Last month, Gov. Greg Abbott declared creating a Texas cybersecurity agency an emergency item this legislative session.
“We cannot let any more time go by without strongly, robustly addressing this problem,” Abbott said in a video filmed at his desk. “And that is why I’m calling for an emergency item to create the Texas Cyber Command.”
Now, a bill which would form that agency is moving through the Legislature. First stop: the new Delivery of Government Efficiency Committee in the Texas House. When House Speaker Dustin Burrows unveiled the Musk-inspired committee last month at a summit for the Texas Public Policy Foundation, one of the most powerful conservative think tanks in the United States, he said, “We’re going to cut red tape. We need to be looking down at our own inefficient government as well.”
Burrows described DOGE Chair Rep. Giovanni Capriglione, R-Southlake, as “literally made for this committee.”
It was Capriglione himself who filed the bill to form a cybersecurity agency based at UT-San Antonio. House Bill 150 specifies that the Texas Cyber Command would be a component of the University of Texas system, tied to UT-San Antonio’s existing cybersecurity programs. Creating and running the agency would cost roughly $88 million in the first year, and total to $413 million during its first five years, according to the state’s Legislative Budget Board.
Roughly half of that money (about $190 million) would go toward contracts to private companies, the Legislative Budget Board found. UT System staff told the board “they anticipate the need for a substantial volume of contracted services in niche and high-value services by a range of cybersecurity providers.” These private company payments would amount to roughly $36 million in 2026, ratcheting up to $40.5 million annually by 2030.
The state already funds 40 positions dedicated to cybersecurity. The new agency would dramatically expand spending on cybersecurity work. In addition to contractors, it would more than quadruple the number of state cybersecurity positions.
“[HB 150] puts us at the forefront of leading in what is, quite frankly, the 21st century realm of warfare, which is cyber.” – David Dunmoyer of the Texas Public Policy Foundation
UT-San Antonio President Taylor Eighmy testified that much of the first year’s price tag for Texas Cyber Command ($60 million of $88 million) would not come from taxpayer dollars. Texas state universities make money by leasing state-owned land, and they invest revenues from that leasing into the stock market, Eighmy explained. Those investments yield returns, and the UT system would pull from that pot of money for $60 million to put toward Texas Cyber Command.
Some funding would come from current state cybersecurity spending. The bill would redirect cybersecurity spending in the existing Department of Information Resources to the new Cyber Command. That would include moving the roughly 40 existing cybersecurity employees from DIR to work under the umbrella of Texas Cyber Command (though these employees would not have to physically move to San Antonio).
Capriglione argued that the need for this agency is great. In introducing the bill during the March 19 DOGE hearing, he turned to each of the representatives on the dais and pointed out cybersecurity attacks that happened in their respective districts. The state’s 2024 Cybersecurity Report noted that, “despite increased investments in cybersecurity, most agencies reported that they do not have adequate resources budgeted to respond effectively to a major cybersecurity incident.”
Capriglione claimed in his introduction of the bill that state agencies are under constant cyberattack: “In the time it will take me to lay out this bill, millions of attempts from adversarial nations, organized criminal enterprises, and hacktivists will be made on our state’s network. It is literally thousands per second.” We were not able to confirm these numbers, but the 2024 Cybersecurity Report noted one attack on a rural Texas water system by a Russian group as part of a “broader pattern of attacks on the water utilities sector in Texas and other states.” Meanwhile, the Texas comptroller’s office says more than 38,000 victims of cybercrime reported an estimated $313.6 million in financial losses in 2020 in Texas.
“The chairman went through a list of attacks and breaches that have happened here in the state,” Tom Guarente, an executive of cybersecurity company Armis, testified last week. “I think if he had gone through the attempted breaches, we would’ve been here for a few days.”
Guarente was one of several cybersecurity company executives to testify in support of the bill, along with Exodus Intelligence’s Joel Bagnal and QUX Technologies Inc.’s Gavin Wince. Guarente said HB 150 would be “fostering collaboration with government, academia, and industry.”
Marc Whyte, a Republican San Antonio City Council member, testified that “cyber city USA” is “the ideal location” for the agency, thanks to its existing military, academic, and industry work in cybersecurity.
Joe Sánchez, executive director of the CyberTexas Foundation, testified that the university component was promising, but also that high school students need to be informed about the possibilities of working in cybersecurity, and that young pupils benefit from the mentorship of military and industry experts.
A representative of the Texas Association of Business also testified in support. So did David Dunmoyer, a representative of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, who pointed to the attack on a rural Texas city’s water system linked to a Russian hacktivist group. He argued: HB 150 “puts us at the forefront of leading in what is, quite frankly, the 21st century realm of warfare, which is cyber.”
The bill was left pending in committee March 19.
This article appears in March 28 • 2025.
