John Ratcliffe, President Trump’s nominee for Director of the Central Intelligence Company (CIA), addressed the Senate Intelligence Committee in the present day, laying out his {qualifications}, imaginative and prescient, and methods to deal with what he described as an unprecedented array of world threats.
TRANSCRIPT:
“Thanks very a lot, Chairman Cotton, Vice Chairman Warner, and distinguished members of the committee, for the chance to look earlier than you because the President’s nominee for the Director of the Central Intelligence Company. I’ve loved assembly with every of you individually, and I sit up for answering your questions in the present day.
Thanks to my pal and mentor, former Lawyer Common John Ashcroft, for being right here in the present day and for his gracious and humbling remarks. Sir, I’m ceaselessly grateful in your religion in me.
Thanks to Director Burns and your glorious workforce on the CIA in your dedication to a easy {and professional} transition. I’d like to acknowledge my wonderful household: my great spouse, Michelle; our two daughters, Reilly and Darby; my 5 brothers and sisters; and, watching from above, my mother and father, Bob and Cathy Ratcliffe.
I merely don’t have any phrases to adequately categorical my gratitude to all of you. Lastly, thanks, President Trump, for the good honor of nominating me to steer the world’s premier intelligence company. I’m grateful for the chance to serve underneath you as soon as once more.
If confirmed, I’ll work tirelessly that can assist you shield the American folks and advance America’s pursuits. Immediately, we face what often is the most difficult nationwide safety setting in our nation’s historical past.
The Chinese language Communist Social gathering stays dedicated to dominating the world economically, militarily, and technologically. Transnational prison organizations are flooding American communities with violence and lethal narcotics.
The Russia-Ukraine struggle wages on, spreading devastation and rising the danger of the US being pulled right into a battle with a nuclear energy.
The Iranian regime and its terrorist proxies proceed to export mayhem throughout the Center East, and Iran is nearer to nuclear breakout than ever earlier than. North Korea stays a destabilizing power.
Rising coordination amongst America’s rivals and adversaries threatens to compound the threats they every pose to us individually. Quite a few terrorist teams and different non-state actors, a few of which have even crossed our southern border, nonetheless pose a persistent risk to our folks and our homeland. These threats converge at a time of fast technological change.
Rising applied sciences like synthetic intelligence and quantum computing will outline the way forward for nationwide safety, geopolitical energy, and human civilization. Ubiquitous technical surveillance is presenting unprecedented challenges to one of many CIA’s core missions: amassing human intelligence.
Briefly, the challenges are nice and enhance the need of confirming a CIA director who is ready on day one to take them head-on.
For roughly 1 / 4 of a century, I’ve devoted my skilled life to U.S. nationwide safety. I served because the Chief of Anti-Terrorism and Nationwide Safety, after which U.S. Lawyer for the Japanese District of Texas.
As a congressman, I used to be a member of the Home Intelligence, Homeland Safety, and Judiciary Committees.
As Director of Nationwide Intelligence, I had the privilege of working carefully with President Trump and oversaw the 18 companies of the U.S. intelligence neighborhood, together with the company I now have the dignity of being nominated to steer. In every of those roles, I served with constancy to the Structure and a strict adherence to the rule of regulation.
I’ve at all times prioritized American civil liberties, one thing I’ll proceed to do if confirmed to serve once more. Every of those experiences has formed me as a frontrunner and nationwide safety skilled.
Collectively, they’ve ready me to steer the CIA by way of a tumultuous time on the planet and towards a future during which the CIA’s mission can be each harder and extra indispensable than ever earlier than. If confirmed, my management at CIA will give attention to setting and speaking priorities and demanding relentless execution. Above all, there can be a strict adherence to the CIA’s mission.
We’ll gather intelligence, particularly human intelligence, in each nook of the globe, regardless of how darkish or tough. We’ll produce insightful, goal, all-source evaluation, by no means permitting political or private biases to cloud our judgment or infect our merchandise.
We’ll conduct covert motion on the route of the President, going locations nobody else can go and doing issues nobody else can do.
To the courageous CIA officers listening world wide: if all of this seems like what you signed up for, then buckle up and prepare to make a distinction.
If it doesn’t, then it’s time to discover a new line of labor. We have to be the final word meritocracy.
I’ll unapologetically empower essentially the most proficient, hardest-working, and most brave risk-takers and innovators to guard the American folks and advance America’s pursuits. I can’t tolerate something or anybody that distracts from our mission.
It could be inappropriate in an unclassified setting for me to debate intimately a few of my views on intelligence assortment priorities, however I’m completely happy to take action within the categorized listening to that can comply with this one. Nevertheless, if confirmed, there are a number of organizational priorities that I plan to give attention to that I’d like to debate right here.
The primary is expertise. As you’re all little doubt conscious, the CIA has a remarkably low turnover price amongst its workforce. This reveals the CIA’s success in attracting mission-focused public servants who discover deep which means and worth within the distinctive work they’re privileged to do day-after-day.
However in some circumstances, it additionally means that complacency is tolerated. Excessive performers hate nothing greater than mediocrity, and nothing poisons a high-performance office tradition greater than leaders who don’t maintain workforce members accountable once they don’t meet expectations.
The CIA have to be a spot that incentivizes and rewards significant contributions to our nation’s safety and holds accountable low performers and dangerous actors who should not centered on our mission.
It has been mentioned that the CIA’s World Struggle II predecessor, the OSS, described its ideally suited recruit as a PhD who may win a bar combat. This sentiment is the essence of what in the present day’s CIA should recapture.
However we should discover that preventing spirit in recruits whose skills, talent units, and backgrounds are extra diverse than ever. I can even work to develop pathways for mid-career professionals with extremely sought-after abilities to fill gaps within the company’s workforce and for CIA officers to do rotations within the non-public sector that broaden their views.
I’m dedicated to defending and supporting CIA’s workforce. We’ll absolutely examine workforce well being and wellness points, together with anomalous well being incidents.
Our officers should embrace a tradition of powerful readiness and resilience, however we should even be clear that once they put themselves in hurt’s method, we’ll ensure they’re taken care of once they return house.
We owe that to America’s women and men in uniform, and we owe it to the silent carriers who threat their lives within the shadows as properly. Altogether, these expertise methods can be notably necessary in addressing one other organizational precedence that I’ll give attention to: expertise.
On the CIA, expertise is each a software and a goal. As a software, expertise is baked into practically each aspect of the company, from the spy devices imagined and created by the Directorate of Science and Know-how and utilized by the Directorate of Operations, to the cyber capabilities deployed by the Directorate of Digital Innovation, to the Directorate of Assist utilizing new expertise instruments to assist our workforce, and the AI-powered massive language fashions utilized by the Directorate of Evaluation.
However over the many years, as technological innovation has shifted increasingly from the general public sector to the non-public sector, the CIA has struggled to maintain tempo.
As a goal, expertise is extra necessary than ever, whether or not it’s understanding our adversaries’ capabilities in AI and quantum computing, their developments in hypersonics and rising house applied sciences, or their improvements in counterintelligence and surveillance.
The current creation of the company’s Transnational and Know-how Mission Middle was an acknowledgment of that truth, however way more must be performed as a result of our adversaries—and one particularly that I’ll talk about now—perceive that the nation who wins the race of rising applied sciences in the present day will dominate the world of tomorrow.
This brings me to the necessity for the CIA to proceed and enhance in depth the give attention to the threats posed by China and its ruling Chinese language Communist Social gathering. As DNI, I dramatically elevated the intelligence neighborhood’s sources dedicated to China.
I overtly warned the American those who from my distinctive vantage level as an official who noticed extra intelligence than anybody else, I assessed that China was far and away our high nationwide safety risk.
President Trump has been an unbelievable chief on this problem, and it’s encouraging {that a} bipartisan consensus has emerged lately. The current creation of the CIA’s China Mission Middle is an instance of the great work that should proceed.
In closing, the company should present the President and U.S. policymakers with the very best intelligence to tell their decision-making in hopes of preserving peace and spreading prosperity.
That is our once-in-a-generation problem. The intelligence is evident.
Our response have to be clear as properly. I’m honored for the chance to look earlier than you in the present day, and I thanks in your consideration of my nomination to be the Director of the CIA. I sit up for answering your questions.”
WATCH: CIA Director Nominee @JohnRatcliffe‘s full opening remarks: pic.twitter.com/6UX5lOnoIQ
— Trump Struggle Room (@TrumpWarRoom) January 15, 2025
