Pentagon is falling behind in cybersecurity

Bloomberg

The US military’s cybersecurity capabilities aren’t advancing fast enough to stay ahead of the “onslaught of multipronged” attacks envisioned by adversaries, the Pentagon’s combat testing office is warning.
Despite some progress in fending off attacks staged by in-house “Red Teams,” the testing office said “we estimate that the rate of these improvements is not outpacing the growing capabilities of potential adversaries who continue to find new vulnerabilities and techniques to counter fixes.”
Automation and artificial
intelligence are beginning to “make profound changes to the cyber domain,” a threat that the military hasn’t yet fully grasped how to counter, Robert Behler, the Defense Department’s
director of operational test
and evaluation, said in his annual assessment of cyber threats, which was obtained by Bloomberg News.
The test office’s findings may be discussed on Tuesday during a Senate Armed Services hearing focussed on Pentagon cyber policy with Chief Information Officer Dana Deasy. The evaluation, part of the testing office’s annual report that may be released this week, comes amid other critical appraisals of the military’s ability to maintain and improves its defense against computer attacks.
In an acknowledgment of potential threat from artificial
intelligence, the Army is seeking information about “Autonomous Cyber” capabilities that would use AI and machine learning to defend its networks and protect its own intelligent systems against sophisticated cyberattacks. In other words, the Army wants to pit AI against AI in cyberspace, according to Bloomberg Government analyst Chris Cornillie.
The Government Accountability Office issued a withering assessment, saying the US military had failed to make cybersecurity for its multibillion-dollar weapons systems a major focus until recently, despite warnings.