Former cyber official targeted by Trump speaks out after cuts to digital defense

Chris Krebs, the former government cybersecurity leader who President Donald Trump targeted for investigation for affirming the integrity of the 2020 election, said he was “outraged” Monday at the Trump administration’s gutting of cyber personnel.

The comments are the first Krebs has made in public since Trump directed the Justice Department to take action against him.

Garnering applause from a generally reserved crowd of industry professionals at the RSA Conference in San Francisco, a cybersecurity conference, Krebs criticized the second Trump administration for its repeated cuts to cybersecurity employees, contractors and programs.

“Cybersecurity is national security. We all know that, right? That’s why we’re here. That’s why we get up every morning and do our jobs. We are protecting everyone out there. And right now to see what’s happening to the cyber security community inside the federal government, we should be outraged. Absolutely outraged.”

Since January, the Trump administration has made repeated cuts to cybersecurity personnel. It has directed the agency that Krebs helmed under Trump’s first administration, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, to cut probationary employees and advisory committees and sent out two rounds of emails encouraging employees to retire.

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees CISA, has previously confirmed rounds of cuts, but did not respond to a request for comment Monday on Krebs’ comments.

Krebs said that given a series of recent major hacking campaigns that the U.S. government and cybersecurity companies have traced to China — nicknamed Salt Typhoon, Volt Typhoon and Flax Typhoon — the U.S. should be investing more heavily in cybersecurity staffers.

“I can see the policy arguments that we’re trying to downsize government, streamline. But when you’ve got Volt Typhoon, Salt Typhoon, Flax Typhoon, whatever, every day knocking on our door, we’re not moving forward,” he said.

“We need more Cyber Command, more folks at the NSA collecting intel, we need more front line defenders, threat hunters, red teamers, folks that are just doing [system administration], the basics. We need more of that, not less. So that’s my pitch: make CISA great again,” he added.

Krebs has established himself as a popular leader both among CISA staffers and in the cybersecurity industry, where he worked until recently. Trump’s actions against Krebs included rescinding the security clearances at the firm SentinelOne, where he had worked until he resigned this month.

Also on Monday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights nonprofit, published an open letter defending Krebs, though it initially only had a few dozen signatories, and none representing major cybersecurity companies.

One of the signatories, Katie Moussouris, the CEO of a smaller cybersecurity company, Luta Security, previously told NBC News that the industry generally supports Krebs but has been wary of angering the Trump administration.

“Everybody feels the same way I do. Nobody is authorized to say anything officially,” she said.