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New from me: Inside CISA as Trump prepares to take power. Employees are worried that he'll end key projects, drive away star talent, and generally weaken the agency's role in protecting the government and the nation from hackers. My @wired.com story: www.wired.com/story/cisa-c...

CISA staffers expect Trump to spurn efforts to raise the tech industry's security baseline. "Compliance efforts like secure-by-design may not have the support that they currently benefit from," one employee said. Also at risk: Election security aid and incident reporting rules.

As a U.S. cyber official put it to me of Trump's team, "They do not think it's the role of the US government to make [the] private sector act in a certain way."

On election security, the cyber official noted that Trump's pick to lead DHS (which oversees CISA), Kristi Noem, is a 2020 election conspiracy theorist. "I have a lot of questions about what happens there," the official said.

One CISA staffer even told me that they expect to see the "persecution of those who have done election security work" after Trump takes office.

During CISA Director Jen Easterly's tenure, CISA has recruited cyber industry luminaries and up-and-coming talent, simultaneously improving its capabilities and burnishing its credibility. Employees are worried that Trump will repel those kinds of "star hires," eroding CISA's workforce gains.

A lot of this will depend on who Trump picks to lead CISA and how they get along with Noem at DHS and Trump's White House team. But the list of respected cyber veterans who can clear Trump's vetting (www.nytimes.com/2024/12/07/u...) is short.

Then there's the DHS problem. The department's immigration crackdown will make it even more polarizing. Many CISA employees already hate being part of DHS, and Trump's second term will only fuel those tensions, straining CISA employees' morale.