Not everything is changing in the new Trump administration—but some projects left in place are seeing adjustments.
One such project is the Pentagon’s “Cyber Command 2.0” overhaul. Put in place by the Biden administration under former Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in December, the revisionary project focuses on four points of change—streamlining responsibilities, improving talent development, training and education support, and a cyber warfare innovation center.
Restructuring the command requires a review on how best to implement the changes. Austin gave the Pentagon 180 days to finish the review.
Speed racer. Former Fox News presenter and recently appointed US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, after being briefed about the initiative on Feb. 5, told Cyber Command (Cybercom) to come back in 45 days with the findings, severely cutting the response time. Hegseth’s shortened timeline decree means the review will be due by Mar. 22. Once complete and approved, the Pentagon will begin implementing the new standards.
While an accelerated timeline is a shift, the overall cyber landscape remains positive for the Pentagon, with Hegseth exempting Cyber Command from $50 billion in defense spending cuts that would be reappropriated to the White House’s preferred priorities.
The federal government has seen its fair share of chaos in the last month, with Elon Musk’s Department of Governmental Efficiency slashing budgets and staff. As Rex Booth, SailPoint CISO, told IT Brew earlier in February, the upheaval could leave the US open to threats.
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“There’s no doubt in my mind that adversarial nation states are looking for ways in which to take advantage of the perceived or actual instabilities in the way in which we control access to sensitive information systems,” Booth said.
Streamlining. In his Jan. 6 response to policy questions from the Senate Armed Services Committee in advance of confirmation hearings, Hegseth expressed his desire to consolidate and streamline the cyber defense forces across the department.
“While cyberspace operations are the responsibility of a relatively small number of cyber professionals, cyber risk is a challenge that should be shared across the defense enterprise,” Hegseth wrote.
Gen. Timothy Haugh, Cybercom chief, shares the secretary’s desire to get everyone on the same page. He told Defense Scoop that he sees “an opportunity for us as a department to be able to ensure that we’re being really coherent in how we develop and lead that force.”
“This is one of the reasons that Congress tasked us to go build the future force generation model for Cyber Command, which is, what are the ingredients that are going to allow us to reach mastery of our force?” Haugh said.