CISA director pick already drawing concern from Hill Dems over Palantir connection

The two expected incoming leaders of the Senate and House homeland security panels expressed reservations Tuesday about the Trump administration’s pick to lead the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency because he currently works for the oft-controversial tech company Palantir.

The Trump administration on Monday announced its intent to nominate Michael LoSapio, chief information security officer for Palantir, to fill the long-vacant Senate-confirmed position of CISA director.

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has authority over approving CISA director nominees. A spokesperson for its current chairman, Rand Paul, R-Ky., didn’t respond to a request for comment, but he won’t hold the gavel much longer with Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., in line to take over as chair in 2027.

Hassan and her counterpart on the House side, prospective Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., both voiced concerns about Palantir’s work at the Department of Homeland Security and with its subagency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“CISA plays a critical role in protecting our nation’s cybersecurity infrastructure, and the Trump-Vance administration has undermined CISA by cutting its funding, reducing agency staff, and making us vulnerable to cyberattacks from our adversaries,” Hassan said in a statement to CyberScoop. “I will carefully review Mr. LoSapio’s nomination to lead CISA, as I do with any nominee. But given his senior role at Palantir, which has provided tools that helped enable ICE’s lawless behavior under this administration, I have serious questions about whether he has the independence and judgement needed for this position.” 

Thompson expressed apprehensions for similar reasons.

“CISA is at a critical juncture, rebuilding after a year of reckless efforts to hack up the agency. I don’t know much about Mr. LoSapio, but certainly his relationship with Palantir raises very serious concerns given its role in DHS surveillance programs,” he said in a statement to CyberScoop. “I’m concerned that baggage will be an unnecessary distraction from the urgent rebuilding efforts at CISA. I urge my Senate colleagues to thoroughly vet Mr. LoSapio before proceeding with his nomination.”

The current top Democrat on the Senate panel, the retiring Gary Peters of Michigan, also cited the threats CISA is facing amid cutbacks: “Mr. LoSapio must demonstrate that he possesses the independent judgment and qualifications to decisively place national security and the national interest above political pressure.”

The current chairman of the House panel, Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y., said he appreciated Trump putting forward a nominee given the need for a Senate-confirmed director, something CISA has lacked for his second term, even as he praised the leadership of acting director Nick Andersen.

“I look forward to reviewing the qualifications of Michael LoSapio and urge the Senate to do so with urgency,” he said in a statement.

Unlike another of the top cybersecurity officials in the Trump administration prior to his nomination, National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross, LoSapio comes with technical credentials.

A former Trump administration official said that LoSapio’s name was first floated months ago, and said his cybersecurity certifications and experience managing cyber risk for a major public company would make him a good fit for the role.

A cybersecurity executive who knows and has worked with LoSapio said he was an “exceptional choice” for the job.

“Mike LoSapio is an extremely competent and talented cybersecurity leader. He knows his stuff,” the executive said. “He defends one of the most targeted organizations on the planet” because of Palantir’s sensitive government work.

CISA is primarily a technical agency, so “that work is best done by someone who knows how to do it,” the executive said. LoSapio is also a “high-integrity” person who isn’t “dogmatic or political” or “the kind of person that would be cowed by political pressure.”

But his role at Palantir is drawing criticism, something the executive said he understood given concerns about surveillance in the United States, even as the executive noted LoSapio has proven capable of navigating those “thorny issues.”

Patrick Eddington, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute think tank, acknowledged LoSapio’s technical background but said his lack of a government background and no public record of weighing in on the subject matter CISA works on adds up to a “thin resume.” More worrisome, he said, is that CISA is a Palantir customer.

“The nominee would come from the vendor whose software is already being bought, without competition, by the office he’d run,” Eddington said. “And the agency responsible for judging the security of federal civilian systems would be led by the former security chief of a vendor whose platforms now run across DHS. That’s where ethics rules would normally help, yet this administration has weakened them.”

Before confirming LoSapio, senators should find out what kind of Palantir stock or other holdings LoSapio has and whether he’ll divest it, whether he’ll recuse himself from Palantir matters for longer than the Trump administration would require, whether he has made bargains to return to Palantir after CISA service and other answers about potential conflicts of interest.

“Bottom line: Palantir’s business is fusing government data at scale, and DHS has made it the default analytics vendor across the department,” Eddington said. “Putting the company’s security chief in charge of the agency that sets the security bar for those systems, with a one-year recusal as the main safeguard, risks making CISA one vendor’s customer, regulator and alumni network all at once. Even if LoSapio is entirely well-intentioned, that’s the wrong setup.”

A Palantir spokesperson didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Even in optimal circumstances for a nominee, it can take some time to work through the Senate confirmation process and then begin shaping an agency as its leader, said Joshua Corman, a former CISA adviser and now executive in residence for public safety and resilience at the Institute for Security and Technology.

Andersen and his team, even amid budget cutbacks, “never gave up” on the agency, Corman said, and set important priorities for “the most life-safety of our critical functions.”

With two years left in Trump’s term, “it may be hard to have much of a dent, no matter who gets the nod, and as such, I really hope they lean on the current steward” in Andersen, Corman said. 

Madison Alder contributed reporting to this story.