Plea for help: The Pentagon seeks cybersecurity assistance from Silicon Valley.
U. S. pushes for Silicon Valley talent to help nation’s cybersecurity, ‘ rewiring’ Pentagon
Seeking to “rebuild the bridge between the Pentagon and Silicon Valley,” Defense Secretary Ash Carter Thursday asked for the tech community’s help in “rewiring the Pentagon” by upgrading its innovation and cybersecurity capabilities.
To do that, Carter wants to recruit tech talent by selling members of the younger generation on furthering the Pentagon’s mission — and not necessarily requiring them to embark on a military career. He also said the Pentagon will sink millions into creating a Silicon Valley- based Defense Innovation Unit X — with the X standing for “experimental.” The first- of- itskind unit will partner with startups on cutting- edge technology.
“Threats to our security and our military’s technological superiority are proliferating and diversifying,” Carter said Thursday during a speech at Stanford University. “You may think some of this should just be left up to ( the Department of Defense), but these challenges should concern us all.”
He revealed Thursday that Russian hackers this year tapped into an unclassified part of the Pentagon through what he called “an old vulnerability in one of our legacy networks that hadn’t been patched.” Within 24 hours, the attack was thwarted. Pentagon officials declined to specify whether the attack came from state hackers or whether their aim was espionage or destruction.
Still, the attack worried Carter.
“Threats to our security and our military’s technological superiority are proliferating and diversifying.” Defense Secretary Ash Carter
The Pentagon leader conceded that after fighting two wars for more than a decade, “We lost sight in some ways of the bigger pictures about the impact and proliferation of technology around the world.”
Carter, a former lecturer at Stanford, wants to refocus his department’s $ 72 billion research and development budget in different ways — namely through increased cooperation with Silicon Valley. He visited Facebook headquarters Thursday and is scheduled to meet Friday morning with tech leaders at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz with the hope of forging — and in some cases, mending — bonds with the community.
Competing interests
The military and the federal government often have competing interests with the tech world. Silicon Valley’s often libertarian entrepreneurs don’t want government to force them to divulge information. Civil libertarians are wary of government snooping.
Cooperating with the government will be challenging for many companies, particularly after former National Security Administration contractor Edward Snowden released documents detailing federal international surveillance operations in cooperation with foreign governments and some telecommunications firms.
“D. C. has been obsessed with public- private partnerships in cybersecurity for years — but any partnership involving network surveillance of our communications raises serious privacy and civil liberties issues — especially after the Snowden revelations,” said Lee Tien, senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “Yet the word ‘ privacy’ hardly appears in Secretary Carter’s remarks” on Thursday.
Carter shrugged off the criticism.
“We’ve had tensions before and likely will again. We shouldn’t diminish that,” Carter said. “But I think that’s OK. Because being able to address tensions through our partnership is much better than not speaking to each other at all.”
He called for building on the $ 12 billion in research the Pentagon already sponsors at universities like Stanford and at tech companies. He wants more research into pattern- recognition technology, big- data analysis and rescue robots that could work in disaster areas.
The military, he said, should partner with business on a wide range of things, from autonomy to robots to 3- D printing.
Needs talent
Before it can do that, he conceded the Pentagon needs to upgrade its tech talent. The defense secretary said he hopes civilians will “give us a try,” even for a short period of time, in the interest of serving the country. He acknowledged that the difference between the military and the tech world is “a clash of cultures — and also a clash of generations.”
The government can’t compete with the private sector on paying top tech talent, he acknowledged. Instead, it can offer workers the ability to work on “exciting projects that matter.”
Part of that effort will be the Defense Innovation Unit X, along with a valley- based “sprint team” of tech experts who can jump on IT and data problems that crop up. The Pentagon did not offer further details about the size and scope of Unit X, or its projects.
“Right now the Department of Defense doesn’t have many effective ways to harness promising technologies ( startups) come up with,” Carter said. “We need to fix that.”
Carter’s proposals come after recent widespread data breaches at Target, health insurer Anthem and Sony Pictures Entertainment. Federal officials say that in recent years, more than 100 million Americans have had their personal information compromised in some way.
The threats are coming from state and nonstate cyberattackers alike — sometimes acting together, Carter said, complicating how the Pentagon responds. The low- cost and global proliferation of malware has also “made it easier for smaller malicious actors to strike in cyberspace.”
On Thursday, the Pentagon rolled out its updated cybersecurity strategy, which is more defensive in nature. Its primary responsibility is protecting military networks, Carter said. A Pentagon spokesman said the military might get involved with 2 percent of the attacks on private companies.
Carter said the military intervenes only when an attack involves a significant loss of life or property, or an entity suffers significant economic damage. He did not set specific guidelines on what those damages might entail.