ICYMI: Rep. Rogers Joins McCrary Institute ‘Cyber Focus’ Podcast

WASHINGTON – U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers (AL-03), Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, joined the McCrary Institute’s “Cyber Focus” Podcast to discuss the future of national security and Alabama’s role in our nation’s defense.

The McCrary Institute for Cyber and Critical Infrastructure Security at Auburn University was founded in 2015 with the mission of making America safer from cyber-attacks through a team of national cyber experts in policy, applied research and services, and education. Since then, the McCrary Institute has emerged as a leader in the cybersecurity space and has further cemented Auburn’s Samuel Ginn College of Engineering as a preeminent engineering program.

Rep. Rogers works closely with the McCrary Institute and recently helped secure funding for the Southeast Region Cybersecurity Collaboration Center (SERC3) project.

Watch or listen to the full episode here.

Key Moments:

We are at the lowest level of defense spending as a percentage of GDP since before World War II. It is dangerously low, 2.9% of GDP. We really should be closer to 5%.

You can put a multi-million warehouse stockpile of drones together and we can upgrade them every week or every month without touching them. And those are the kind of changes that we need to make sure that we can move with the speed of relevance.

Guam has a big target on it. Number one target by China. If we get into a conflict… it will be target number one.

We’re going to be doing swarms [of underwater drones] just like we’re doing swarms in the air. You’re going to find the use of unmanned fighter jets is going to be very commonplace. We’re already doing some of that now, but it’s going to be a lot.

I really think scholarships are the best way to get younger people to think about [working in cyber] early when they’re looking at career choices.

[The Golden Dome] would create a significant space-based, low earth orbit sensor capacity that is much more sophisticated than what we have now. Along with some additional interceptors, and obviously this would be exactly in the wheelhouse of Huntsville.

I expect sometime in the month of April that Space Command will officially be assigned to build its headquarters in Huntsville… I’ve already talked with the contractor, and he is ready to turn dirt on the day they announce.

There will be a lot of battles fought where there’s not a gun fired. It’s going to be through cyber and through space.

We all, in our daily private lives, use space every day.