorized by the President

If the United States is going to develop capabilities that allow our military and intelligence community to penetrate widely-used commercial software like Microsoft Windows, then we need to be far more vigilant to ensure that these tools…