Senate Intel chair urges national cyber director to safeguard against open-source software threats

Sen. Tom Cotton urged the National Cyber Director to address risks from foreign influence in open-source software, referencing the XZ Utils backdoor incident, a Russia-based sole maintainer of OSS used by the DoD, and high OSS contributions from Chinese firms. He called for government capabilities to track OSS provenance and adversary-nation contributions, noting DoD directives to guard against foreign-influenced tech and contrasting policy signals from recent executive orders and stalled OSS cybersecurity legislation.