The law's vulnerability disclosure provisions will give the Chinese government a head start on remediating -- and potentially exploiting -- zero-day vulnerabilities, possibly to include those discovered in tech used by the Defense Department, Intelligence Community, and across the US public and private sectors more broadly.
"I think it's more than likely we're going to end up, if we end up in a war - a real shooting war with a major power - it's going to be as a consequence of a cyber breach of great consequence, and it's increasing exponentially," President Biden said.
The Network Tactical Common Data Link system enables secure comms and ISR for carrier strike groups and their air and naval assets.
"So what will happen is you'll be destroying your grandmother's computer in Kansas that has been taken over," cyber policy expert Herb Lin said. "It's not clear to me that that's the best way."
"It's part of a larger diplomatic strategy," cyber policy expert James Lewis said of the US attribution to China for Microsoft Exchange hacks earlier this year.
Rep. Langevin criticized the 2022 budget overview for its brevity, opacity, and appearance as "nearly a carbon copy" of the 2021 document. "If DoD were a high school student, I would have called [the 2022 budget overview] plagiarism."
"We're not in Kansas anymore," Gen. Nakasone said about the cyber threat landscape and the US's adversaries.
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"China is a second-tier cyber power but, given its growing industrial base in digital technology, it is the state best placed to join the US in the first tier," an IISS report says.