SAN FRANCISCO — Chris Krebs, the former government cybersecurity leader whom President Donald Trump targeted for investigation for affirming the integrity of the 2020 election, said he was “outraged” Monday at the Trump administration’s gutting of cyber personnel.
The comments are the first Krebs has made in public since Trump directed the Justice Department to take action against him.
Getting applause from a generally reserved crowd of industry professionals at the RSA Conference in San Francisco, a cybersecurity conference, Krebs criticized the second Trump administration for its repeated cuts to cybersecurity employees, contractors and programs.
“Cybersecurity is national security. We all know that, right? That’s why we’re here. That’s why we get up every morning and do our jobs. We are protecting everyone out there. And right now, to see what’s happening to the cybersecurity community inside the federal government, we should be outraged. Absolutely outraged.”
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Since January, the Trump administration has made repeated cuts to cybersecurity personnel. It has directed the agency Krebs helmed during Trump’s first administration, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, to cut probationary employees and advisory committees, and it sent out two rounds of emails encouraging employees to retire.
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees CISA, has confirmed rounds of cuts.
In a statement to NBC News, a DHS spokesperson said that "over the years, CISA strayed from its core mission of defending against cybersecurity threats and protecting critical infrastructure."
On Tuesday, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem is set to outline her vision for CISA and cybersecurity in an appearance at the conference.
Krebs said that given a series of recent major hacking campaigns that the U.S. government and cybersecurity companies have traced to China — nicknamed Salt Typhoon, Volt Typhoon and Flax Typhoon — the United States should be investing more heavily in cybersecurity staffers.
“I can see the policy arguments that we’re trying to downsize government, streamline. But when you’ve got Volt Typhoon, Salt Typhoon, Flax Typhoon, whatever, every day knocking on our door, we’re not moving forward,” he said.
“We need more Cyber Command, more folks at the NSA collecting intel, we need more front-line defenders, threat hunters, red teamers, folks that are just doing [system administration], the basics. We need more of that, not less. So that’s my pitch: Make CISA great again,” he said.
Krebs has established himself as a popular leader both among CISA staffers and in the cybersecurity industry, where he worked until recently. Trump’s actions against Krebs included rescinding the security clearances at the firm SentinelOne, where he worked until he resigned this month.
Also Monday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit digital rights organization, published an open letter defending Krebs, though it initially had only a few dozen signers and none representing major cybersecurity companies.
One of the signers, Katie Moussouris, the CEO of a smaller cybersecurity company, Luta Security, has told NBC News that the industry generally supports Krebs but has been wary of angering the Trump administration.
“Everybody feels the same way I do. Nobody is authorized to say anything officially,” she said.
