CIA director: U.S. information campaign ‘effective’ against Russia ahead of Ukraine invasion

Despite the U.S. government taking criticism for its approach to Russia’s information operations in recent years, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency believes current efforts to combat the Kremlin’s false flags and disinformation surrounding its invasion of Ukraine have been fruitful.

“I think the work that we’ve done — and it’s not without risk as an intelligence community — to declassify information has been very effective,” CIA chief William Burns told the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence during a hearing Tuesday.

In the run-up to the invasion, Moscow sought to perpetrate false flags and disinformation campaigns as a pretext for its attack. The U.S. government along with allies and partners quickly declassified several pieces of intelligence to expose this activity and thwart any Russian attempts to justify the Kremlin’s actions.

In recent years, as foreign information operations have become more prominent and efforts to effectively combat them have appeared difficult, the U.S. military and intelligence community (IC) have emphasized exposing them. Agencies declassified intelligence to disclose Russian troop movements and actions ahead of the assault on Ukraine. Those disclosures continued even after the invasion.

To a large degree, it’s unfamiliar territory for the intelligence community as agencies typically do not want to risk exposing how they obtain information. Protecting sources and methods is a top priority.

“I’ve sat for many years on the policymaking side of the table, and I’ve seen us lose information wars.”

— CIA Director William Burns

However, exposing adversaries’ activities can take the wind out of their sails and allow others to take defensive measures.

“I’ve sat for many years on the policymaking side of the table, and I’ve seen us lose information wars. In this case, I think by being careful about this, we have stripped away the pretext that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, in particular, often uses,” Burns said. “That’s been a real benefit, I think, to Ukrainians. It’s been a real investment in the kind of actions that our allies have taken.”

This tactic of exposing adversaries’ activities, capabilities and tools, has been adopted by the U.S. military in recent years.

Some examples include exposing Russian behavior in space; highlighting activities of the Wagner Group — a Russian security company — as acting on behalf of the Russian government in Libya; and disclosing malware samples found during U.S. Cyber Command operations.

“Disclosure is cost imposing as it removes adversary weapons from the ‘battlefield’ and forces them to expend resources to create new weapons,” Col. Brian Russell, the commander of II Marine Expeditionary Force Information Group, said. “Disclosure forces the adversary to ask: ‘How were those capabilities discovered?’ It causes them to investigate the cause of the disclosure, forcing them to spend time on something other than attacking us. If I can plant a seed of doubt [by messaging] that the disclosure might have been caused by someone working on the inside, it makes them question the system’s very nature, perhaps spending more time and resources to fix the system.”

Marine Corps creates information warfare career field

The Marine Corps has established a new occupation field for its personnel specifically for information warfare, signaling the importance the larger information space will play in future conflict.

The Corps redesignated its 17XX career field from cyberspace operations to information maneuver, it announced in a press release Tuesday.

The 17XX career field was established in 2018 as a means of better managing cyber operators. Officials equated it to special operations forces in which they are trained and don’t depart that role for the duration of their careers.

In recent years, the Corps, along with other components of the Department of Defense in one way or another, have begun to reorganize under the banner of information warfare, consolidating like capabilities to include cyber, electronic warfare, information operations, intelligence, space and others.

U.S. adversaries and competitors, such as Russia and China, are also restructuring their military forces around the concept of information, an approach that views cyber, space, electronic warfare and information operations as one discipline, not separate and siloed domains.

The Corps’ new career field includes specialties such as space, electromagnetic spectrum operations, cyber warfare, civil affairs and psychological ops. Such capabilities be employed in a conflict or in the gray zone, a term which refers to competition below the threshold of war.

“Prior to the established of the Information Maneuver OCCFLD, Marines gained valuable experience and skills at a Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF) Information Group (MIG) or at combatant commands only to go back to their previous [military occupational speciality] causing us to repeat the cycle again, never getting Marines with more than three years of experience across information related billets,” said Col. Jordan Walzer, director of the Information Maneuver Division within the office of the deputy commandant for information.

The MIGs were created in 2017 as a means of modernizing the Corps and keeping pace with adversaries who exploit the information environment via cyberattacks, propaganda and electronic warfare. They include tactical cyber operators to conduct defensive cyber ops, electronic warfare, signals intelligence and other information-related activities.

In 2017, the Corps dedicated a three-star billet to create the deputy commandant for information, which oversees all aspects of information warfare within the service.

Given how small the Corps is, dedicating a three-star billet to information, which means sacrificing another three-star position elsewhere, is a big deal.

“Two years ago … [former commandant] Gen. [Robert] Neller talked with us about the need to move into the information environment, electronic warfare, MISO [military information support operations], cyber and military deception faster. He traded — intentional, deliberately traded — a three-star billet from a command and created a three star [DC-I] … who oversees that for us,” Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger told Congress in 2020 about the importance of the position. “You wish you could go back two years and thank him for that.”

Agencies continue to struggle with data center optimization

Some agencies continue to struggle optimizing their existing data centers due to technical and budget constraints, according to a Government Accountability Office report released Tuesday.

GAO found five out of 17 agencies reviewed failed to meet the Office of Management and Budget‘s metric for reducing the number of servers and mainframes serving as virtual hosts in their data centers, as well as increasing the amount of advanced energy metering covering their floorspace.

OMB’s Data Center Optimization Initiative (DCOI) has agencies consolidate inefficient infrastructure, optimize what’s left and migrate to the cloud, with all 24 Chief Financial Officers Act agencies receiving an A grade for their performance on the most recent Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act scorecard in January. But data center closures and resulting cost savings should slow, making optimization — an area where agencies have yet to address 25 GAO recommendations — all the more important.

“Until agencies fully address all previous GAO recommendations to meet their optimization performance targets, they are unlikely to fully realize the expected benefits, including cost savings from DCOI,” reads GAO’s report.

In addition to virtualization and advanced energy metering metrics, four agencies failed to adequately use production servers in their data centers and one agency saw more data center downtime than OMB expects. A total of seven agencies were exempted from optimization by OMB.

To date, agencies have saved $6.6 billion consolidating and optimizing data centers since fiscal 2012. GAO’s report ran through August 2021 and found agencies had closed 51 data centers that fiscal year, for $335.88 million in savings, with 29 more closures planned and their cost savings goal well within reach.

But agencies expect only 83 more closures between 2022 and 2025 for $46.32 million in savings and will need to shift their focus toward unaddressed optimization metrics, according to the report.

OMB orders agencies to comply with NIST framework for secure software

Federal agencies must now comply with a National Institute of Standards and Technology framework on secure software development.

The Office of Management and Budget said Monday that “effective immediately” agencies must take action to adopt NIST’s new guidelines when procuring software.

President Biden’s May 2021 executive order on cybersecurity called for NIST to issue such guidance for agencies to more securely navigate the software supply chain, presenting “a set of practices that create the foundation for developing secure software.” The standards agency issued that guidance, along with its Secure Software Development Framework, Feb. 4, starting a 30-day window within which OMB would need to require agencies’ compliance with it.

That 30-day window expired Monday. “As such, Federal agencies must begin to adopt the SSDF and related guidance effective immediately, tailoring it to the agency’s risk profile and mission,” OMB said in a release.

Per NIST, the framework is “a set of fundamental, sound, and secure software development practices based on established secure software development practice documents” that is meant to “help software producers reduce the number of vulnerabilities in released software, reduce the potential impact of the exploitation of undetected or unaddressed vulnerabilities, and address the root causes of vulnerabilities to prevent recurrences.”

While agencies must begin the new framework and guidance, “tailoring it to the agency’s risk profile and mission,” OMB will not yet jump fully into requiring agencies to attest to vendors’ software security, it said.

“OMB understands vendor attestation of secure software development practices has significant implications for vendors and service providers supporting delivery,” OMB said. “As a result, OMB will engage with the private sector on how best to implement this requirement before directing agencies to require an attestation.”

The agency later in March will host a public workshop that it intends to be “forward looking, focusing exclusively on best practices for implementing the SSDF, and approaches for attesting to secure software development practices.” In anticipation of that, OMB and NIST are asking for industry feedback through a set of implementation questions to inform additional discussions.

Cyber Command and NSA still working to meet measures necessary to split

U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency continue to work toward measures Congress set in place necessary to separate the two co-located organizations, though the official who leads them reiterated Tuesday the power of having a single person in charge.

Rep. Trent Kelly, R-Miss., pressed for progress on how the government is working to split the so-called dual-hat arrangement of NSA and Cyber Command leadership during a hearing Tuesday of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

Gen. Paul Nakasone, who leads both organizations, told the committee that Cyber Command and NSA’s requirements continue to grow and that dependencies between the two entities, such as shared infrastructure, have decreased, adding they continue to work towards measures outlined by Congress for their separation.

Since Cyber Command was created a decade ago, it has been co-located with NSA and shared a leader. At the time, this made sense to help the command grow, relying on the personnel, expertise and infrastructure of the NSA.

Several years ago, in response to rumors a split was imminent, Congress felt such a decision was premature and Cyber Command was not ready to stand alone. As such, Congress outlined a series of metrics for the Pentagon to meet in the 2016 annual defense policy bill. Those metrics were then tweaked in the 2017 policy bill adding more restrictions necessary to split the dual hat. They included that each organization have robust command and control systems for planning, deconflicting and executing military cyber operations and national intelligence operations as well as ensuring tools and weapons used in cyber operations are sufficient for achieving required effects. It also sought to ensure that Cyber Command can acquire or develop these tools, weapons, and accesses.

In recent years, Cyber Command has gained significant, yet still maturing, acquisition authority to purchase its own capabilities. It also developed what it calls the Joint Cyber Warfighting Architecture, which guides the command’s acquisition priorities and includes major programs for infrastructure and tools separate from those of the NSA.

Nakasone said that decisions to separate the infrastructures were made before he took command, but he added they were good decisions and they continue to carry out separate infrastructures.

The dual-hat arrangement has been a hotly debated topic in the cyber and intelligence world, with proponents saying the military can benefit from the unique intelligence insights and access of NSA, leading to faster decision-making and operational outcomes. Opponents argue the roles are too powerful for one person and relying on intelligence infrastructure and tools, which are meant to stay undetected, for military activity poses risks to such espionage activity.

Despite the initial dual-hat relationship, it was always understood that it would not be permanent given the inherently different missions of each organization: foreign intelligence and warfighting.

However, officials have increasingly spoken favorably about the nature of the relationship, saying it provides a degree of speed and synergy needed to keep pace in the modern digital world.

“What is unique is that the domain of what we’re operating here in cyberspace is requiring the speed and the agility and unity of effort that the nation needs and we’re seeing that with what we’ve seen in elections, what we’ve seen with ransomware and now what we’re seeing with Ukraine and Russia,” Nakasone told the committee. “This is the advantage of being able to have one person that runs both organizations, in my opinion.”

At the conclusion of the Trump administration, officials attempted to hastily finalize the split between the two organizations. Members of Congress at the time opposed this plan, citing the aforementioned certifications had not been made.

GSA looks to issue delayed Polaris solicitations ‘soon’

The General Services Administration is “working closely” with agencies and industry to issue the first two Polaris requests for proposals “soon,” having missed the anticipated February release window, according to a spokesperson.

No reason was given for the delay, but interested vendors should monitor SAM.gov and the Small Business Governmentwide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) Community of Interest on GSA Interact for timeline updates, the spokesperson told FedScoop.

The Polaris contract replaces GSA’s $15 billion Alliant 2 Small Business Contract and will give agencies flexibility when buying improved cloud, cybersecurity and software development technologies from small businesses.

“Polaris will also drive progress on important public policy objectives, including Executive Order 13985 On Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government,” the spokesperson said. “An initial priority will be the creation of pools to accommodate set-asides for small businesses and women-owned small businesses.”

GSA posted pre-solicitation notices to SAM.gov announcing plans to issue those pool requests for proposals (RFPs) sometime in February. While that didn’t happen, proposals will be due about 30 days after the RFPs are released.

Both pools will be multiple-award, indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contracts with five-year base periods and five-year options on which agencies can place task orders. Draft Polaris RFPs included seven categories of services for which task orders could be issued: cloud services, cybersecurity, data management, information and communication technologies, IT operations and maintenance, software development, and system design.

GSA plans to post pre-solicitation notices for Polaris’ other two Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business and Historically Underutilized Business Zones pools at a later date.

Russia’s lack of electronic warfare in Ukraine puzzling to experts

Despite being considered a world leader in advanced electronic warfare capability and tactics, Russia so far has not demonstrated its perceived prowess during the nearly two-week invasion of neighboring Ukraine, according to several experts.

In previous instances and operations in Ukraine dating back to 2014, Russia has demonstrated the ability to target cell phone networks and send messages to Ukrainian soldiers and target forces based upon their electromagnetic signature. These sophisticated tactics have forced the U.S. military, particularly the Army, to alter some of its tactics and capabilities in order to stay ahead of the Russian threat, to include reducing the electronic signatures of command posts as to not be targeted by Russian forces.

But Russia has not brought to bear its full might in the electromagnetic spectrum yet.

“We have not seen what we believe [are] the full scope of their electronic warfare capabilities brought to bear. Cannot give you an assessment of why that would be. But we do know and we do have indications that in some places they have used EW to their advantage, particular in jamming, at a local level,” a senior defense official told reporters in early March, according to Breaking Defense.

Experts have been puzzled by the lack of electronic or electromagnetic spectrum warfare in the conflict so far.

“The seeming lack of EW front line systems is puzzling to those of us who tracked Russian EW” tactics and concepts, Samuel Bendett, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, said, noting that prior to the invasion, Russia had postured electronic warfare equipment at the border.

Experts offered several possible reasons why Russia’s electronic warfare capabilities either haven’t been used much or haven’t been used to great effect in the conflict so far.

One could be simply poor logistics and planning.

“One of the reasons that we’re seeing them not being used is just a complete and utter failure of logistical and command and control support of Russian forces in aggregate across the board,” said Aaron Brantly, director for the Tech4Humanity Lab at Virginia Tech, adding there have been reports of Ukrainians capturing Russian communications equipment.

Throughout the invasion, there have been widespread reports and military assessments that the Russians’ logistical lines have failed.

“They’re having a lot of coordination problems. I think that’s part of what you’re seeing is that the Russians’ coordination of the invasion has been flawed, which is part of why they get bogged down,” said Bryan Clark, senior fellow and director of the Center for Defense Concepts and Technology at the Hudson Institute.

Others posited it could be poor equipment or the equipment was not fit for purpose.

Brantly noted that the Russians might also be suffering from poor equipment and management. He explained that the Russians experienced poor battlefield communication during operations in 2008, which was supposed to be alleviated with a reorganization and military leadership changes.

However, it appears some modernized military equipment may not have made it to the field, he said, emphasizing this assessment was speculation.

Another possible explanation is poor tactics — specifically, Russians not wanting to use jammers for fear of disrupting their own battlefield communications.

Russian troops have been observed using commercial communication such as cell phones and stealing SIM cards. This likely indicates a problem with battalion-level and below communications, Brantly said, indicating the Russians are probably reliant on the local Ukrainian communication infrastructure, signaling they don’t have their own resilient or redundant communications.

While jamming can be quite effective at blocking enemy communications, if the jamming technique is too blunt, it can also interfere with friendly communications, a lesson U.S. forces learned during the Afghanistan war in trying to block signals for improvised explosive devices. Sophisticated equipment and tactics, rather, seek to act as a scalpel instead of a blunt instrument to target the exact signals of interest and jam them while not affecting their ability to talk at the same time.

During so-called gray zone operations in Ukraine in the 2014 timeframe, the Russians could get away with using lower-end tactics because the Ukrainians didn’t necessarily want to escalate. Now, in full-scale combat, the Russians have to worry about deconflicting within the spectrum.

“The Russians, for their part, now have to worry about deconfliction. They can’t just start jamming and exploiting signals as aggressively as they were because now they got to use the spectrum a lot more to manage their own operation,” Clark said. “I think they’re saying we’re going to prioritize, maintain our comms open, which means we’re going to probably reduce the amount of jamming that we tried to employ because they don’t have good electromagnetic management.”

The Russians also might have a lack of targets, which could be another explanation for the lack of electronic warfare use.

“In order to leverage a lot of the more tactical battlefield types of EW equipment, they have to have very specific targets to go after,” Brantly said, adding, “When you start mixing and matching equipment between Ukrainian and Russian and civilian and military, being able to target specific forms of equipment becomes increasingly difficult.”

If the Ukrainian Army is also fighting more like a militia and isn’t as reliant on the spectrum, that would deny the Russians adequate targets as well, Clark said.

Similarly, others have expressed that the Ukrainians have increased their capability, which appears to have befuddled the Russians.

The Ukrainians were provided radios by western partners, which have more advanced waveforms making them harder to jam if adversaries aren’t used to them.

Moreover, given the conflict has broken out from the gray zone, the Ukrainians likely brought out their best military equipment and tactics.

They’re also not solely relying on cell phone networks that were demonstrated as being easy to hack or spoof. Additionally, others have observed that training from western partners has provided the Ukrainians better tactics such as understanding when to turn on radios and when not to. Once a radio or an electronic system is turned on, it can be observed in the electromagnetic spectrum, geolocated and targeted.

U.S. observations

Experts explained there is much the U.S. military can take away from observing how Russia is employing electronic warfare capabilities and tactics in Ukraine.

The Army’s organization in charge of setting requirements for new electronic warfare systems, the Cyber Center of Excellence, referred comments regarding what it would want to learn to the Pentagon. The Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment.

For its part, the Air Force only offered “maintaining electronic warfare capabilities to enable dominance within the electromagnetic spectrum continues to be our focus in providing air and space superiority for our joint force.”

Based upon what’s been observed so far, while positive for the U.S., Brantly and others suggested not getting complacent.

“Hopefully, the U.S. military doesn’t come away saying, ‘Oh, we don’t have a threat,’ but rather they come away saying, ‘We are training better and we should continue to train better than our adversaries,’” he said.

For Clark, one of the big takeaways should be the importance of electromagnetic spectrum battle management, something the military has begun to pay much closer attention to.

He also pointed to the fact that modernized radios appear to be pretty effective, maybe more so than previously thought.

What to expect next in Ukraine

While Russia’s use of electronic warfare to date has been minimal or underwhelming, that doesn’t mean that will continue.

As the conflict shifts and Russia continues to be stymied, it may turn to different, more brutal tactics in which it will need to rely more on electronic interference.

“They’re just going to get brutal, and at the point where they’re willing to start shelling whole cities, maybe you would see electronic communications interference, EW type activity,” Klon Kitchen, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said. “You’ll definitely see, we’ll call it tactical cyber, where they’re trying to influence or interrupt Ukrainian decision making, internal comms, internal knowledge transfer, but I think to the degree that exists will be pretty low level.”

Similarly, for Brantly, he is worried that as the conflict transitions to a potential insurgency, electronic warfare could be used to target insurgencies or individuals within the population.

Clark also believes that Russia will ramp up its jamming as the conflict progresses, possibly because as Ukrainian forces collapse into urban centers or bases, coordination of jamming and friendly forces will become easier.

“They may be able to afford some jamming of their own communications because everybody is closer,” he said. “As you drive into the country, your logistics catch up with you, you’re all closer together, the operations may be going more slowly. All those things make it easier to coordinate. Maybe they can then afford to reduce their own comms and allow more jamming to occur.”

He also said he expects to see more use of drones to sense, detect and even jam enemy forces, something the Russians have done previously but that has not been very prominent thus far during operations.

IRS establishes office to improve taxpayer experience with digital tools

The IRS established a Taxpayer Experience Office to improve customer experience by establishing agency guidelines based on changing expectations and industry trends.

The new office is considering hundreds of programs and digital tools — fully transparent taxpayer accounts, expanded e-File and payment options, digital signatures, secure two-way messaging, and online accounts for businesses — it may implement.

The IRS first proposed the solutions in a January 2021 report to Congress required by the Taxpayer First Act, and the Customer Experience Executive Order issued in November only served to add weight behind its five-year priorities for TEO.

“As the IRS continues taking immediate steps this filing season, including adding more employees to address the significant challenges facing a resource-constrained IRS, it’s critical that we work going forward to equip the IRS to be a 21st century resource for Americans,” said Commissioner Chuck Rettig in the Friday announcement. “The formal establishment of this office will help unify and expand efforts across the IRS to improve service to taxpayers.”

TEO’s short-term activities include expanding customer callback and payment options and adding secure two-way messaging and services for multilingual taxpayers.

The office plans to staff up the next several months to accomplish its goals.

Recently the IRS introduced digital tools supporting Economic Impact Payments and the Advance Child Tax Credit, online chat, and online tax professional accounts.

“Whether checking the status of a tax return, meeting with a revenue agent for an audit, or receiving a tax credit to their bank account, improving service delivery and customer experience are fundamental priorities for us,” said Ken Corbin, chief taxpayer experience officer, in a statement. “We’re committed to designing and delivering services that better connect with our diverse taxpayer base.”

Intelligence community gets new CIO in Adele Merritt

Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines announced Adele Merritt as the new CIO of the intelligence community on Monday.

Merritt officially took the role, housed under the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, in late January.

Michael Waschull had been serving as acting CIO of the IC since January 2021 and will continue on in his official role as deputy CIO.

“Dr. Merritt will lead our ongoing modernization efforts to transform the IC Information Technology Enterprise, ensure the security of the IC’s Information Technology systems, and enhance IT cooperation within the IC,” Haines said in her announcement. “Dr. Merritt brings over 20 years of technical, analytic, and policy expertise in cyber and national security operations to the role. Her accomplishments span the U.S. government.”

Within that portfolio, she’ll also be responsible for the continued rollout of the IC multi-cloud offering, the Commercial Cloud Enterprise (C2E) program.

Merritt comes to the IC after serving most recently as a program manager for Dreamport, a nonprofit associated with the Maryland Innovation and Security Institute and created by U.S. Cyber Command. Prior to that, she spent time in government as principal deputy CIO for cyber at the Department of Energy and as acting senior director for intelligence programs on the National Security Council during the Obama administration.

She’ll be the first permanent CIO for the IC since Matthew Kozma stepped away from the role. Before that, John Sherman — now serving as the CIO at the Department of Defense — held the role for several years.

DOD doesn’t have what it needs for ‘software supremacy,’ Eric Schmidt says

The military conflicts of tomorrow will be driven in large part by technologies like artificial intelligence, but the Department of Defense doesn’t yet have the talent and innovative mindset to achieve the “software supremacy” needed to compete with global powers like China, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt said recently.

“Why is software so important? Because the next battles will be fought based on software supremacy. They really will be,” said Schmidt, the former chair of the Defense Innovation Board and a major advocate for the U.S. military’s adoption of modern software practices and AI. “And you understand this — you’ve heard it. But you don’t have it yet.”

Speaking at the Air Force Association’s Warfare Symposium, Schmidt offered direct, blunt criticisms about the DOD’s continued struggle to innovate and adapt to the increasingly digital nature of defense. It’s something the Defense Innovation Board grappled with repeatedly under his leadership, during which time it produced a Software Acquisition and Practices (SWAP) study for the department.

“If I look at the totality of what you’re doing, you’re doing a very good job of making things that you currently have better, over and over and over again,” he said, adding that the DOD and military services often ritualize processes and systems as “God-given” without considering innovative alternatives.

He continued: “If I’ve learned anything in my now 45 years of innovative tech companies, it’s that rules can be changed with focus, with cleverness and with some real buy-in. And I would suggest that if we look at the things that are missing in terms of technological innovation, they’re precisely the things that we need to actually change the system to account for.”

In pockets across the military, though, this is happening, Schmidt said, pointing to the Air Force’s approach in developing the B-21 Raider. And it needs to be applied to “things other than bombers,” he said. “Like let’s try to do the same thing for software” and concepts like Joint All Domain Command and Control and “actually get it in your hands, get it working, get it now.”

But there are several challenges at play across the DOD as the department looks to buy software. The primary issue, Schmidt said, “is you don’t have enough software people. And by software people, I mean people who think the way I do, you come out of a different background, and you just don’t have enough of these.”

On top of that, the military doesn’t yet understand that “software is never done,” he said. “So if you’re a person who accounts for something that has to be done,” as the military tends to think about acquiring weapons systems, “you’re always unhappy. Because software is never done. It’s a process of continuous improvement.” And what that tends to result in is “every time you try to do something in software, one of these strange scavenging groups within the administration takes your money away,” Schmidt said. “It’s insane.”

Schmidt’s points about software are largely in anticipation of the DOD’s need to more rapidly adopt AI.

“AI is a force multiplier like you’ve never seen before,” said Schmidt, who spent several years as chairman of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence. “It sees patterns that no human can see. And all interesting future military decisions will have as part of that an AI assistant.”

Still, the same cultural and resourcing challenges remain, Schmidt said, urging for more attention to this space.

“To be very blunt, you don’t have enough people. You don’t have the right contractors. And you don’t have the right strategy to fill in this,” he said. And while the DOD has fought tough battles to stand up the AI resources it currently has, like the Joint AI Center, that’s not nearly enough. “We need 20, 30, 40 such groups, more and more. And as that transformation happens, the people who work for you, the incredibly courageous people will have so much more powerful tools.”