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China has penetrated networks that control infrastructure systems and has hacked telecommunications companies.
Oct. 22, 2025Updated 2:21 p.m. ET
Cyberattacks by the nation’s adversaries have increasingly targeted broader swaths of American communications and public infrastructure.
But even as more sophisticated threats emerge, the Trump administration’s cuts to federal programs have eroded U.S. cyberspace defenses, according to a senator and a nonprofit organization that advocates improved security.
“I would call it almost an across-the-board retreat from the national security defenses that we built up over the past five years, at the same time that the threat is only increasing and accelerating,” said Senator Angus King, a Maine independent who caucuses with Democrats.
Mr. King helped lead the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, which was established by Congress in 2019 to recommend ways to strengthen defenses against hacking attacks. Many of its recommendations were signed into law.
After the commission’s mandate ended, a nonprofit called the Cyberspace Solarium Commission 2.0 began tracking how many of the original recommendations had been put into practice.
Last year, 80 percent of the original recommendations were carried out or nearing enactment. But this year, for the first time, only 70 percent of the recommendations had been nearly or completely fulfilled, according to a new report from the nonprofit group.
