US Democrats plan to restaff the cyber agency and tackle AI risk

Democrats retook the House and the Senate in the US. The expected leaders of the committees for cyber security tell their goals for January. They want to restaff the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). The agency has more than 1,000 fewer persons than in January 2025, a decrease of one third. They also want to examine AI security risks.

What they want

• Restaff CISA, which hires some hundreds of persons.
• Extend the 2015 US law on cyber information, which ends in December.
• Fund the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center. The US government ended its payments last year.
• Extend grants for cyber work by US states and local governments, mainly for water utilities.

The rule to prepare for

CISA sent the last rule on incident reports to the White House to examine this fall. Tonya Ugoretz of PwC tells companies to check their controls before the rule starts.

What is not known

No dates for new laws and no budget numbers are given. The lawmakers tell goals, not votes. Senator Mark Warner also wants to examine the cyber operations of the US government. In these, private firms work against cyber criminal groups in other countries.

Insight: Letters to AI firms can become committee work

On October 29, 20 US House Democrats told OpenAI to answer by November 13 on the dismissal of three safety researchers. In January, the same party leads the committees for homeland security and intelligence. It seems that the pressure on AI firms moves from letters to committee work. Monitor if the OpenAI reply gets a response in January.