HR1 and the future of U.S. tech security

Dave Bittner: Hello, everyone; and welcome to Caveat, N2K CyberWire's privacy, surveillance, law and policy podcast. I'm Dave Bittner. And joining me is my cohost, Ben Yelin, from the University of Maryland Center for Cyber Health and Hazard Strategies. Hey there, Ben.

Ben Yelin: Hello, Dave.

 

Dave Bittner: And, on today's show, our N2K colleague and author of The Caveat newsletter, Ethan Cook, joins us with a closer look at President Trump's Big Beautiful Bill. Hey there, Ethan.

 

Ethan Cook: Hey, guys. How are you doing.

 

Dave Bittner: While this show covers legal topics and Ben is a lawyer, the views expressed do not constitute legal advice. For official legal advice on any of the topics we cover, please contact your attorney. We'll be right back after this word from our sponsor. And we are back. Ethan, before we dig in here to the Big Beautiful Bill, just a tip of the hat to you for taking the time and going through the Big Beautiful Bill.

 

Ethan Cook: Yeah.

 

Dave Bittner: It's a monster, right?

 

Ethan Cook: Yes.

 

Dave Bittner: I mean, how did -- how did you approach it in any sort of reasonable, rational way?

 

Ethan Cook: Yeah. So the first thing was -- was to cut through all the chaff. Anyone who's familiar with this bill knows that it is one of the largest bills that Congress has passed in a very long time. I believe it's over 300 pages long. It is long enough that, if you go to the website and try to load it in its default text, the website gives you a warning that it may crash your browser or take several minutes to load. So, in any bill that is this large, there's going to be a lot of meaningless stuff put into it. That's not what I was trying to cover. And, by meaningless, I don't mean that it's not impactful, more so just meaningless to this conversation. So, when I approached this, I knew there was no way that we could cover every little aspect of this bill. It is too large, and one conversation could never cover everything in it. So I primarily just focus on the things that are related to defense, things that are related to security, things that are related to resiliency and focused on that aspect of the conversation. Obviously, there's a ton of this related to, like, Medicare, Social Security cuts, things along those lines that are very impactful and certainly are worth a conversation but aren't impactful for the way that we're trying to look at it from this -- from it today.

 

Ben Yelin: Maybe we should start another podcast just to talk about all the things we're not able to address today.

 

Ethan Cook: Yeah.

 

Ben Yelin: If you want to hear our thoughts on, you know, Medicaid and Social Security, then, yeah.

 

Dave Bittner: We'll just make it part of CyberWire Pro.

 

Ethan Cook: There you go. Put it behind the pay wall.

 

Dave Bittner: Right.

 

Ethan Cook: Yeah.

 

Dave Bittner: Not only is it less interesting, but it's more expensive.

 

Ethan Cook: Woo hoo!

 

Dave Bittner: All right. Well, let's start at a high-level here. I mean, for folks who may not have followed every detail, Ethan, unpack this for us. What is the Big Beautiful Bill, and why has it generated so much debate?

 

Ethan Cook: Yeah. So the Big Beautiful Bill, for context, is -- or it's, you know, legally known as HR1 is the -- I guess the stepping stone for the Trump administration and its major funding effort for the next four years. Obviously, there's going to be other funding that comes through, but this is a really big hallmark on what its intentions are for the next four years and what it is trying to do. So some of the big things that came through this were the extension of the tax cuts that -- from 2017. Obviously already mentioned the social program cuts but also a massive influx in spending. I believe it's 150 billion with a B, billion dollars into defense, as well as there's another 150 billion put into border security. Not going to cover that portion today. Purely looking at the defense aspect. But in here we have things related to procuring new technologies, improving supply chain resiliency, things along those lines. And the spending is kind of crazy. It puts the US spending on military over $1 trillion. And this money, while I say 150 billion is a lot, worth noting it is over the next four years. It's not just 2025-2026. It is a four-year program for a lot of these things. But I do think it's worth looking at what these programs are because it is very indicative of what the Trump administration is trying to do from a defense perspective.

 

Dave Bittner: Yeah. Can I be snarky and say you shouldn't call it defense or and -- or war.

 

Ethan Cook: I think they put on the website that the Department of War is just a nickname. It's not legally changing it.

 

Dave Bittner: Well, because it requires an act of Congress to legally change it. And I guess they'll have trouble with that so.

 

Ben Yelin: There is a new placard, though, outside of --

 

Ethan Cook: There is a new placard.

 

Ben Yelin: -- Secretary Hegseth's office. So we have that.

 

Dave Bittner: Yeah, yeah. All right. Well, enough of my snark. Let's dig into some of the details here. I mean, my understanding is that a big part of this is defense modernization. What exactly do they mean by that?

 

Ethan Cook: So I think the defense modernization aspect is saying that, for the next 10 years minimum, that wars and I guess the lead-up to a war is not going to be won by just raw manpower. It's going to be won by technological advancement. And some people are going to say, well, that's obvious. You know, that's the way it's been forever, right? You know, whoever developed the bow and arrow over the other group was better, right?

 

Dave Bittner: Gunpowder.

 

Ethan Cook: But I think -- and what that means for the modern context is things like investing in mesh networks and communication capabilities. There's 300 million just provision, just for mesh networks in the Indo Pacific region. They also are putting $400 million into advancing -- in the development of advanced command and control tools, $500 million for accelerating the integration of 5G and 6G technologies across the military, and many others that are -- and we can go on. I think one of the most important ones was the $500 million to prevent the delay of delivering AI-related military capable tools.

 

Dave Bittner: Ben.

 

Ben Yelin: Yeah. I mean, I think there's a theme here. I think it's reflected in the $1 billion for offensive cyber operations, which is a really significant investment and I think signifies an acceleration of a strategy that we, the three of us, have talked about, pushing to more offensive cyber operations as a weapon of foreign policy. You know, the rest of it seems like they could have been bipartisan investments in the Department of Defense. Like, I don't think if you were to go line by line here there's anything that most members of Congress where it would, per se, object to. It just, in the context of a much larger bill, it is a significant increase in defense spending. And depending on what your priorities are, I mean, I think the controversy is whether that money would have better been spent elsewhere. Like, I don't think there's anything particularly controversial about the line items in the section here for the Department of Defense.

 

Dave Bittner: Yeah. So, Ethan, you mentioned that one of the bill's focal points is the Indo Pacific Command. What makes that region a priority?

 

Ethan Cook: China. The simple salute answer to that is China. I think the Trump administration has obviously always been very anti-China, even in -- under his first administration. And, while the Biden administration was also not on the best of terms with China, the second Trump administration I expect to be just as hostile, if not more, more so over that relationship. And I think the massive amount of money that they poured in, from just this bill alone, into the Indo Pacific Command is very indicative of where they say we need to focus our money. We need to not just keep diverting resources but add resources because, again, this is in addition to the money we have already spent to boost to that region. We're putting billions of dollars more into that effort. And I think it's not just about building advanced technologies. It's about building a series of networks and control in that area with allies, with -- to ensure that, because it's so large, we can communicate efficiently across those areas, have the infrastructure in place to really make sure that we can control and have predictability in the area and make sure that there's nothing happening that we can't control or that we can't respond to very quickly.

 

Dave Bittner: You know, this bill also has a lot of funding for supply chain resilience. What's the concern there for both the military and the broader economy?

 

Ethan Cook: So I think, from a -- the supply chain aspect, I think a key part of it is making sure the US always has access to critical minerals for semiconductors and AI-related products. I believe that there was $5 billion put in for investments into critical minerals supply chains, among other similar ones. They also are expanding not just the raw ability to acquire but the ability to predict and analyze what is needed. They put 25 million, which -- now, that doesn't sound like a lot, but that's purely for the expansion of their industrial policy workforce. So we're putting 25 million to just expanding the Department of Defense's ability.

 

Ben Yelin: Nice stimulus for law and policy analysts out there.

 

Ethan Cook: Yeah. Exactly. And I think that that is that -- the reason why that stood out to me was because, at a time when the US government and specifically the Trump Administration has been cutting, not just within certain agencies but across the board has been cutting positions within the DoD, within CISA, etc., this marked a, Hey. We're not cutting here. We're expanding. This is something that we're worth investing in, that industrial policy security is really important, especially under the Department of Defense. I think that was a huge indicator of what they're trying to do and to really ensure that the department has -- the military has not only access to these consistently but not for right now but for the next 10, 15 years.

 

Dave Bittner: How do we reconcile the additional funding that HR1 provides with the broad cuts that we saw with DOGE? Is it that, you know, DOGE came through with a widely swinging chainsaw, and no department was safe; or -- and that the money provided is more targeted and specific, whereas the cuts were kind of, you know, hey. Everybody's going to feel some pain here. Is my description at all on the mark?

 

Ben Yelin: I think that's right. At least vis-à-vis the Department of Defense, I think DOGE treaded a little bit more carefully. They work closely with Secretary Hegseth to find efficiencies, particularly within the workforce. But the cuts in DoD were not nearly as drastic, at least as a percentage of the workforce, as they were in other departments. And this obviously goes along with President Trump's campaign and also his political philosophy. I mean, he has consistently said that he would like to expand the Department of Defense and our defense capabilities, and I think that's reflected in the increases in funding here. I think DOGE focused mostly on other federal departments. And, while there were some efforts before DOGE petered out related to the Department of Defense, I don't think it was -- it certainly wasn't a key focus of the Department of Government Efficiency.

 

Dave Bittner: Yeah. Ethan, you know, we saw this recent US government investment in Intel, and I think that relates to what we're talking about --

 

Ethan Cook: Absolutely.

 

Dave Bittner: -- and the ability to have that capability on our own soil. I guess the Trump administration sees as a good investment.

 

Ethan Cook: Yeah. I think, well, I'm not going to argue the -- or talk about the legality of this. Obviously there's a -- they are citing a specific law to do -- to take that acquisition. And whether or not you support it or disagree with it is not really, I think, relevant to this conversation. I think the more important thing is the fact that it was done and what that signifies for the Trump administration's goals for critical minerals, as well as development of technologies. Taking a nearly 10% stake in one of the largest tech companies in this field is massive.

 

Ben Yelin: It was also part of our diplomacy with Ukraine. The Trump administration tiptoed around this, but what they were trying to do was condition additional funding for Ukraine's war fighting effort against Russia by trying to secure access to some of Ukraine's critical minerals. And they were able to strike a deal with President Zelensky on that. I mean, I don't know much about critical minerals, but I do know that there's a decent supply of them in Ukraine. And so it was trying to leverage our position as the funders of the Ukrainian military effort to secure something for the United States, and what they secured was access to these minerals.

 

Dave Bittner: You know, there's always the argument that these defense and supply chain investments come at the expense of social programs. You know, there's that old chestnut about, you know, I hope for the day when the military has to hold a bake sale to buy a new aircraft carrier and the school is fully funded.

 

Ben Yelin: I -- always been just -- you've seen that bumper sticker so many places. It's --

 

Dave Bittner: Yeah. I mean, it's an old chestnut, and I've been around long enough that it is a cliché. I mean, is it a fair line of conversation to -- I guess the trouble I have with it is sometimes, like, you'll say, oh. You know, I support the local charity that helps puppies. And somebody will say, What? Do you hate orphans? No, no. I just love puppies. But you're not supporting the orphans.

 

Ben Yelin: Right, right.

 

Dave Bittner: But, you know, like -- so, to me, this is clearly an expression of the Trump administration's priorities, as you mentioned, Ben. But is -- is it fair to look at it in the context of -- of that bigger picture and what this spending could do to social programs?

 

Ethan Cook: Yeah. I think a great way to -- the way I -- you know, when I was writing and researching so I try to frame it and think about it in a way that was what -- what is the goal here, outside of obviously just increasing raw military capability? That's self-evident, I think something that was really telling for me and what I kind of looked into this was the Trump administration, with this bill, with all these cuts slash expansions of programs, to me this is playing a -- the game of short-term gain over -- with the hope that it pays off long-term. The cuts that are happening right now to social programs and the dramatic expansion of military spending to me is a -- sure. There's a ton of economic investment in terms of military -- military industrial complex. There's a ton of money going into that system. There's a ton of potential long-term gain with advancing technology and really taking over those sectors. I think the concern that is -- is, with all this investment, the bill is expected to add 5 -- or 4 to $5 trillion to the deficit. Obviously, we always -- every year we have this conversation. The deficit is getting larger, and no one ever seems to do anything about it, whether it's a Republican administration or a Democratic administration. It always goes up. But I think the fact that one bill alone is adding that much is really, really concerning. It's not okay. The general -- it's not the entire government adding to it. It's one single investment, essentially, adding to it. I think that that is potentially trading long-term stability economically with the hope that the investments we're making now will account for that. And, if they don't, I think that's where the big question marks and flags are going to start getting raised where it's we're cutting all these programs with the theory that it will pay off long-term from a defense and economic perspective. But, if it doesn't, it seems like we're putting a lot of eggs in one basket. And, now, granted. I'm not an economist. So I'm sure there's someone who's going to sit there and say, well, there's also all these factors.

 

Dave Bittner: Right.

 

Ethan Cook: A hundred percent. I will not speak as an economist here. But, from what I could read, the discourse was -- is that there is a lot of long-term risk to this bill, and it is not quite clear if there is a material gain at the moment.

 

Dave Bittner: Ben, what do you make of that? I mean, putting this in context of the, you know, the aspirations of the Trump administration when it comes to the nation's economy.

 

Ben Yelin: So I think it's important to keep in mind, just for context, that the increases in defense spending here are quite small compared to the loss of tax revenue that's coming in this bill. So much of the increase in the deficit is because we're extending the 2017 Trump tax cuts. And then there are a bunch of new tax provisions that are intended to provide tax relief to various people in communities. There's a new no tax on tips provision. There's an increased threshold for the state and local tax deduction, which is great for those of us who live in states with high state and local taxes because we'll be able to deduct a lot more of it for our taxes. But that costs the government a lot of money. And there are a bunch of other tax provisions that end up leading to that -- that large increase in the deficit, and I think, for a long time, the attitude kind of 2008 to 2023 was deficits don't really matter. I mean, we are the world's reserve currency. We can always borrow money to pay for service on the debt. It's better to make these long-term investments. Interest rates were low for the majority of the 2010s, for example. So it really made sense to borrow against the future to make these investments. That is not the case now. Interest rates are quite high. A far greater percentage of our budget right now is interest on the federal debt. You're in a situation where additional debt could cause a greater strain on -- on interest rates, can make it harder for people to borrow money to purchase a home, for example. So there's like a tangible impact right now to having a larger federal deficit, considering we're already in a period of high interest rates and coming off a period of significant inflation. So that's -- that's definitely a concern. Beyond that, I mean, this is a reflection -- the reason it was a One Big Beautiful Bill is it is a reflection of the party's priorities that won the last election. You can debate around the edges; like, is this really what people were voting for? I mean, people vote for lots of different reasons. And, you know, I don't think a lot of individual components of this bill are popular, certainly not the cuts in Medicaid, minimal cuts but some cuts to Medicare, etc. But this is what the Trump administration and the Republican Party has articulated as its governing philosophy. And they won the election. They had this bite at the apple, and now the opposition to this has to organize and try and convince people before the next election that this was not -- if we were going to increase the deficit and make these long-term investments, this is not the way to do it and that we should have grown or maintained funding for our social safety net in lieu of additional tax cuts that are pretty regressive and for these increases in defense spending. But that's our -- that is our small d democratic system at work. That's -- it might not be the most satisfying conclusion, but you can't say that, like, this came out of nowhere. I mean, it is -- it is emblematic of a very specific governing philosophy that won the last presidential and congressional elections.

 

Dave Bittner: Yeah. Ethan, what do you suppose the Trump administration believes the long-term benefits of these initiatives will be?

 

Ethan Cook: The first one is the winning of the AI race. I think that is very clear in this, you know, coupling that with the administration not only taking staking in Intel but also taking -- laxing the -- a lot of the regulations for developing AI, trying to increase federal adoption of AI systems, as well as attempting to pass -- well, it failed -- the moratorium, which we talked about previously, to basically overturn all state AI laws through federal preemption. I think that this is a reflection of that effort to ensure the US is the dominant country when it comes to AI development, AI research, AI deployment, etc. And I don't think that is a take that people would disagree with us trying to do. I think, if you look at -- allies and adversaries alike are just as involved in this race. You see Europe is pivoting really, really fast to try and attract more AI development. You see China is obviously with things like DeepSeek is neck and neck with the race; and they're pouring billions of dollars into this same effort. Little different, since they're not a democracy; but the point is -- stands. India is rapidly ramping up technological capabilities to get involved. I think everyone sees that AI is the golden goose at the moment. And, right now, obviously the US is in the lead with major companies like Anthropic, OpenAI, Meta's AI platform, etc., Google. And I think the Trump administration is coming out and saying that we currently have the lead; and, in their mind, Biden was going to cause -- going to cause us to lose that lead. So we're going to not only undo everything Biden did, but we're going to double down on the things that got us to this lead. So we're going to remove regulation. We're going to invest in making sure that companies have access to controls or to minerals and resources. We're going to make sure that they can make money by removing export controls so they can ship that product out to everyone, as long as it's not China. That's the -- I think the biggest thing that comes through and that's that Indo Pacific is that it can go to China, but it has to be old gen stuff. It cannot be the cutting edge things.

 

Ben Yelin: Yeah. It is kind of funny. I mean, it is kind of funny that Congress did pass, and the previous president did sign a bill that required TikTok to be divested from its Chinese ownership; and we're just, like, not enforcing it. So, like, you can be very hawkish on China; but that seems to be something that's somewhat selective at this point. I'll also say, like, the investment in AI, who knows if it's -- if it's going to pay off in the long run? I mean, I think there's speculation that there's some bubble potential here. I think building all of these AI data centers has sustained our economy to a significant extent over the past couple of years, expanding out AI infrastructure. Obviously there's going to be some payoff for it. I mean, AI is going to lead to some increased efficiencies in various industries. But, if it doesn't fully live up to its promise, then it can be one of those bubbles that bursts. Like, eventually we're going to stop building stop building these data centers, we're going to stop expanding infrastructure, and we will have invested all of the -- this -- these federal resources in it.

 

Dave Bittner: Yeah.

 

Ben Yelin: So I hope it works out.

 

Dave Bittner: What if it puts lots of people out of work also?

 

Ben Yelin: I mean, yeah. That's a huge, huge aspect of it as well.

 

Ethan Cook: I equate it to the dot com bubble where it is obviously slightly different, but you see a mass -- everyone wants to get their hands on this tech. Everyone wants to be involved. Everyone wants a piece of the pie. And a lot of that, if there's not enough pie to go around, and the question is who comes out, I think -- to Ben's point there, there -- I've been seeing similar reports that there is a bubble forming, if it's not already there; and that -- that the pop is going to dramatically shake up how we handle AI going forward.

 

Dave Bittner: Yeah. I mean, this -- you know, people are throwing stupid money at --

 

Ethan Cook: Exactly.

 

Dave Bittner: -- anything with the name AI on it, and I guess that includes the federal government because our adversaries are as well.

 

Ben Yelin: So we rebrand this podcast is just like the AI podcast.

 

Ethan Cook: It's the buzzword.

 

Ben Yelin: Yeah. They can throw money at us.

 

Dave Bittner: Yeah. How about stupid money? That's another thing possible.

 

Ethan Cook: All right.

 

Dave Bittner: We'll be right back after this word from our sponsor. Sticking with the notion of our allies and our adversaries, let me ask you this, Ben. Can you put this bill into context with a reality that many of our longtime allies, countries like Canada, like the UK, like Mexico are pulling back from their partnerships with us, not -- they're feeling as though we are not the reliable partner that perhaps we once were. How does that play into the spending that's taking place in a bill like this?

 

Ben Yelin: I mean, I think it just reflects a different foreign policy strategy. In lieu of the, I guess, investment we'd be getting from our close allies and partners like Canada and Mexico and even countries like South Korea, we're doing these large-scale deals with bigger countries and bigger companies to secure trillions of dollars of investment here. And the idea is that's going to replace the investment that some of these partners have made in our country. We're going to be harsher against these countries as it relates to trade policy, instituting relatively large tariffs. Certainly the across-the-board 10% tariff is significant; and then some of the reciprocal tariffs, as well, are going to discourage some of our traditional allies from investing in the United States. I think the Trump administration goal is combine kind of secured investments through his own personal diplomatic channels, which lead to nice press conferences in the paved-over rose garden. That's one aspect of it. And then, to a smaller scale, the investments made in the One Big Beautiful Bill to put us on -- on lead footing for things like artificial intelligence, minerals, offensive cybercapabilities, that sort of thing. So I think it's a two-pronged strategy, but it's certainly -- it reflects a shift in foreign policy away from economic consensus that really has ruled across both political parties, that you leverage those good relationships with our allies, have as little barriers to trade as possible with them that -- and that allows both countries to flourish. I think the President fundamentally doesn't believe in that vision, and a lot of his supporters strongly believe that that vision has led to the destruction of a lot of communities and the country at large. So I do think it just reflects a completely different set of priorities.

 

Dave Bittner: Yeah. I guess it does reflect that America first strategy. Ethan, I'm curious for your take, having read through the bill. I think it's fair to say that a component of this Trump administration, as well as his previous, was a certain amount of chaos, a strategic chaos, right, like intentional chaos, I'd say, you know, this time around, looking at things like DOGE, just the broad cutting back of government agencies and so on and so forth. To what degree does this bill contain that sort of chaotic aspect; or is it traditional policy, and the chaos from the Trump administration is found elsewhere?

 

Ethan Cook: I think the chaos involved in this bill is the size and how fast it came about. For context, for those who weren't tracking the bill when it came out a couple months ago, it was introduced into the House and passed very quickly. It actually generated a lot of concern because it was passed so fast that almost everyone mutually agreed on both sides of the aisle, but no one had time to actually read the bill.

 

Dave Bittner: Right, right.

 

Ben Yelin: Which is pretty common, by the way.

 

Dave Bittner: Yeah, yeah. And you had folks like Marjorie Taylor Greene saying, I didn't know this was in here.

 

Ethan Cook: Exactly. And that led to the discovery of the AI moratorium when that came out, which is --

 

Dave Bittner: Right.

 

Ethan Cook: -- you know, that was -- while the Senate took its time with it, the House was trying to pass this thing. Created a ton of chaos because no one even had time. It was almost like a blitz strategy. You know, let's pass it so fast and that people don't even know what's in here, so they can't complain that -- if they discover something.

 

Ben Yelin: Solid pass strategy, by the way.

 

Ethan Cook: It's not.

 

Ben Yelin: From a political perspective.

 

Ethan Cook: It's a very good strategy.

 

Dave Bittner: When you have the vote, yeah. When you have both House of Congress, I mean.

 

Ben Yelin: There are also, like, some funny procedural things here. This was a 50/50 prospect in the United States Senate. And a Republican senator, Lisa Murkowski, expressed displeasure with large portions of the bill but said, I'm going to vote for this and hopefully --

 

Ethan Cook: Kick it to the House. Hopefully they'll deal with it.

 

Ben Yelin: They'll make some changes to it. You know, she basically just handed the House a loaded gun.

 

Ethan Cook: Yeah.

 

Ben Yelin: The House did not make any changes to it and sent it to the President's desk so.

 

Ethan Cook: That was -- that was one of the weirdest -- for people who -- to people who weren't following that, that were not familiar with it, that was one of the wildest exchanges I've ever seen a congressman do, congresswoman do. The -- her actively coming out and saying, I do not like this bill for X, Y, and Z and then saying, But I'm not going to stop the vote on it, it was just crazy to me. That was -- I mean, rightfully so. There was a lot of flack thrown her way for it. But I think the -- the -- to your point, Dave, the chaos with the bill was the size. But the individual provisions I don't think are surprising. Like, if I told you that, within the first year President Trump was going to cut taxes, you would say, Yeah. That makes sense. He was going to increase military spending. Yeah; that makes sense. He was going to cut social programs. Yeah; that makes sense. All these things were on his platform. What I don't think people were expecting was to do all three of these things at once and to try and pass all these things in one giant bill at the same time and make it -- and try and pass it quickly before people could really get a handle on it. I think everyone thought this would be a kind of progressive, you know, iterated process where we would try to do this back and forth, similar to how the budget negotiations happen where it's like, ah. This is what I propose, this is what we're doing, and we find a middle ground. Even if it means shutting down the government, that's what they intend to do, right? I think the blitzing aspect of this is what caught people off guard. I think something that also was quite chaotic was the scale of the investments. I think people were expecting cuts, but no one was expecting cuts at the degree they were. People were expecting investments, but no one was expecting us to push a trillion dollars for military spending, push it over a trillion dollars. I think that's what was also kind of chaotic about it. It was just there was -- it was fast, and it was more than people thought it was going to be.

 

Dave Bittner: Yeah. Certainly. I mean, look. Donald Trump, there's a boldness to him; and you can't deny, right?

 

Ben Yelin: I will say, though, that, of all the things that have happened in Trump's second term, this is the most, like, normal politics thing that's happened. Like, they went through -- the process was definitely rushed. But, like, they went through the proper procedural maneuvers. They passed actual legislation by majority vote in the House and the Senate; and it was signed into law. Like, contrast that with DOGE or some of the immigration actions they've taken that have been held up and through injunctions in district courts or trying to shut down agencies at the executive level without consulting Congress, like USAID. That's very different than what happened here. What happened here is like a very standard political process that, if you're dissatisfied -- dissatisfied with it can be resolved through political means. Now, I don't want to get too complicated. It's like that's a little more difficult when states start regerrymandering their congressional districts. So it's much harder to replace legislators that -- that voted for this legislation. But I do think, like, compared to a lot of the President's other action, this -- this is probably among the most normal things he's done in his second term, even in the context of legislation. So a lot of the, like, most high profile cuts actually didn't come in this bill; but there was a separate rescissions package which the President sent to Congress, and it was passed, which permanently rescinded funding for National Public Radio, for example, and a bunch of different foreign aid programs. And, like, that was legislation, but it was also more unprecedented than what they did in the Big Beautiful Bill. So, yeah. I would say, compared to some of the other outrages that we've seen, I mean, this is more just like you could have seen a bill drafted like this in 2005 during the Bush administration --

 

Dave Bittner: Right.

 

Ben Yelin: -- and it would have looked largely similar.

 

Dave Bittner: Yeah. So let's look towards the future here. I mean, what should people be looking out for over the next few years as this rolls out? For -- you're a policy maker, if you're an industry leader, or even just an everyday citizen, what sort of things should we be keeping our eye on as these policies become day-to-day reality? Ethan, you want to start off for us.

 

Ethan Cook: Yeah. I think for big tech or tech-oriented companies, this is a layup. This is what you want to see. You're seeing millions, if not billions of dollars being poured into a variety of technological sectors, whether that be 5G, 6G; whether that be chip procurement; whether that be unmanned aerial systems; whether that be missile development; whether that be supply chain resiliency; whether that be -- the list goes on and on and on. I think that, if you see this, you go, this is exactly what I want. The federal government, that contracting window is open for me. Time to start making my bids for contracting and really start reaping this over the next four years and making my money. I think, if you are -- what that is -- what that will inherently do, to a degree, will also make sort of a feeding frenzy where we're going to have a ton of -- ton of these contracts going out, a ton of these companies are getting hyper-competitive, stimulating growth, etc. I do think there's -- given how contentious this bill will be -- this bill is, there's been some discussions; and, as with every one of these kind of major spending bills, these subjects -- these spending is not locked in stone anymore. If a new Congress is appointed in -- after midterms and it disagrees with this bill, they can adjust the funding. This isn't like, it's like, Oh, we've provisioned $500 million for this. It's locked in. It's never going to change. These funding amounts can be changed. And I think that, given how contentious this bill was and given how contentious the cuts were for both a tax and social service perspective, I don't know if they would outright cut all these programs; but I think there would be some accountability brought in, possibly. And that could be an interesting long-term shake up to some of these efforts.

 

Dave Bittner: What do you think about that, Ben? I mean, we got -- it's 18 months before the midterms.

 

Ben Yelin: And even then, I mean, Trump is still going to be president. And you could try to threaten to shut down the government, but that rarely works out for the side threatening to shut down the government. And I have -- frankly, have not seen Democrats try to campaign on reversing or repealing even individual -- individual provisions of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. I mean, I think there are high-level criticisms that are part of campaign rhetoric about what this bill does. But I haven't seen, like, on Day One, if you elect a Democratic House and Senate, we will rescind funding for these increases. And so we, like, we -- we have not seen that. The -- every provision in this bill, because this is a reconciliation bill, expires in 10 years. You can't institute any spending or policy changes, for that matter, in a reconciliation bill beyond that 10-year window. That 10-year window also happens to coincide with something else that's projected to take place around 2034, 2035, which is that we're kind of going to run out of Monday -- money for our Social Security Trust Fund. We are paying out more money than we're taking in, and so that fund is projected to be insolvent around then. So we're going to have to figure out some mechanism to continue to pay people's promised Social Security benefits. So there's probably some time in the middle 2030s. Who the heck knows what's going to be happening politically at that time.

 

Dave Bittner: Right around when I'm set to retire.

 

Ben Yelin: Right.

 

Ethan Cook: I just accept that I'm never seeing Social Security.

 

Ben Yelin: Yeah. I would not rely on it myself.

 

Dave Bittner: Well, look. It sounds to me like, regardless of how any of us feel personally about Donald Trump, his administration, his policies, the components of this bill that we've been talking about today don't seem terribly unreasonable. Is that an accurate description to say? Like, we're all -- they align with what the President campaigned on. They align with -- with the promises that he made. None of them seem to come way out of left field. And, again, I'm just limiting this to the things we talked about here today, the cyber elements of it. Is that a fair assessment?

 

Ben Yelin: Yeah. I think so.

 

Dave Bittner: Begrudgingly.

 

Ben Yelin: Right.

 

Ethan Cook: You got a concession out of Ben. That's crazy.

 

Ben Yelin: I just think, like, the things that people object to in this bill are unrelated to these defense provisions. Like, you can -- you can object ideologically to spending more money on the Department of whatever it's called now. But, like, I don't -- this isn't like billions of dollars for F16s that are never going to fly. Like, this is -- these are --

 

Ethan Cook: One of the best investments we ever made.

 

Ben Yelin: Exactly. I think these are reasonable investments. It's just, when you have a bill this large, like, I think there's -- there are so many other reasons to oppose it. I don't think the nature of the opposition is going to come down to increasing our offensive cyber operations or investing in critical minerals to build out artificial intelligence. Like, I think those, it is interesting in a however many page bill you get a lot of different policy changes, and a lot of them are going to be unobjectionable. So I don't think that's going to be the nature of the opposition here. I think the nature of the opposition is the tax provisions and cuts to the social safety net. I think that's going to be the kind of headline battle we'll see vis-à-vis this legislation as it -- as it plays out in Congress over the next few years.

 

Dave Bittner: All right. Ethan, final thoughts.

 

Ethan Cook: Yeah. I would say that HR1 is obviously way too big for its own good. I think that was intentional. I would say that I think the defense provisions in this bill are -- to Ben's point in your point, I don't think that they're necessarily bad. I don't think that they're anything that I would necessarily object to. I think the -- my point of contention with them is this seems to be similar to what we talked about earlier with this is -- it's almost let's throw everything on the wall and see what sticks. Let's just put so much money into this that we're bound to hit somewhere. And I think the concern that I have with this is, is this the best, effective way to be spending this money at this moment, given the -- what we're cutting from? And that's where I think that's a wait and see. All I can say is the $50 million that we put to making high altitude stratospheric balloons, that was my favorite line item that I read.

 

Dave Bittner: Okay.

 

Ethan Cook: I mean, we -- the 50 million that we put to that, sorry, the 50 million was, that was a -- that was my favorite item that I read.

 

Ben Yelin: Well, hey. I mean, there were stratospheric balloons high above our country --

 

Ethan Cook: Exactly.

 

Ben Yelin: -- that weren't accounted for. So it's time to -- time to pay those people back, whomever they are.

 

Dave Bittner: Right, right. Send -- send some F16s out to shoot down the balloons.

 

Ben Yelin: There you go. That's Keynesianism right there.

 

Ethan Cook: That was the most effective use of that plane ever.

 

Ben Yelin: Yeah.

 

Dave Bittner: All right. Gentlemen, really interesting conversation. And, again, our thanks to Ethan Cook for joining us today. Ethan is the author of The Caveat newsletter. You can learn more about that on our website, thecyberwire.com. That is Caveat brought to you by N2K CyberWire. We'd love to know what you think of this podcast. Your feedback ensures we deliver the insights that keep you a step ahead in the rapidly changing world of cybersecurity. If you like our show, please share a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Please also fill out the survey in the show notes, or send an email to caveat@n2k.com. This episode is produced by Liz Stokes. Our executive producer is Jennifer Eiben. The show is mixed by Tré Hester. Peter Kilpe is our publisher. I'm Dave Bittner.

 

Ben Yelin: I'm Ben Yelin.

 

Ethan Cook: And I'm Ethan Cook.

 

Dave Bittner: Thanks for listening.