The U.S. won the space race last century when it became the first country to put a man on the moon. Yet officials say it could lose the “cyberspace race” as peer competitors vie for network domination.
As a result, the Pentagon and Congress are turning their attention to helping the U.S. get ahead in cyberspace.
Adm. Michael Rogers, the leader of U.S. Cyber Command, told senators last week that Russia and China both have the ability to inflict “serious harm” on American infrastructure.
“Cyber is one area we have to acknowledge that we have peer competitors who have every bit as much capacity and capability as we do,” Rogers told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
While he worries about power or water grid disruption and the chaos that comes with that, Rogers said another major concern is the increased targeting of large troves of citizens’ personally identifiable information in healthcare databases, for example.
“Because of the power of big data and analytics, massive amounts of data that 10 years ago, we would have said to ourselves, ‘No one could ever really comb through that to generate insights or find anything. It’s just too large.’ You sure don’t have those conversations anymore,” he said.
The Pentagon is working to get ahead of the curve. Defense Secretary Ash Carter recently announced a “Hack the Pentagon” initiative that will begin April 18 that asks hackers to find vulnerabilities in the Defense Department’s public websites. The 20-day pilot program is modeled after those used by private corporations to find security flaws.
“This initiative will put the department’s cybersecurity to the test in an innovative but responsible way,” Carter said when registration opened last month. “I encourage hackers who want to bolster our digital defenses to join the competition and take their best shot.”
Katie Moussouris, an adviser to the Pentagon on the initiative, said the military needs the hacker community to find security gaps before they’re exploited by bad actors.
“Governments accustomed to military and economic dominance around the world are faced with the stark reality that in order to win the cyberarms race — and protect the Internet on which commerce, communications and critical infrastructure rely around the world — they must embrace hackers,” Moussouris, who also is an adviser for HackerOne, wrote in Time.
Carter also suggested in a speech concerning plans to shake up the military’s organization that he would consider elevating U.S. Cyber Command to the level of other geographic combatant commands, such as U.S. Central Command.
Asked by Sen. Jack Reed if U.S. Cyber Command is “mature enough” to become its own unified command, Rogers said “yes.”
Capitol Hill is also turning its attention to helping the Pentagon bolster its cybercapabilities. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, promised that the committee would focus its attention on cyberthreats and resources once Congress passed the annual defense policy bill.
“After we finish the bill on the floor, our efforts in the fall will be centered to a large degree on the issue of cyber,” McCain told reporters at the Capitol.
McCain also called for the military to spend more on cyber in future budget requests.
“Unless the services begin to prioritize and deliver the cyberweapons systems necessary to fight in cyberspace, we’re headed down the path to a hollow cyberforce,” he said.
The president’s fiscal 2017 request asks for nearly $7 billion for cybersecurity advances.
