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NATIONAL GUARD ON-THE-RECORD TELEPHONIC MEDIA ROUNDTABLE

November 4, 2022

TOPIC SUBJECT MATTER EXPERTS

National Guard Cyber 

Forces Domestic Support

▪ Air Force Major General Rich Neely, Adjutant General, Illinois

▪ Army Major General Todd Hunt, Adjutant General, North 

Carolina National Guard

▪ Air Force Brigadier General Gent Welsh, Assistant Adjutant 

General, Washington National Guard

▪ Air Force Colonel Paul Perron, Cyber Chief, Louisiana 

National Guard

▪ Army Colonel Joed Carbonell, National Guard Bureau Cyber 

Chief

Introduction:

The National Guard provides critical cybersecurity and information technology support to the Department 

of Defense and the 50 states, three territories and the District of Columbia. The domestic operations cyber 

support the Guard brings to the table is another critical capability that allows us to remain fully interoperable 

with the Joint Force. National Guard Cyber Forces domestic support ranges from mission assurance, 

network assessment and protection and risk mitigation. 

More than 2,200 Army and Air National Guard personnel serve in 38 cyber operations units, and an 

additional 2,240 Guard members provide cyber and IT support to the DOD, the states, territories, and the 

District of Columbia. 

Earlier this year, the National Guard provided cyber support to eight states during May and June primaries 

and will provide cyber support to fourteen additional states during the November mid-term election season.

It is part of vision of the Chief of the National Guard Bureau General Daniel Hokanson to employ 

modernization to keep our Soldiers and Airmen on the leading edge of contemporary technologies. The 

National Guard will use modern and interoperable equipment, systems, and processes that are deployable, 

sustainable, and that overmatch current and future threats.

As we are Always Ready and Always There, partnerships remain at the forefront of our service. For Cyber 

Forces Support, our units coordinate with interagency partners that enable a Unity of Effort, a Common 

Operating Picture, and Shared Situational Awareness during election cycles each year. 
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Here today to talk about these capabilities are the Adjutant Generals from Illinois, Air Force Major General 

Rich Neely, North Carolina, Army Major General Todd Hunt, the Assistant Adjutant General from 

Washington, Air Force Brigadier General Gent Welsh, from Louisiana, Air Force Colonel Paul Perron, 

head of cyber for the Louisiana Joint Staff and our National Guard Bureau resident Cyber Chief, Army 

Colonel Joed Carbonell.

All bios were provided in the media release, and at the end of this media round table, if we have any open 

questions or anything, we will follow up with you, and provide the information as requested.

The on-the-record telephonic media roundtable was held Friday, November 4th, from 11-1145 a.m. (ET).

Dialogue:

[Name] [QUESTION/RESPONSE]

Maj. Murphy – NGB-PA Good morning and thank you for joining us for National Guard Media 

Roundtable to discuss National Guard Cyber Forces Domestic Support. 

The National Guard provides critical cybersecurity and information 

technology support to the Department of Defense and the States. Three 

territories in the District of Columbia. The domestic operations. Cyber 

support the guard brings to the table is another critical capability that 

allows us to remain fully interoperable with the joint force. National Guard 

cyber forces, domestic support ranges from Mission Assurance, network 

assessment and protection and risk mitigation. More than 2200 Army and 

Air National Guard personnel serve in 38 cyber units, and an additional 

2240 Guard members provide cyber and I.T. support to the DOD, the 

states, territories and the District of Columbia. Earlier this year, the 

National Guard provided cyber support to eight states during May and 

June primaries and will provide cyber support to 14 additional states 

during the November midterm election season. It is part of the vision of 

the chief of the National Guard Bureau, General Daniel Hokanson, to 

employ modernization, to keep our soldiers and airmen on the leading 

edge of contemporary technologies. The National Guard will use Modern 

and interoperable equipment, systems and processes that are deployable, 

sustainable and that overmatch current and future threats. As we are 

always ready and always there partnerships remain at the forefront of our 

service. For cyber forces, support our units coordinate with interagency 

partners that enable unity of effort, the common operating picture and 

shared situational awareness during election cycles each year. Here today 

to talk about these capabilities. Are The Adjutants General from Illinois. 

Air Force Major General Richard Neely, Washington, Air Force Brigadier 
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General Jim Welsh, North Carolina, Army Major General Todd Hunt 

From Louisiana, Air Force Colonel Paul Perron and our head of cyber for 

the National Guard Bureau, Resident Cyber Chief Army Colonel Joed

Carbonell. The Media Roundtable will last approximately 45 minutes. 

This should allow time for you to have at least one question. And if time 

permits, we'll have additional. You may also submit your questions in 

writing, in the chat, and if time runs short, we'll do our best to get you the 

answer. So with that, we'll go ahead and start going around the room and 

we'll start with Steve Bannon from Military Times. 

Steve Beynon – Military Times Steve Beynon, Military.com: Appreciate you all for doing this. Just ahead 

of the midterms, can you give us a rundown on is there any specific threats 

to any sort of cybersecurity apparatus? And can you kind of give us just 

the scope of any mobilizations around that site? Title 32 or sad orders or 

anything like that? Thank you. 

Maj. Murphy – NGB-PA Major General Neely, would you like to start off? 

Maj Gen Neely - IL Well, sure, I'll just try to hit a few of those things. I think Col Carbonell

probably has the details on the particular units, but what we're what we're 

seeing really is just a continued partnership across the across the National 

Guard, partnering with our emergency managers our state board of 

Elections, and that to ensure that we continue to have secure elections. 

You know, we saw the challenges that came out of the 2016 election. And 

for us in Illinois, that's really something that caught our attention when we 

really started to address the issues of the election systems, and particularly 

when election systems were were part of that became part of the critical 

infrastructure. And so we're this year, we're in place to ensure that if there's 

any assistance that's needed, we're working proactively with our State 

Board of Elections, not just on the day of elections, but really prior to to 

do security analysis checks and look into the the network to make sure it's 

as secure as possible. And we're really that that third party that comes in 

is just assisting them to give them a different look so that on Election Day 

we can all have confidence in our election systems. And I'll turn over to 

Colonel Carbonell really to talk about maybe the numbers that we're 

seeing across the nation as those different states that are supporting 

elections this year. Joed. 

Col Joed Carbonell - NGB Thank you, sir. So we started partnering with CSISA cyber security 

infrastructure security agencies and U.S. Cyber Command earlier this year 

to really start the flow of information that national say, down to the state 

and local level at the state and local level, up to the national level, really 
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serving as a bridge across the 54 early before reaching out to the states and 

saying how many we're going to participate or plan to provide National 

Guard support through the elections. And as major murphy mentioned 

earlier, 14 states that are that are have participated or plan to participate 

on state active duty and supporting the governor and adjutants general for

election security right now. 

Maj. Murphy – NGB-PA Thank you, sir. Jim Leach.

Jim Leach Thank you. I'm sorry I came in late to this. This is dealing primarily with 

election security. And you may have already covered this. I apologize, but 

are you dealing with specific threats or is this primarily precautionary?

Maj. Murphy – NGB-PA I’ll turn this question to Col Paul Perron from Louisiana.

Col Perron - LA Right now, we're not dealing with any specific threats. As General Neeley 

indicated, this is just another opportunity for us to partner in particular for 

Louisiana, to partner with our secretary of State and just help to ensure 

that they are in the best secure posture possible. It's just a continuation of 

what we do on a day-to-day basis throughout the year. And in addition to 

that, as General Neely also indicated, our partnership with CSISA, the 

Cybersecurity Information Infrastructure Security Agency, it just 

enhances those types of partnerships.

Maj. Murphy – NGB-PA Thank you, Sir. Jeff Selden from Voice of America. 

Jeff Selden Thank you very much for doing this. I'm just wondering what types of 

things Are with the midterm elections are You looking at? What type of 

things have you. Been asked to look at in terms of Cybersecurity? And as 

part of cybersecurity? Obviously, there's a lot of. Disinformation, 

misinformation in cyberspace. To what extent are you looking at influence 

operations? We've heard CSISA talking about those being used to incite 

violence. Are you guys keeping an eye out for any of that stuff? 

Maj. Murphy – NGB-PA Jeff, first off, we're talking about cyber forces Support to domestic 

operations. General Hunt from North Carolina, Would you like to address 

that? 

MG Hunt - NC So thank you for the question. Yes. When it comes to some of the cyber 

threats, malicious, we leave that to our state and federal law enforcement 

partners. Our main goal and our main objective with our cyber team. Let 

me explain. Our cyber team was composed of about ten people by our 
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force structure, which is the Army's plan for how many personnel that we 

can have. we've created our own cyber team in concert with the National 

Guard in North Carolina to include emergency management, some federal 

partners. And we have a steady state operation of about 31 personnel. 

We've been doing election monitoring of the network since we had the 

first discussions in 2018. So like some other colleagues we do, this is a 

steady state type of operation. However, we will surge during the election 

to ensure that we have 24 hour coverage throughout this whole process. 

And I will say that from a National Guard standpoint, we treat this like we 

do any kind of domestic operations, the partnerships, because we are 

citizens, soldiers, we live in the state and we do have a vested interest in 

our state elections along with the federal elections. Thank you. 

Maj Gen Neely - IL Matt, if I could just pile on a little bit a word as an excellent answer by 

general Hunt. You know, I think it's really that here we all should really 

just highlight the fact that as each of the participants talked about is it's 

really about a whole of community coming together. It's the federal 

agencies. It's the state agencies that are securing these elections, all 

working together in the National Guard, as we do in many other aspects 

of in the homeland, whether it was with COVID or whether it's with a 

hurricane. The National Guard is always there to support both our citizens 

and and here in the homeland, as well as the National Guard certified 

America's wars. And so, again, we're using these unique skills that that we 

have as military members and some equipment really just, again, to partner 

with with our state agencies and our federal agencies. And really, it's a it's 

a whole of government approach. And a lot of times as as we did in 

COVID, we're just there is an extra set of hands to to assist. And the 

professionals in the law enforcement area are the ones that are looking at 

some of these these threats closer than we would. Thank you. 

Maj. Murphy – NGB-PA General Welsh would you like to add anything?

Brig Gen Welsh - WA You bet. Yeah, I would say I completely agree with everything else that 

this panelist said, but I sort of say on the influence piece, really not our not 

our business, not our scope. You know, that's that's one that we get asked 

a little bit about in that state as well. Just a little bit interesting. I mean, 

one of the things that that really is making a lot of this cyber participation 

possible are states that have just decided to do it. What you notice is that 

54 states and territories, not everybody is doing it. And those that are have 

invested in cyber talent at cyber missions for years. So if you don't have a 

cyber unit in your state, chances are you're not in a good position to help 

out that state for some of the elections security issues that we've got. I also 
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sort of say that, I mean, you know, ever since, you know, I mean, 

nationally and internationally, we've gotten to this place where in public 

reporting will back this up is just that you've got a military great adversary 

and adversaries coming after election, cyber critical infrastructure in the 

United States. How do you get after that? You know, you don't train people 

and corporations and and, you know, the state public sectors to do this kind 

of work. Most of the security is is built around making sure maybe the 

walls are higher and the lights are blinking green But one of the unique 

things here is, is you have the National Guard, who's whose mission it is, 

and in a lot of cases to to do cyber missions, you know, against other 

military structures. So kind of that military grade adversary, military grade 

kind of helper really makes a lot of sense here. 

Maj. Murphy – NGB-PA Thank you, sir. Just a quick reminder, we do have B-roll and some 

handouts in the biographies of all of our speakers in the chat. So if you 

aren't seeing that, we'll make sure that we get them to you after the MRT. 

We'll go to Sean Lingus at CNN. 

Sean Lingus - CNN Yes, Thanks for doing the call. Have any of you had requests to do 

incident response from state or local election officials this midterm cycle? 

And the second question is, what are you expecting on Election Day? Are 

you expecting another day on the Internet? Are you expecting a an increase 

in cyber activity aimed at election infrastructure? 

Maj. Murphy – NGB-PA We’ll start with North Carolina.

MG Hunt - NC Sean, thank you. Again, we're not able to share operational data on what 

we do day in and day out. But I will tell you more than the positive things 

that our cyber task force team in NC does is we go out and educate local 

and state officials on the network as a preemptive measure to prevent some 

of these instances of malicious attacks onto our networks. And that's 

something unique. We have 100 counties in North Carolina. Each one has 

their own election system, an election process. But our team has gone out 

from a cyber standpoint and done cyber hygiene and training for each not 

all of our counties yet, but the majority of them to help shore up the 

network as we move to the election cycles. 

Maj. Murphy – NGB-PA General Neely, would you like to add?

Maj Gen Neely - IL I think General Hunt hit it spot on. I mean, we don't really want to talk 

about operational issues. And again, that gets back to law enforcement. 

What we're doing is really focused on both that education piece and that 
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pre game day piece where we can ensure that the the networks as secure 

as possible. And then on that, on game day, we have support to our security 

operations center to the stages so that they're augmented. We have a lot of 

great professionals in in our state security operations center, but the 

National Guard brings in additional hands to assist with that. And so we're 

continuing, you know, cyber is that that new domain? It's the domain that 

it's a manmade domain. So it's different than land, sea, air space. And 

because of those uniqueness, I think each of these that each of our states, 

our nation, entire world is really, you know, trying to get their arms around 

security and what that means. General Welsh brought forward the you 

know, the point of, you know, nation states. We can see attacks from 

nation states. And we've had to have in the past. And, you know, our goal 

is really to make sure we have as secure elections as possible. And and the 

National Guard brings, you know, some unique skills and abilities, 

although I would continue to say that we we were at the really beginning 

stages of this, and we hope to see a continued growth of cyber capabilities 

across our across our National Guard forces, because, as General Walsh 

said there, there are many there are few states that really have enough 

capability out there. And we're seeing a continued growth in this area and 

the need for additional security capability within the National Guard. So I 

hope that helps. Thank you. 

Maj. Murphy – NGB-PA Col Carbonell, anything you’d like to add?

Col Carbonell - NGB You know, there's been a lot of questions about specific threats or 

information like that. The system has done a great job of sharing all the 

information and getting across the community and with private industry, 

and we just ensure that that flow of information continues to happen from 

the Guard Bureau perspective. And as of right now, what they are sharing 

in the public is they expect this to be another another normal day on the 

internet as this goes. But this is giving us an opportunity in the states that 

have already spoken right on building those enduring relationships with 

their state and local officials because that's that's critically needed in order 

to respond in the future if there were to be attacks in America on the 

cyberspace. 

Maj. Murphy – NGB-PA Thank you. We'll go to Mark Hensh, National Guard magazine. 

Mark Hensh – NG Magazine Yes. I thank you for your time today. How do you see the efforts that 

you're doing in your individual corners of the National Guard as improving 

citizen trust in institutions like elections?
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Maj. Murphy – NGB-PA We’ll start with general Welsh from Washington.

Brig Gen Welsh - WA And that's a great question. I think if you look back, you know, as crazy 

as the last couple of years have been, the United States military and 

certainly the the National Guard is still one of the most respected and 

trusted institutions across the United States. So not to say that the National 

Guard going in, you know, and doing cyber work in the election space is 

is giving it the I would say the US seal of approval. But it does add a layer 

of credibility to to what's being out, you know, to what's out there. It's, it's 

a nonpartisan structure. Sometimes you have partisan elections, you know, 

offices here and there, you know, you know, Democrat, independent, 

Republican, whatever. But the National Guard is is like anything in the 

military, extremely nonpartisan. And it does give that extra sense of hey

we took a look at this thing. We took a look at it from this perspective, 

with everything that we've been trained on and everything that we do and 

all the trust and credibility we've earned from from our population over 

the years. And this is what we saw and this is what we didn't see. 

Maj. Murphy – NGB-PA Col Perron, do you have anything to add?

Col Perron - LA I'd echo what General Welsh said. I think another aspect of this is that 

communities are used to seeing the National Guard after an incident such 

as a hurricane or flood, tornado or something of that sort. This is an 

opportunity where they see the National Guard more in a proactive state, 

providing more of a defense of the nation-type support for the community. 

And as General Welsh indicated, it's just another opportunity for 

communication, that things are secure. And we are looking at things very 

rigorously and standing by for in the event that something does happen. 

Maj. Murphy – NGB-PA Thank you. We'll go to Kevin Collier from NBC. Kevin. 

Kevin Collier - NBC Appreciate your doing this call. I just want to ask I don't think I heard 

anything to this effect CSISA does on Election Day and is doing this 

midterms as well. A series of calls throughout the day where they say 

either all quiet on the western front or we're doing X, Y and Z, we're seeing 

X, Y and Z at 1 to 9 and one at noon or One of four, you know, that sort 

of thing. Can you commit to doing something along those lines is so 

frankly, just speaking as a reporter and I'm sure I speak for some of my 

colleagues here, it can be really overwhelming trying to keep up with 

who's seeing what in a very fast moving Election Day. So that sort of thing 

is extremely helpful. 
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Maj. Murphy – NGB-PA Col Carbonell, can you address that?

Col Carbonell - NGB That's something we'll look into. I mean I'm sure the information that we 

receive is coming from the CSISA itself or from other federal agencies or 

unreadable. But we'll follow up with major incidents to see what, if 

anything, we are able to do to make. 

Maj. Murphy – NGB-PA Thank you. We’ll move on to Justin Doubleday from Federal News 

Network.

Justin Doubleday - FNN I was wondering, you know, it sounds like it's a pretty busy time For you 

all Are you dealing with any specific cyber and I.T. recruiting challenges 

and retention challenges? Do you have any numbers you can share and 

any strategies for dealing with that? 

Maj. Murphy – NGB-PA General Neely, would you like to start?

Maj Gen Neely - IL Well, recruiting is always one of our highest priorities. And you know, 

one thing about the National Guard, many times people find an 

opportunity to do some unique bring unique acquired civilian skills and 

bring them into the military or vice versa. A lot of times we’ll actually, 

you know, many of our new soldiers will an airman will go off to get cyber 

skills and then be picked up by industry or may come off active duty to 

the National Guard. And and so times that is the interest to continue to 

serve. The interest to do something very unique in the military is a big 

draw for us. And so we're continually and constantly looking for talent out 

there that that we can we can bring in. And it's great to have those those 

skills, you know, those members that go off to industry and bring those 

unique skills back and help us in the military. So many times we will have 

the people that may join for one reason or another and and stay in you 

know, they may be a truck driver, but during the week, they may actually 

work at Microsoft and bring those skills back to the National Guard, and 

we're able to use them in these unique missions. I think Major-General 

Hunt mentioned that earlier about how we sometimes build our own cyber 

teams out of not just out of the structure that we have, but out of some of 

our civilians, some of our folks who bring those skills from industry back 

to the National Guard. So we're continually we're always looking to 

recruit. It's always a priority for us. And we know that it's a it's a skill 

sought out there by many industries. And we're we're always out there 

trying to make sure that they understand they can serve part time in the 

military and full time in the civilian sector. So hopefully that helps out a 

little bit. 
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Unknown Major Murphy, can I add to that? 

Maj. Murphy – NGB-PA Yes, please.

Unknown That's one of the unique advantages that we have in the National Guard, 

the reserve component, but specific the National Guard is being able to 

capture that talent that is coming off from active duty like general Neely 

mentioned service members from all the service is going to train through 

their time. And so the nation will want to continue to serve, but they want 

to go explore other opportunities. They can do that with us in the National 

Guard. They can be close to home wherever home is for them. If the force 

structure is there for them to return to and provide that that service to the 

community, service to the nation then and also the service to private

industry and why it's so important in the National Guard versus perhaps 

other components of being able to have that dual mission and support to 

state and local and then the reserve brothers and sisters aren’t able to do. 

Maj. Murphy – NGB-PA Thank you. Any of the other states have anything to add?

Unknown I'll just add people love these kind of missions. I mean, one of the unique 

things about the National Guard is you do get to serve your community 

and you get to serve that state and domestic peace of things. So for the for 

the 13 folks that we've got on our mission here, we probably have triple 

that in terms of volunteers that want to do this mission. So people actually 

join the National Guard to do things like this, things that they can't do on 

active duty, things that they can't do in their civilian career. And missions 

like this actually add to their professional credibility quite a bit. So, again, 

best of both worlds. That's one of the unique things about the guard. So I 

was saying earlier is just that, you know, you can have your cake and eat 

it too. Cake and pie. You can you can have a great civilian career and you 

can have a great career in cyber. And he can live in the same house and 

not have to move. So it's a it's a great thing. And these are great missions 

for our guys and gals to get into. 

Maj. Murphy – NGB-PA Thank you.

Maj Gen Neely - IL If I could just highlight one more thing that, you know, General Welsh 

really, really highlighted is, you know, and I don't think we talked about it 

early on. As you know, most of you on the on air are probably aware of 

this. But, you know, it's only the National Guard that can work in these 

unique missions. The National Guard is tied to our states where we work 
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very closely with our emergency managers. We work very closely with 

with the civilian sector. We have that day to day interaction, but we also 

have that ability to understand what's happening at the national level. We 

have security clearances that allow us to understand the bigger picture on 

the security of of the nation. And many of those things, we wear multiple 

hats. That state hat, which is really kind of a homeland security hat we 

wear that federal have that it allows us to do defend the nation national 

security type of work. And there's really no other organization in the world 

really especially in DOD, that is able to go between local to national level. 

And so in this mission, it makes us very, very unique to not only have that 

capability, but also to understand and to work between CSISA and the 

state level, between DOD and the local level, and to really kind of close 

some of those gaps that we have in our system. So I hope that helps a little 

bit as well to add to to the conversation. 

Maj. Murphy – NGB-PA Thank you, sir. We’ll go to Megan Myer.

Megan Myer Thanks. This question was sort of asked earlier, but I just want to try to 

get at it again. Were there any specific threats that the National Guard 

responded to during the primaries for this election cycle and beyond that 

on Election Day, if there is a threat? What does it look like when the 

National Guard response? Is the National Guard able to get a network back 

online or set up a backup network? Given that you all are at the whim of 

the state entities that are taking the lead. 

Maj. Murphy – NGB-PA Col Carbonell, I’ll let you lead with that.

Col Carbonell - NGB You know, as was mentioned for the question, you can't go into any 

specific operational information. But but in general, as our teams go in and 

respond, it's if they're called and invited in like any other incident 

responder is to help mitigate the threat and share information with the law 

enforcement partners. Everything done at the state and local level and my 

colleagues online can really address that is done in an agency type matter, 

but they're not there, as I.T. professionals to get network systems to back 

up. They rely on the ... mission To take care of that is to help provide 

expertise and information to get that organization back up and running. 

And then they rely on the information that's provided by the various 

(unreadable) and agreements that exist for sharing of assets information. 

Maj. Murphy – NGB-PA Thank you, Sir. We’ll move on to Benjamin Freed from State Scoop.

Benjamin Freed – State Scoop Thanks. Thanks for your service. And this call is more of a physical 
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security question. But if if as expected, it takes some states several days or 

weeks to tabulate the results and certify are National Guard units Are you 

making any preparations in case we see incidents similar to what we saw 

in 2020? 

Maj. Murphy – NGB-PA General Hunt... 

MG Hunt - NC Thank you. So to answer your question, no, we're not seeing anything. 

However, the National Guard in the state of North Carolina is postured to 

increase readiness to respond to domestic events if called upon by the 

governor. Right now, we are not seeing anything from our standpoint. It is 

a tiered response. 

Maj. Murphy – NGB-PA General Neely, would you like to respond?

Maj Gen Neely - IL I'd simply put you know, just add on to what general Hunt said we're 

always there and always ready, you know and you know that's we're not 

seeing anything. We're not expecting to see anything. But much like we 

did after, you know, January six, if the guards called in, the National Guard 

responds and comes in as soon as needed. And again, nothing's out there

to say that. And we're not expecting anything, you know, with within with 

what we're seeing. So thank you, though. 

Maj. Murphy- NGB-PA We’ll move on to Maggie Miller from POLITICO.

Maggie Miller - Politico Thanks for doing this. I know you've mentioned a few times you're 

working with CSISA and I think you said NSA as well. Can you talk about 

what that collaboration is going to look like on Election Day? And, you 

know, if any threats come up, sort of how each of the agencies will be 

covering different areas. Thanks so much. 

Maj. Murphy – NGB-PA I'll start with our cyber chief from Louisiana. 

Col Perron - LA So Sister is lead federal agency for cybersecurity, for all intents and 

purposes. So there is. Colonel Carmen Allard had indicated. They're 

providing us with a lot of information. As for a direct partnership on on 

Election Day, it's mainly for that threat Intel, that information sharing 

NSA. I'm not sure if that was mentioned, but our primary focus is gaining 

as much insight from CSISA and responding accordingly. 

Maj. Murphy – NGB-PA Col Carbonell, anything to add?
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Col Carbonell - NGB On the same sort of partnership it's been with, with CSISA predominantly, 

and then you have Cyber Command as the key lead agency. But as I've 

mentioned, this is a whole of nation government. We took the lead whole 

of nation approach taken away from CSISA and then we have the Guard 

Bureau serving as a conduit of information back and forth between the 

states and the federal side. 

MG Hunt - NC Matt, I’d like to add to this question as well. This is general Hunt.

Maj. Murphy – NGB-PA Absolutely, Sir.

MG Hunt - NC Yes. And answer your question about U.S. involvement in this election 

process. We have stood up a joint cyber mission center with other state 

partners, along with federal partners. And in that mission center, we don't 

just have National Guardsmen. We did have a liaison officer and sister, 

DHS and some other federal partners that we work with on a continuous 

basis. So this is nothing new for us in our Joint Cyber Mission Center. Is 

stood up. It'll be 24 seven here during the election process. We’re gonna 

surge to about 25 National Guardsmen in that as well. But to answer your 

question, we do have a direct link with CSISA and DHS because they do 

have personnel in our Joint Cyber Mission Center here in our building. 

Thank you. 

Maj. Murphy – NGB-PA Thank you, Sir. We’ll move on to Lauren Williams from Defense One.

Lauren Williams – Defense One Thank you so much for doing this. I asked it in a chat, but I want to pose 

it to everyone. Any of the states that are activated for this election cycle, 

new for this particular cycle, and then also, are there any vulnerabilities or 

just general states of readiness or lack of lack thereof that you guys are 

observing with each of the different states? 

Maj. Murphy – NGB-PA Col Carbonell, would you like to start?

Col Carbonell - NGB So thanks for the question. I can't answer the latter. There's nothing 

specific that we’ve been monitoring in that regards, and then I'll have to 

get back with you on the new states I didn't come prepared to see what 

new states have been added from last cycle. But that's something that we'll 

work through to make a reference to that. 

Maj. Murphy – NGB-PA Thank you. Louis Martinez, did you have a question?

Louis Martinez - ABC I do. Matt, thanks. Apologies. Can you all describe for. Us the historic 
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impact that your previous missions Have had? Broadly speaking, not 

getting into any specific operational details, but broadly speaking? Have 

your missions actually had an impact? Have they prevented anything that 

could have impacted previous election cycles? 

Maj. Murphy – NGB-PA General Neely, would you like to start?

Maj Gen Neely - IL Yeah. Let's start. That's a great question. And I you know, I think it goes 

back to a couple comments made earlier about when the National Guard 

comes in. I mean, we're we're just one more partner. This is really a whole 

of whole of government approach in making sure that we're working well 

together in state of Illinois, just like in North Carolina and Louisiana and 

other states. We're just another partner that comes to the table that tries to 

bring skills in. And that and I think you've seen since the attacks in 2016, 

we've seen, I think, as a nation, a much more solid approach towards 

security, CSISA has come online, new organizations have come online, 

and new partners have come to the table to ensure that we have secure 

elections. And Chris Krebs said that in 2020, that was one of the most it 

was the most secure election we had. And and I think we continue as a as 

a nation to continue to build security. As we look at and we've had rigorous 

debates about our approaches to security as a nation. I think that's 

continued to make sure that we're we're putting the emphasis in this. The 

other thing is, is 2017 January 2017, the election systems were then 

identified as critical infrastructure, and that kind of drove a new approach 

to ensuring that their security and I you know, and so I can see this across 

the nation that that, you know, everyone's approach to this is is increased 

security like the National Guard, as was mentioned earlier, because of 

things like COVID. In that we also bring a there's an aspect of the 

confidence of the National Guard, the apolitical nature of the military, that 

we're here just like we are after a hurricane or during COVID. We were 

here. The uniform brings confidence to the American public. And so I 

think there's also an aspect of that as well. So I’ll pause there. Thank you. 

Maj. Murphy – NGB-PA General Hunt, would you like to respond?

MG Hunt - NC I would agree with general neely on what his statements were as well. It's 

all about partnerships and having been successful. I know that this year we 

have conducted over 45 missions for assistance, and those assistance 

might be ransomware, malware, credential harvesting, those type of events 

to our partners within the state. But I think the real answer to your question 

and my other colleagues will see is our customers continuously ask us to 

come back. So if we're not making a positive impact, they would not allow 
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us or want us to come back to get back on their system and help shore up 

their security within their local, state and municipalities. 

Maj. Murphy – NGB-PA General Welsh, anything from Washington?

Brig Gen Welsh - WA You bet. So maybe a couple of things there. So direct impact. Yes. I'll give 

you a couple of things to think about. So when we first started our 

cooperation with our secretary of state back in 2016, we started our 

cooperation actually with doing an assessment of their whole process. So 

again, I talked about kind of an another set of eyes, you know, a different 

a different look at the security piece of this thing, looking at it from maybe 

a military aspect, really trying to get after that failure of imagination, you 

know, that we all hear about from from our nine, 11 days. So with that, we 

took a look at the systems here, and we did find some things that we left 

them with to improve their systems. Not going to give us specifics, but 

those recommendations were incorporated and certainly resulted in a 

much more secure system here. So vote by mail system in our state. So 

that was four years ago. A couple of years ago, we specifically sent a what 

we call a cyber nine line cyber command, you know, and that's nothing 

classified, but it's stuff that we found on a state's network that's of interest 

to the highest levels of our cyber structure in our country. And that's one 

of the things going back to a previous question about information flow that 

exists out there is because you have the National Guard out there, you 

actually have a what I would call a secure point of presence. So you 

actually have folks in uniform, folks with security clearances that can pass 

data, you know, both up to Cyber Command in a very quick way because 

we do have security clearances in those relationships and get, in some 

cases, some of the highest levels of security information down to a state 

that can be filtered through, you know, as appropriate that that cyber team. 

And the last one is, you know, kind of a more recent engagement. Wasnt 

during the mid this midterm run but we're absolutely absolutely able to to, 

you know, from a protect standpoint, get a hold of some of the systems at 

the state, at it at one location and actually get them transported in a way 

that kept all the forensic data intact so they could analyze it and the law 

enforcement folks could analyze that. So, yes, in our case, quite a bit of 

actual impact, not just the talk piece. 

Maj. Murphy – NGB-PA And our cyber chief from Louisiana...

Col Perron - LA So I'm not going into direct impact, but I will build off of you know, 

especially with what general welsh had indicated some of the things that 

we're able to bring is the fact that due to our exposures and some of the 
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responses that we've been involved with, there's a lot of lessons learned. 

So by us being engaged on the election support, we're able to, as an outside 

viewpoint, just provide some additional insight, some additional 

considerations for them to look at and make sure that they're in a more 

hardened position. Other than that, I think what was previously stated is 

spot on. 

Maj. Murphy – NGB-PA Thank you. And we're coming up on our time. I know I haven't gotten to 

Kari Williams. Did you have a question? 

Kari Williams No, not at this time. Thank you.

Maj. Murphy – NGB-PA Is there anyone else that we missed that didn't have an opportunity to ask 

a question? We have a couple folks on their phone where we can't see your 

name and any questions from the folks on the phone. Anyone have a final 

question for the panel? 

Steve Beynon – Military.com Yeah. If I could get in there real quick, I just kind of want to see where 

everyone saw it. Where cyber will be in the next maybe decade or two. 

You know, the guard right now is still very post-GWOT era and focusing 

on maybe civil disturbance missions domestically. How much does it need 

to invest in cyber? And then how much do you think it will actually invest 

in cyber? Like what was this conversation look like in a couple of years? 

Maj. Murphy - NGB-PA Col Carbonell, would you like to lead?

Col Carbonell - NGB There's a couple thoughts to leave you with. So first, thanks for that 

question. It's a perfect way to end the dialog. You know, if you look at the 

open press and see what's going on around the world, we know that the 

homeland is no longer a sanctuary. The last several a couple of 

administrations and strategies have pointed that out. And part of that is 

really within our critical infrastructure and the networks and cyber terrain 

that we are relying on in civil society. And so the National Guard is at the 

nexus of that we serve, as you've heard throughout this discussion, is a 

kind of bridge between the federal and state side that only we can fill. And 

so there's definitely an increasing demand signal for utilizing the National 

Guard across the 50 states, the territories and the District of Columbia to 

be a partner in that protection of our critical infrastructure beyond just the 

election side of the House. So what does that look like in the future? I think 

that's stuff that we're still working through with our policy makers and 

overseers. But there is a not just a consistent need for our cyber 

capabilities, but an increased need for military really across hopefully all
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of the 54, not just in the 38 states now. 

Maj. Murphy – NGB-PA Col Perron, your final thoughts?

Col Perron - LA So I believe General Hayden had made the point earlier that it's about the 

investment that states are making. And so for Louisiana, in addition to our 

more formal cyber forces, we've put pretty significant investment in taking 

it out of hide and building capabilities with our soldiers and airmen, just 

providing them with training, but also bringing them into a more formal. 

We've stood up a cyber directorate to support our not only our military 

mission, but our state mission and being able to be ready and prepared for 

anything that may come to bear for the state. 

Maj. Murphy – NGB-PA General Welsh?

Brig Gen Welsh - WA Lots of thoughts on this topic. Quick condensing it. So you're going to 

have to figure out how to plug this this gap that's out there between the 

federal government and the states in terms of cyber response. So one of 

the areas that's that's ripe for for probably 5 to 10 years is, again, some 

kind of cyber equivalent of a the civil support teams that are out there now 

in every state and territory looking at the weapons of mass destruction 

threats. So we've got to get there somewhere on the on the cyber side

domestically. Really up until that point, I think we've got some some more 

exposure for really the states that are the haves and those that are the have 

nots. 

Maj. Murphy – NGB-PA General Hunt?

MG Hunt - NC Thank you. I would agree with General Welsh there. The the National 

Guard is the touch point between the federal and local agencies when it 

comes to cyber. This field will continue to grow, in my personal opinion, 

as we see the threats continue to emerge. This is a continuous process for 

cyber warriors that are out there and for us to to continue to secure the 

networks. We definitely have to stay ahead of the threat, which is a 

continuous process, because they're changing their tactics, for lack of a 

better term. So we must stay ahead of them. We must grow our cyber. And 

again, the National Guard is the number one choice to be the touchpoint 

like general welsh said between the federal agencies and the state agencies 

as the conduit. Thank you. 

Maj. Murphy – NGB-PA Thank you, and General Neely, your final thoughts?
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Maj Gen Neely - IL Now, I appreciate the question. Excellent question. And all the speakers 

previously had really done a great job teeing it up. And my thoughts on 

this is kind of as I initially stated earlier, you know, we're in the early days 

of cyber. It's a manmade domain. It's much different than the other 

domains. We can quickly move between homeland security and the 

homeland defense issues. And it's really we're in the biplane era of cyber. 

And I'd say that from the aspect of we're in their early years funding policy, 

infrastructure, force structure that we need in the National Guard is all 

missing at this point. And we've really you've seen states knit together 

cyber capability where they really don't have that capability in significant 

force structure. Some of our states do an extremely great job. Washington 

is one of those that have a pretty robust structure and amazing talent there. 

But we're all on a journey here as we grow. Much like we need helicopters 

and and large trucks in every state to support the state, those states in their 

homeland response capability. We need cyber capability in each state and 

we need robust structure that we can build around so that when we have 

threats like we've seen to our critical infrastructure, that we have the right 

people, the right equipment, the right skills to be able to come and support 

our states and ultimately the nation as we as we fill in those gaps, as the 

really that pivot between the state and the federal agencies. And so, again, 

thanks for being able to join all of you today. It's been a real pleasure. 

Thank you. 

Maj. Murphy – NGB-PA I'd like to close by repeating some of. General Daniel Hodgkinson, the 

chief of the National Guard Bureau. His comments, our highly trained 

Cyber warriors provide our state partners significant capability and 

expertise to address election infrastructure issues. Our adversaries use 

cyber activity to target personnel, commercial and government 

infrastructure. And the effects can be devastating. It is critical we have 

National Guard cyber professionals available to help our communities 

whenever or wherever they're needed. And with that, I think the panel and 

to all of those who joined today, we appreciate your comments. Again, 

there are some links and some handouts in the chat. If you didn't get them, 

please email the press box and we'll be sure to get you the information. 

Appreciate your time today and thank you very much. 

[End of Audio]

Duration: 52 minutes
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