Trump taps Sean Plankey to head CISA

President Donald Trump on Tuesday nominated Sean Plankey to head the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

In the latter portion of Trump’s first term as president, Plankey served as principal deputy assistant secretary for the Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security and Emergency Response at the Department of Energy, overseeing energy sector engagement, preparedness, response efforts and research aimed at safeguarding U.S. energy infrastructure.

Prior to that, he served as the director for maritime and pacific cybersecurity policy at the National Security Council, and also held cybersecurity leadership roles at U.S. Cyber Command.

Plankey will need Senate confirmation to lead CISA, though a Republican majority in the high chamber is likely to ease that process. Bridget Bean has led the agency since its predecessor director Jen Easterly departed in January.

The cyber agency has historically enjoyed bipartisan support from members aligned on the notion that cybersecurity is a national security matter and shouldn’t be mired in politicization. But Republican claims that CISA’s misinformation efforts have targeted conservative voices in the past two years are setting the agency on a course for potentially far-reaching reevaluation.

Before the 2020 election and throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, CISA worked with social media firms to counter false information propagating on their platforms, particularly from foreign adversaries and domestic actors. The flagged content often centered on vaccine efficacy and Trump’s unsubstantiated election fraud claims.

Those efforts were curbed amid a 2023 lawsuit originating from Missouri, which accused the Biden administration of infringing on First Amendment rights and suppressing conservative voices. The case was eventually kicked up to the Supreme Court, which ultimately ruled in favor of the Biden administration on the matter.

A former CISA official told lawmakers this month that those agency disinformation efforts totaled less than 1% of its budget — around $2 million of its $3 billion topline — and refuted any GOP claims that it censored Americans.

Kristi Noem — a critic of the agency’s previous election security work — is now at the helm of CISA’s parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security.

“CISA’s gotten far off-mission. They’re using their resources in ways that was never intended,” Noem said during her confirmation hearing. “The misinformation and disinformation that they have stubbed their toe into and meddled with should be refocused onto what their job is, and that is to support critical infrastructure … to have the resources and be prepared for those cyberattacks that they will face.”

CISA’s suggested downsizing under Trump 2.0 has extended to all of DHS, with the administration recently purging members across its various advisory boards, including the Cyber Safety Review Board, which was in the midst of investigating a major Chinese hack into telecom systems that compromised the communications of people close to Trump and Vice President JD Vance. 

Plankey, with input from Noem and the White House, is expected to help shape membership and the business of CSRB moving forward.

Last week, Secretary Noem eliminated multiple DHS advisory groups, including the Critical Infrastructure Partnership Advisory Council, Politico first reported Monday.

CISA was stood up in Trump’s first term. Its former leader, Chris Krebs, was fired by Trump after Krebs declared that the 2020 presidential election was secure.

It’s not clear how the agency under Plankey would handle election security matters. CISA is tasked with overseeing the protections of several critical infrastructure sectors — including election systems — but Trump has promised to overhaul the government by dismissing those who are disloyal to his political agenda or were associated with certain Biden administration initiatives.