Avril Haines, President-elect Joe Biden’s nominee for director of national intelligence, will likely be confirmed with an "overwhelmingly bipartisan vote," Sen. Mark Warner, who will become chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Wednesday.
"We had a great hearing yesterday," the Virginia Democrat said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "She was introduced by Dan Coats. The former Republican director of national intelligence, a former Republican senator, set a bipartisan tone."
Meanwhile, Warner said that the Intelligence Committee's immediate agenda is to restore faith and confidence in the intelligence community and to allow it to "speak truth to power."
"They should be willing to tell this president and leadership the hard truths even if they don't like to hear them and there should not be any politicization coming out of the intelligence community," said Warner. "Number two, I want the committee to look at the rise of these right-wing anti-government extremists in this country, but also their connections and ties to those same kinds of anti-government extremists in Europe and how that anti-government extremism is being promoted by Russia and others."
The committee will also need to look at the role of social media, said Warner, because "we cannot rely on the goodwill of a couple of corporate CEOs to get it right. We need some rules of the road."
A further look will have to be taken into cyber warfare, including the ability of Russia, Iran, and others to launch attacks, said Warner.
"We need an international consensus so that we can take action, not just America but as nations and democracies against these kinds of incursions," said Warner.
But the "most overarching" of all issues is the rise of China, which is a military and economic threat, said Warner.
"We have not seen this kind of threat, with the exception of the Soviet Union in the '60s, a threat to be a leader in technology, 5G, artificial intelligence, quantum computing," said Warner. "These are things we need to do a deep dive on."
A coalition of industrial democracies and others beyond the normal U.S. allies is what is needed to take on the challenge, he added.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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