Does the United States need a Cyber Force? Did it need a Space Force? Why does the Department of Homeland Security persist? While creating a new institution might sound prudent in practice, each represents a knee-jerk Washington D.C. response to complicated future challenges and more bureaucracy.
At the recent Black Hat cyber security conference in Las Vegas, former Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Chris Krebs implored the audience, “we have to make an agency that’s focused on empowering better digital risk management services.” He also suggested that CISA may be split off from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to create a new agency.
The Cyberspace Solarium Commission considered the need for a new cabinet-level organization and ultimately decided to support the idea of a National Cyber Director instead. There was a need for someone to be the point person for cyber security operations in the U.S. government outside of the Department of Defense (DoD). Yet, standing up a new agency would be fraught with complications, including competing mission sets, bureaucratic bloat, and the shortsighted failures in creating the last two…
