Congress rejected a bid to shift about $90 million in cybersecurity research funding to a newly formed agency at the Department of Homeland Security in the recent funding bill.
The Science and Technology Directorate at DHS will retain that funding, which DHS sought to move to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
Source: Congress bucks DHS on bid to move cyber research funding — FCW
Oracle’s lawsuit against the Department of Defense looking to stop its $10 billion cloud buy is being frozen temporarily while DOD probes conflict-of-interest allegations.
Judge Eric Bruggink of the Court of Federal Claims issued a stay in the case Feb. 19, in response to a motion from the DOD. According to the brief order, DOD is reconsidering “whether possible personal conflicts of interest impacted the integrity of the JEDI Cloud procurement.”
The DOD’s motion seeking the stay remains under seal.
The conflict-of-interest allegations stem from the participation of two individuals in the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure procurement with strong ties to Amazon Web Services, the vendor widely seen as having the inside track in this procurement because of its work provisioning classified cloud services for the intelligence community.
A combination of artificial intelligence, machine learning, cloud computing, fifth-generation communications and agile software development processes may one day allow commanders to direct any asset from anywhere, essentially revolutionizing command and control.
During the recent AFCEA Alamo Chapter Event in San Antonio, several officials agreed that the current command and control (C2) center known as an air operations center (AOC) has grown too cumbersome and vulnerable for Air Force commanders to make the rapid-fire decisions required in the modern era of multi-domain operations.
Maj. Gen. Patrick Wade, USAF, mobilization assistant to the Air Combat Command commander, pointed out that the AOC can take up to 72 hours to complete an air tasking order, which essentially assigns specific aircraft to a mission.
“I think in the future, and I say think, we’re going to be fusing information from fifth-gen platforms, bringing together everything we have in the Air Force, in other services and with our coalition partners, and trying to take that data and turn it into something actionable.”
Source: Air Force Seeks Disaggregated Command and Control | SIGNAL Magazine
Last year the U.S. Defense Department released a cyber strategy and followed that with posture review that identified more than 90 gaps in cybersecurity capabilities, many of which were determined to be critical shortcomings.
This year, officials expect to begin implementing the strategy, beginning with several priority areas involving endpoint management, network visibility, user authentication and cyber force development, according to Brig. Gen. Dennis Crall, USMC, deputy principal cyber advisor, Office of the Secretary of Defense.
Gen. Crall made the comments during a keynote presentation at the National Security Technology Forum and Exposition, a joint effort between the University of California San Diego and AFCEA, and during a brief interview with SIGNAL Magazine following the address.
Source: A Banner Year for Cyber Implementation | SIGNAL Magazine
A new strategy for U.S. intelligence looks to improve integration of counterintelligence and security efforts, increasingly address cyber threats, and have clear guidance of civil liberties, privacy and transparency. As outlined in the U.S. National Intelligence Strategy (NIS), from Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Dan Coats, the intelligence community is facing a turbulent and complex strategic environment, and as such, the community “must do things differently.”
Some leaders of the IC, including Coats; FBI Director Christopher Wray; CIA Director Gina Haspel; DIA Director Lt. Gen. Robert Ashley, USA; NSA Director Gen. Paul Nakasone, USA; and NGA Director Robert Cardillo; all testified on Capitol Hill on January 29 as to the threats America faces from adversaries.
The leaders presented to the U.S. Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence their annual Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community.
Source: Intelligence Strategy Outlines Measures for a Complex Threat Environment | SIGNAL Magazine
Army leaders are tackling the integration of modern network capabilities to push out broadly across the Army force structure over the next decade.
Maj. Gen. David Bassett, USA, program executive officer for Command, Control, Communications-Tactical (PEO-C3T) and Maj. Gen. Peter Gallagher, USA, director, Network Cross-Functional Team (Network CFT) are overseeing the effort and have developed an iterative plan to bring together network transport, mission command applications and services, all easily deployed to soldiers.
“We know that the things that we are doing today are going to develop capabilities that are going to have a significant improvement in our expeditionary capability, and also in the simplicity of the network design,” Gen. Gallagher said.
Source: Leaders Outline Plan for the Army’s Integrated Tactical Network | SIGNAL Magazine
The U.S. Navy is consolidating its information warfare efforts to ensure effective operations across the breadth of the fleet and its ashore assets.
This endeavor ties together training, doctrine and equipping as new threats and technologies rapidly change the nature of the information operations realm.
The Navy has signed a charter to establish an information warfare (IW) enterprise that focuses on aligning IW development, generation and execution across the service.
The executive committee comprises Vice Adm. Brian Brown, USN, commander, Naval Information Forces, as the type commander; Vice Adm. Matthew Kohler, USN, the OPNAV N2/N6, as the resource sponsor; and Rear Adm. Christian Becker, USN, Space and Naval Warfare Systems commander, as the primary systems command lead for IW capabilities.
Below this command level is a broader board of directors representing other systems commands, program executive officers and type commanders.
Source: The Navy Turns a Sharper Eye Toward Information Warfare | SIGNAL Magazine
Machine-learning techniques used by thousands of scientists to analyze data are producing results that are misleading and often completely wrong.
Dr Genevera Allen from Rice University in Houston said that the increased use of such systems was contributing to a “crisis in science”.
She warned scientists that if they didn’t improve their techniques they would be wasting both time and money. Her research was presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington.
The 2016 presidential election revealed—as nothing before it—one of the most striking but least-anticipated aspects of the global digital revolution. In a single dramatic vote, the victory of Donald Trump highlighted the emergence of a stark and widening divide between two Americas: one based in large, digitally oriented metropolitan areas; the other found in lower-tech smaller cities, towns, and rural areas.
In doing so, the vote displayed—with its stark red-blue map—the underrated power of technology to reshape the geography of nations.
The divide came as a shock to many.
Source: Countering the geographical impacts of automation: Computers, AI, and place disparities
A report released by the White House, which was compiled by 20 agencies, includes the widely cited statistic that 24 million people can’t get broadband service in the United States, with about 80 percent of those people living in rural areas.
The report acknowledges what has long been a gripe of local leaders from rural areas: the imprecise Federal Communications Commission map of broadband coverage that overestimates its availability in many places.
Source: Trump Administration Releases Rural Broadband Strategy – Nextgov