— European officials are working to respond to the withdrawal in U.S. cybersecurity funds for Ukraine, and looking at moving forward without Washington.
HAPPY MONDAY, and welcome to MORNING CYBERSECURITY! This newsletter may be focused on cybersecurity, but the real news today is the arrival of two new members of the POLITICO cyber family! The first is maybe a tad too young to write for us, but she IS the daughter of my colleague John Sakellariadis, who became a member of the dad club last week. John will be out for the next few months, and we can’t wait to see photos of baby Lena in her POLITICO onesie.
And, in another piece of amazing news, we’re welcoming our new full-time Morning Cybersecurity writer, Dana Nickel, who starts today! Dana has already been a part of the POLITICO family as a digital producer, and we are all thrilled to have her on board! Reach out to Dana ASAP with tips and contact details.
Want to receive this newsletter every weekday? Subscribe to POLITICO Pro. You’ll also receive daily policy news and other intelligence you need to act on the day’s biggest stories.
CALIFORNIA DECODED: The technology industry and its key characters are driving the national political narrative right now, but it is also a uniquely California story. To understand how the Golden State is defining tech policy and politics within its borders and beyond, we’ve launched POLITICO Pro Technology: California Decoded. This new daily newsletter will track how industry players in Silicon Valley are trying to influence state and national lawmakers – and how government officials are encouraging or foiling those figures. Sign up now to get a limited, free trial of this newsletter delivered straight to your inbox.
Today's Agenda
The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security holds a meeting of the Emerging Technology Technical Advisory Committee. 9 a.m.
The Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology holds a virtual briefing on "Strengthening U.S. Energy Infrastructure Cybersecurity." 11 a.m.
The Council on Foreign Relations holds a virtual discussion on "Navigating the Gray Zone - Strategies to Address Hybrid Warfare." 11 a.m.
Anthropic co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei speaks at a virtual discussion on “the future of U.S. artificial intelligence leadership” hosted by The Council on Foreign Relations. 6:30 p.m.
The International Scene
FRIENDS?... IN THE NORTH — Cyber officials in Europe have been left reeling by the withdrawal of U.S. cyber funds for Ukraine, and may seek to move away from working with U.S. companies as the rift between Washington and Brussels widens, Estonia’s cyber ambassador told your MC host.
Tanel Sepp, the Estonian ambassador at large for cyber policy, said in a wide-ranging interview that following the Trump administration’s recent pullback on funding and support for Ukraine, as well as for traditional European allies the European Union’s cybersecurity officials are left a bit stunned — but also contemplating action.
“Everybody is trying to figure out and make sense of what happened,” Sepp said. “We are going to have, within the EU, a cyber commanders and cyber ambassadors meeting under the Polish presidency, and there will be some other meetings coming.”
Sepp said despite these upcoming convenings, there have not been any “substantial discussions” about how to move forward on cybersecurity issues without U.S. involvement. But he noted that it’s likely “this moment will still come.”
— Tangible impact: One part of the pullback in U.S. cyber support for Ukraine, as your MC host detailed in National Security Daily on Friday, is the evaporation of U.S. funding for the Tallinn Mechanism, a program established in 2023 to coordinate government and private sector cyber aid to Ukraine. The State Department did not respond to a request for comment on the funds.
Sepp, one of the key leaders of the mechanism, said that half of the €200 million from donors and foreign assistance efforts was tied to the U.S. government, and that those funds had been cut. As a result, he said he is “running around trying to find some cover” to fill the financial gap, such as speaking with other potential government donors that he declined to detail.
“I am working with the assumption we are not getting a dime from the U.S. government,” Sepp said. “It’s an extremely tricky situation, and I just don’t understand the justification for this.”
The ambassador also predicted that U.S. companies are likely to feel the sting of the Trump administration pulling support in Europe, as EU leaders will be less likely to trust them and may turn to alternatives for everything from cybersecurity to satellite services.
— Active threat space: Estonia is the key nation in Europe that often leads on cybersecurity issues, and hosts annual NATO cyber warfare exercises in Tallinn. The nation has been forced to zero in on cybersecurity in the past two decades as Moscow has increasingly targeted Estonian networks. Sepp said there were 6,500 successful cyberattacks against Estonian systems in 2024, double 2023, and said most were likely tied back to Russia. Hybrid threats to the EU generally have already increased in the past year, including cyberattacks.
In the face of these threats, Sepp said his nation and the EU had no choice but to persevere.
“We will stay calm and carry on,” Sepp said. “There is no point in reacting to every single piece of news that comes from D.C., but it’s confusing and it is sad to see that also these principled, allied values are kind of at stake here.”
At the Agencies
MORE CUTS — Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem last week signed an order directing the end to eight federal advisory committees, including those focused on cybersecurity and AI issues, according to an order obtained by John.
— Who’s who: According to the order, the eight advisory committees set to be disbanded immediately are the Homeland Security Academic Partnership Council; the Tribal Homeland Security Advisory Council; the Artificial Intelligence Safety and Security Board; the Public-Private Analytic Exchange Program; the Homeland Security Science and Technology Advisory Committee; the Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee; the Critical Infrastructure Partnership Advisory Council; and the Cyber Investigations Advisory Board.
Noem in the order cited the need to comply with an executive order Trump signed in mid-February that directed agency leaders to identify federal advisory committees that could be cut as part of the overhaul of the federal government.
Anthony Guglielmi, chief of communications for U.S. Secret Service, confirmed to your MC host that the Cyber Investigations Advisory Board, which USSS oversees, has been disbanded, but declined to comment further.
Spokespersons for DHS and for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which has oversight of the Critical Infrastructure Partnership Advisory Council, did not respond to requests for comment on the order.
STAY VIGILANT — The Republicans leaders of the House Homeland Security Committee want the Transportation Security Administration to be “flexible” on how it approaches cybersecurity regulations for key critical sectors.
Committee Chair Mark Green (R-Tenn.), cyber subcommittee Chair Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.), transportation and maritime security subcommittee Chair Carlos Gimenez (R-Fla.), and committee member Rep. Sheri Biggs(R-S.C.) late last week sent a letter to TSA Acting Administrator Adam Stahl urging the agency to take a careful approach to setting cyber standards.
“TSA must ensure that its cybersecurity framework is not only effective but also agile enough to respond to multiple simultaneous cyber incidents that impact different nodes of the transportation sector without compromising operational continuity,” the lawmakers wrote.
— A whole lotta history: The letter was sent after TSA put out a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in November that would mandate some rail and pipeline companies to establish cyber risk management programs. It also comes years after the Biden administration put TSA at the forefront of creating regulations for these sectors following the 2021 ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline that temporarily left much of the U.S. East Coast without fuel.
Many oil and gas pipeline operators pushed back against the 2021 effort by TSA, and the lawmakers in their letter stressed that “we are concerned that the Biden administration did not take this pragmatic and balanced approach to regulation for the Transportation Systems Sector.”
— Next steps: A spokesperson for TSA declined to comment on the letter. The House Homeland Security Committee’s cyber subcommittee is set to hold a hearing on “examining the opportunity to improve the cyber regulatory regime” on Tuesday.
Industry Intel
AI TEAM UP — Organizations including Cisco, IBM, Intel and Microsoft have teamed up to establish a new open source and standards group for developing artificial intelligence products.
OASIS Open and the Data & Trust Alliance on Friday announced the upcoming launch of the OASIS Data Provenance Standards Technical Committee, with the tech companies serving as founding sponsors. The aim is to create standards for AI products aimed at strengthening trust and accountability.
DOGE CONCERNS — Officials at U.S. Cyber Command are increasingly worried that the emails sent by federal employees to DOGE each week detailing their accomplishments pose a major cyber and national security risk, The Washington Post’s Alex Horton and Warren P. Strobel reported.
STRAIGHT TO JAIL — A federal jury in Ohio on Friday convicted a Texas man of sabotaging his company’s networks by introducing malicious code that crashed systems, at one point impacting thousands of the company's users, the Justice Department announced.
