Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the chairman of the House\u2019s Homeland Security committee, called on the White House\u2019s next national security adviser to re-establish a top cybersecurity job in the administration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The position that eliminated under the previous officeholder, John Bolton. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Shortly after President Donald Trump\u2019s Sept. 18 announcement that Robert O\u2019Brien would serve as his fourth national security adviser, Thompson issued a statement demanding that O\u2019Brien\u2019s \u201cfirst act\u201d must be to bring back the job of White House Cybersecurity Coordinator. Until Sept. 18, O\u2019Brien was the State Department\u2019s top hostage negotiator,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWith cyber threats becoming more sophisticated and growing by the day, including the persistent threat to our election systems, there is no reason that the White House should have allowed this position to be eliminated,\u201d Thompson said in the statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The National Security Council position was eliminated in May 2018 by then-National Security Adviser John Bolton. The cyber role had been held by Rob Joyce, who left a month before the job was scrapped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The role of cybersecurity coordinator was originally created by President Barack Obama and helped in setting policy to defend the federal government from cyberattacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lawmakers and former officials were surprised when the position was eliminated, according to several reports. Thompson said in his statement that despite these concerns \u201cthe White House has done little to address the vacuum left behind.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The new national security adviser’s “first act” should be to bring back a senior cybersecurity position at the White House, a congressman said Sept. 18.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":39657,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":{"8":{"categories":["congress","federal-oversight","home","daily-brief","newsletters","it-cloud-report","it-networks"],"primary_category":"congress"}}},"categories":[4109,106,29,32],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3252],"class_list":["post-13137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-congress","category-daily-brief","category-home","category-newsletters"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"J6RKECYVVFCVZADWH4IGOJG4IY","arc_canonical_url":"\/congress\/capitol-hill\/2019\/09\/18\/lawmaker-wants-the-white-house-to-have-a-cyber-czar-again\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n