Ben Sasse: “Winston Churchill is often credited with the apocryphal quote that ``we sleep soundly in our beds because rough men…”

“Winston Churchill is often credited with the apocryphal quote that ``we sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.'' This is still true, but the 21st century has gotten more complicated. We live in an era of hybrid wars. There are fewer D-days on enemy beaches and more zero-day exploits in enemy servers. Americans sleep soundly at night because, in addition to these rough men at the ready, brilliant men and women work around the clock to develop national security technology that defends our interests and undermines our enemies. DARPA--the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency--is on the frontlines of that work. They are racing against our adversaries. Our technology struggle against the Chinese Communist Party is the defining national security challenge of our time. Chairman Xi and his techno-authoritarian regime are fundamentally opposed to not just American values but American interests all around the globe. Our citizens watching this Chamber on most days might think that most of their political leaders are content to ignore this reality, but I assure my colleagues in this Chamber that the CCP is not asleep at the switch. Beijing is aggressively investing in machine learning and artificial intelligence and in quantum computing. They are hacking and stealing America's research and America's intellectual property.…”