Congressional intelligence committee leaders have pledged to examine Russia’s involvement in hacks against Democrats during the 2016 presidential election. As the ranking member of the Senate’s intelligence panel Rep. Adam Schiff put it, “we want to make sure that the intelligence community got it right. … We want to look at the raw intelligence, and make sure their conclusions were substantiated.” But a detailed investigation into hacking demands technical skills that staff for the House and Senate Intelligence Committees appear to be lacking. Research into public committee staff lists, LinkedIn, and conversations with several sources who have interacted with the committees shows a serious dearth of technical expertise among the staffers cleared to access classified materials that would be involved in the investigation. Essentially, committee staff are underwater when it comes to poking into the nitty gritty of cyber warfare — a longstanding problem made more relevant as attacks on U.S. government and politicians escalate.

Committees and their members customarily rely on staff to do the heavy lifting to prepare background research, evaluate evidence and information, and advise on policy and legal issues. Depending on the committee, staffers are typically well-versed in the law, international affairs, Washington policy debates, and more. But a technical matter like the election hacks benefits from knowledge of coding, information security, and attribution. The bulk of staff on the intelligence committees — more than two dozen on each — are lawyers, policy wonks, and budget experts. Many staffers worked in the legislative affairs offices of other senators and members of Congress, government budget offices, the Department of Justice, the military, private law firms, defense contractors, or Washington think tanks. While they’ve served for many years in their respective areas, those areas are rarely technical. While some programs were created in recent years to remedy the desperate need for computer scientists and hackers on the Hill — like TechCongress, a tech policy fellowship in D.C. — the intelligence committees don’t normally accept fellows or detailees due to the sensitivity of the policy issues they discuss. “Anecdotally, of the 15,000 staff in Congress, I’m aware of six that have technology-related educational backgrounds,” Travis Moore, the founder and director of TechCongress told The Intercept in response to a question about the staffing on the intelligence committees. “This is a problem. All policy is increasingly ‘tech’ policy.” Spokespeople for the House and Senate Intelligence Committees declined comment on the expertise of their staff. The Senate Intelligence Committee does have new leadership in Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, who made his fortune investing in the cellular telecom industry and took a prominent role in the debate over encryption technology last Congress and who may emphasize technical issues in the coming debates over Russia. But at the end of the day, there’s not much money to throw around, and adding a technical staffer might mean replacing another qualified legal or policy expert. “Congressional budgets have been slashed 35% and even officers that would like to hire for this expertise don’t have the resources to do so,” Moore said. What technical knowledge the committees have historically added to their staffs is typically rooted in the legal sphere or the policy space rather than in the nuts and bolts of tech. “Evidence of hacking, computer forensics, and attribution are highly technical fields,” Steven Bellovin, a computer science researcher and professor at Columbia University with experience advising the government on technology, wrote in an email.

“If you don’t have independent experts in those fields, you cannot independently evaluate the evidence — all you can do is look at their reports and see if all of the analysts agree,” Bellovin added.