By Miles Layton

EDENTON — Republican congressional candidate Laurie Buckhout says the cyberattacks that worry Pentagon planners are no longer a distant concern.

With Tuesday’s election days away, Buckhout sat down with the Albemarle Observer and said cyberattacks are already hitting hospitals, ports and power suppliers, and that her years inside the government’s cyber apparatus are the best reason to send her to Congress.

Buckhout, a retired Army colonel, is challenging Democratic U.S. Rep. Don Davis, who is seeking a second term in North Carolina’s 1st Congressional District. She was the Republican nominee in 2024 and narrowly lost to Davis. The race is again expected to be close, shaping up to be the most expensive congressional race in history. Supporters of Davis have accounted for $29.6 million in ad spending, compared with $23.3 million for supporters of Buckhout, according to NC Newsline.

Early voting ends Saturday with Election Day being Tuesday, Nov. 3.

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From the Pentagon to the White House

Buckhout’s cyber warfare experience carries added weight as tensions rise overseas and after the Pentagon announced FORTRESS America, a program meant to make U.S. military installations self-reliant and resilient against global conflict, cyberattacks and supply chain disruptions.

Flashback to 2025: Buckhout joined the Pentagon as deputy assistant secretary of war for cyber policy and later became the acting assistant secretary. In those roles, she helped shape the military’s cyberspace strategy, set policy guidance for its cyber operations and coordinated with other federal agencies, industry and international partners before stepping away from DC, later running for Congress.

Buckhout said the cyber threat comes from several directions. China is the most persistent, she said, and Russia and former Soviet satellite states are also involved.

“It is a tsunami of Chinese cyber attacks on everything,” she said.

Buckhout described two kinds of attackers. Criminal groups, including Russian-linked ones and Mexican drug cartels, are after money. “Hospitals have been hacked and held with ransomware,” she said. She noted that nearly everything in a modern hospital runs through scanned wristbands and billing software, so shutting down those systems can stop care.

China’s aim is different, she said. Chinese actors are trying to embed themselves in the systems that control railways, ports and cranes. She called that “open knowledge at this point.”

“They’re embedding subtle capabilities that they could activate if need be,” Buckhout said, describing a patient strategy that looks well into the future.

She said the danger extends to Iran and Russia as well. “Iran, China, Russia—they’re all coming at us,” she said. “Some of them are time bombs that they’re embedding, and some of them are attacks that are just ready to go.”

That threat may be the backdrop for the Pentagon’s FORTRESS America program, which the department announced Sept. 30. According to a memo to senior leadership, the program is meant to keep the U.S. military able to fight under any conditions by securing the energy, infrastructure and resources it depends on. The memo calls the effort the nation’s “insurance policy.” Its five pillars include “installation hardening and cyber resilience,” along with energy independence, supply-chain resilience, a strategic defense reserve and resilience in space and spectrum. The memo gives the Under Secretary of War for Acquisition and Sustainment 30 days to set up a program office.

Though Buckhout did not walk through the program’s details in the interview, she spoke instead about what she said she worked on while in the Pentagon: securing funding and attention for cyber defense.

Her central policy argument is that the military’s cyber forces should be able to help communities more directly. She said Cyber Command, which is based at the National Security Agency in Maryland, can send experts to help U.S. entities. She said lawmakers should consider new laws and regulations to let those teams help civilian authorities.

“Make our cyber forces more robust,” she said. “Make them have more authorities so they can assist civil authorities on what’s going on.”

She said she pushed for a bigger budget so cyber specialists could better support National Guard units, which already have legal authority to assist local governments. She also said she worked on information-sharing among federal agencies, including the CIA and Border Patrol, and with local police.

Buckhout said that if she wins the congressional race, she has been told she would most likely serve on the House’s cyber and intelligence subcommittee. She said she would use the seat to explain the stakes to colleagues from other parts of the country. As an example, Buckhout described attackers targeting an electrical cooperative in a rural area, such as one that supplies power to a remote missile silo in Iowa. A vulnerability like that, she said, is a problem for members who represent small towns.

She also said she has been asked to lead an electronic warfare working group focused on drones and counter-drone systems, and she was not modest about her expertise.

“I’m one of the top ten people in the world on electronic warfare,” Buckhout said. “I am the ‘Rain Man’ for electronic warfare.”

Threat from the Middle East

Buckhout said the threat from Middle Eastern governments is not theoretical to her. Her military career took her to the Middle East, Europe and posts across the United States, she said, and she has dealt with the region both in person and later as an intelligence analyst and equipment builder.

“I understand that intimately,” she said. “It’s a very real threat.”

For decades, terrorists have deployed civilians as elements of their battle strategy.

Buckhout went on to describe what she called a difference in values. Buckhout said she believes people in the region have a different view of sacrifice than Americans do.

“These people are willing to sacrifice their own people to win, and sometimes winning just means killing everybody else,” she said.

To illustrate, Buckhout said that in the middle of a fight overseas, there was a report of a girl about 3 years old being put in front of a rolling tank to stop it. The tank, she said, was too high and too fast to stop. “It ran right over her,” Buckhout said. “But that’s how they are.”

Americans, she said, have a hard time grasping that kind of approach to war.

On the campaign trail

In a district that stretches from the Virginia line to the central coast and far inland, Buckhout has campaigned in relatively prosperous, Republican-leaning counties such as Craven, Carteret and Currituck. Stephen Gallagher, 24, her campaign manager, has run the effort from the start. Buckhout called him brilliant and said he will be “an extraordinary leader one day.”

Buckhout has campaigned in some of the poorest counties in the state, including Bertie and Tyrrell.

Buckhout said the campaign has been going well.

“Really, really good,” she said of how the trail has treated her.

During Buckhout’s travels, health care and emergency response came up repeatedly. She described a conversation during her 2024 run with a widow whose husband died because an ambulance could not reach him in time. “I held her when she cried,” Buckhout said. She said a woman from Martin County told her a similar story on the trail this week.

Buckhout said rural fire and EMS services in the district often lack substations, which she described as powered, sheltered facilities that let crews respond quickly in large areas. Without them, she said, residents can lose both emergency coverage and the ability to buy fire insurance, which in turn holds back home sales and jobs.

She said the closing of Martin General Hospital showed the stakes. The Observer noted that Davis had worked to secure money for the hospital. Buckhout said the $25 million that came for it was from the Republican-led state legislature, not from Davis. She said she does not claim credit for that money but was one of many voices pressing state officials.

“People are dying out here,” she said. “We can do better.”

Buckhout’s broader argument is that the national economy and public safety are improving under the Trump administration but those gains have not reached eastern North Carolina quickly enough. She credited border enforcement and support for police with lowering crime and drug use nationally, though she acknowledged gas prices are still a struggle.

“It’s really hard to see the impact of all the goodness on the first because infrastructure has been ignored,” she said.

Buckhout pointed to NC 12 on the Outer Banks, a section of which near the Pea Island Visitor Center has washed away — again. She said she was “shocked” when she visited and saw the damage firsthand, and she argued that the road matters to statewide tourism revenue. She also spoke of small towns where fire and police stations have seen little investment.

Buckhout said she has also spent time with people who work the land and the water. She said she went out with shrimpers and “was down there hauling nets for a while.” Buckhout said she wants to see farmers spared what she called a heavy regulatory burden, arguing that rules that bind American growers do not apply to imported produce. She said small businesses and workers deserve lower taxes.

“They deserve to keep more of what they earn,” she said.

The closing pitch

Asked for her final message to voters, Buckhout led with national security. She said that as acting assistant secretary she had access to classified intelligence ahead of the first strike in the current conflict, and that “we needed to do what we had to do.” She said she is being careful not to second-guess the war now. Because she no longer sees daily intelligence assessments, she said, she is “resisting being an armchair quarterback.”

Her pitch for the district is more local. She said the region needs someone who will bring jobs and infrastructure and “is willing to make some waves.” She argued the district has been left behind, especially east of Interstate 95.

“I’m fighting for the people who have built a house, who run a farm, and who know how hard they have to work to make a living,” she said.

She also returned to her military background, having served almost 30 years in the Army.

“I know how to protect the country,” Buckhout said.

Her final words were direct.

“I think you should send me to Congress because I have fought these people and I understand them,” she said. “I think you’re going to be sending a grown up to Congress.”