Command and control: A fight for the future of government hacking

Following years of effort and billions of dollars’ worth of research and planning, the nation finally has a fully operational force of cyberwarriors at U.S. Cyber Command. Yet, as those troops confront adversaries around the world, there’s uncertainty across government about how to best make use of them.

While lawmakers push the Trump administration to exact revenge for years of cyberattacks on U.S. targets, a quiet but constant tug of war is raging between the intelligence community and the military over the future of government-backed hacking operations.

Congress, the White House and the nation’s spy agencies all have something at stake, but the tension is perhaps most intensely felt at the National Security Agency, which serves as a partner agency to U.S. Cyber Command. The NSA is not the only intel agency challenged by the warfare unit’s increasingly influential role: The CIA, the FBI and the Pentagon’s other intelligence agencies are also trying to shape Cyber Command’s future. Each agency understands offensive hacking in its own way, and that dissonance only intensifies the debate, according to current and former U.S. officials.

Read the full article at Cyber Scoop