“We met with a vendor on the West Coast — I can’t say who — and saw how they had implemented it end-to-end in their own infrastructure. They looked at (cybersecurity) holistically from the user identity, to the identity of the endpoint, to the application. I was very impressed with what they had done,” says DISA’s Steve Wallace.
By Barry RosenbergTop defense insights from 2024
A curated look at standout opinions and analysis covering topics like uncrewed systems, NATO partnerships, US-Saudi defense dynamics, and evolving warfare strategies, spotlighting key issues shaping the global defense landscape.
SAN FRANCISCO: Uncle Sam wants you, Defense Secretary Ash Carter told a skeptical tech community yesterday. It’s part of an all-out effort by the military’s civilian leader to get the technologically best and brightest to work with or even for the often-hidebound Pentagon. Carter has created the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUX) and the Defense Digital Service, both…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
NGA HEADQUARTERS: If you want further proof of the damage that Edward Snowden has wrought on American intelligence capabilities, look at the relative ease with which the Paris terrorists planned, traveled and killed in Europe. “The adversary has gone and is going to school against our capabilities,” NGA Director Robert Cardillo told reporters here today.…
By Colin Clark
WASHINGTON: The enemy of my enemy may not be my friend, but he can be useful. In a speech he’d ripped up and rewritten since Friday’s horrific attacks on Paris, CIA chief John Brennan said even the only superpower needs help in a dangerous world. That sometimes requires working with countries that make the world worse,…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
WASHINGTON: Hacks are hard to do damage assessments on. Just ask Director of National Intelligence Jim Clapper about the Chinese theft of data from the Office of Personnel Management. “We don’t actually know what was actually exfiltrated,” Clapper told several hundred people at Georgetown University’s Healy Hall today. Why don’t we really know if 5.6 million fingerprints — or…
By Colin Clark
THE WATERGATE: United we stand, Great Britain’s ambassador to the US insisted today. Despite all the strains on the Atlantic alliance — post-Snowden backlash against American spying, rising anti-EU sentiment in Britain, German dependence on Russian energy — the US, the UK, and their continental European allies stand together against what he called Russian “hybrid…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
WASHINGTON: “One of the things I try to tell the work force out there is this is not what is going to define us,” said Adm. Mike Rogers, new head of the National Security Agency and US Cyber Command. After two months in the job — and halfway through this morning’s Q&A at a Bloomberg Government…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
The Weekly Break Out web news show
Coming in 2025! The Washington Monument is an iconic part of Washington. There’s something else monumental coming to defense in DC in 2025.
PENTAGON: Vice Adm. Michael Rogers
By Colin Clark
WASHINGTON: Positing the future of intelligence — even for one year — poses unique challenges. First, there’s so much those of on the outside don’t know. Then there’s the simple truth that our enemies and competitors drive so much of intelligence. Since we can’t know with certainty what will happen, it’s difficult to predict what the intelligence…
By Colin Clark
AFA Conference: A bipartisan group of House lawmakers have presented a new bill designed to increase congressional oversight of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and its main client, the National Security Agency. Obviously, the bill was sparked by the flood of classified information released by the international fugitive and former intelliegnce contractor Edward Snowden. The…
By Colin Clark
NATIONAL HARBOR: Media outcry and public uproar over the Edward Snowden revelations have created a deeply demoralizing backlash against the US intelligence community and paralyzed key cybersecurity initiatives, Gen. Michael Hayden — former director of both the CIA and the NSA — said today. “If you look at the psychic effect of Snowden on the…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.WASHINGTON: You could see the war weariness in the face of James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, when he spoke about The Three Ss: Sequestration, Snowden, and Syria. Clapper, speaking before some 450 members of the intelligence community and media, sounded close to wistful when he talked about the furious national debate about privacy and…
By Colin Clark
UPDATED: With Great Rep. Turner Quote On Snowden WASHINGTON: “The damage assessment is still underway,” about the effects of Edward Snowden’s revelations about the National Security Agency’s monitoring of web and email traffic, a typically cool and careful commander of US Strategic Command told me this morning. But it’s definitely bad. “It’s going to take…
By Colin Clark
