U.S. Senator Katie Britt Questions FBI Director Kash Patel in Senate Judiciary Oversight Hearing

WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Senator Katie Britt (R-Ala.) this week questioned Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Kash Patel in a Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing. The Senator thanked Director Patel for his commitment to securing communities across Alabama, inquired about the resources and funding needed to protect Americans during various upcoming major sporting events, and discussed the Bureau’s new cyber strategy to address increased threats against our nation’s critical infrastructure. Senator Britt highlighted the FBI’s recent partnership with the Tuscaloosa Police Department to carry out a successful operation: “I think it was about a month ago, you did a month-long operation, had 90 arrests, including 48 felony arrests. There were 10 firearms seized, and in that there were two high-profile arrests, one of which was somebody that had committed sexual abuse against a child younger than 12 and also a wanted robbery suspect, so thank you for the work that you’re doing there. You’ve also provided Tuscaloosa, their Violent Crimes Unit, with assistance on the recent shooting. So I appreciate your quick action and the work that your men and women are doing.” Director Patel emphasized how crucial state and local partnerships are to how the FBI conducts law enforcement operations: “Our best work is [done] by bringing state and locals to our facilities, embedding them in there permanently so we have direct lines of communication and also run offensive operations together. Before I got to the FBI, there was a 14-month waiting period for a task force officer to onboard at the FBI because of bureaucratic administrative hurdles … We eliminated that backlog … Increasing that capacity is the reason you are seeing the most prolific reduction in violent crime in U.S. history, not to mention the fact that we stopped 1,100 terrorist attacks.” Senator Britt then asked Director Patel to outline what resources the Bureau needs to continue keeping Americans safe at upcoming major events: “ You mentioned the terrorist attacks that you’ve been able to thwart … I know you’ve worked closely with (DHS) Secretary Mullin, amongst others, to make sure that we were safe when it came to the World Cup … As we look forward to the Olympics in 2028 … the football games that we see every weekend … how do we make sure that we take lessons learned and that we’re giving you the tools that you need and the structure that you need to continue that success that we saw with the World Cup?” Director Patel stressed the need for increased funding, training, and personnel for both state and federal law enforcement agencies, also highlighting Redstone Arsenal in Alabama: “We had about 7 million people come for those World Cup games, and over the course of 38 days, what we were able to do was establish a system of localized law enforcement, partner with the federal government to train them on the counter-UAS programs … which take place at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, the first of its kind … [W]e saw threat[s] based on counter-UAS systems that could easily target innocent Americans at sporting events, state fairs, college football games, World Cup, what have you. So we found a way to alleviate that threat by training state and locals, and by deploying assets into the field instead of keeping them in Washington, D.C. … And so we pushed out more agents and intel operators to the field, and we’re going to continue to do that … We need more resources to get more personnel to the field, but we also need more resources to get the right kit … We need every state and local authority to have their own resources … We want to triple the size of our counter drone-school down at Redstone Arsenal.” The Senator also inquired about increasingly threatening cyber capabilities and artificial intelligence systems: “[T]he critical infrastructure in more rural areas of Alabama, [it] seems that those are becoming easier targets, given the advances that are made, and harder to combat. Just last week, the Bureau released a new cyber strategy designed to protect Americans from these kinds of threats. Can you speak to the ways that you see this new cyber strategy and the Bureau more broadly being able to handle these things and … what you’re going to need from us in being able to do so?” Director Patel detailed the FBI’s new offensive and defensive cyber strategy: “So thanks to the President, he released his cyber strategy out of the White House, and we’re proud to announce that the FBI is the first 1811 agency to issue its own cyber strategy pursuant to that … We issued for the first time an offensive and defensive approach. … “85% of critical infrastructure in this country—water, wastewater, electric power, nuclear—is owned by the private sector. These private sector companies … are working off of devices that are 20 and 30 years old, including our telecom infrastructure and so we need them to upgrade. We need them to put in the resources and money, and we’re on the ground with them, and we’re asking them to allow us to get in early every time there’s a cyber intrusion. … “On the offensive side … we, the FBI, are the only ones leading the charge on what we call joint sequent operations. Joint sequent operations require us to go out and engage, not just with their private sector … but get on the platforms, get on the social media sites, the internet spaces, the dark web, and specifically allow us to run off offensive cyber operations. And with that capacity, our cyber program has seen the largest success we’ve had in the last 18 months.” Director Patel then touted the Kinetic Cyber Range hosted in Redstone Arsenal: “ The kinetic cyber range is maybe one of the best things that we have in the FBI. We literally built a town indoors in Huntsville, Alabama—an entire town consists of housing, schools, car shops, streets so we can practice and train against the modern cyber threat on all ecosystems and learn how to intrude and detect and evade, and also learn how to find those infiltrators that are coming onto our platform … [A]nd I’ve opened up that training capacity to state and law enforcement partners across the country to come down and train at our side.” You can watch the Senator’s full remarks here . ###