The Government Accountability Office has issued a report that divides into four categories 26 long-range threats to U.S. national security identified by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the departments of Defense, Homeland Security and State.

Those categories are dual-use technologies; weapons; events and demographic changes; and political and military advancements of adversaries, GAO said Thursday.

GAO listed the global expansion of Russia and China, military developments in North Korea and Iran, terrorism and information operations as some of the emerging threats under the adversaries’ military and political advancement category.

For the dual-use tech category, the congressional watchdog considered artificial intelligence, internet of things, quantum information system and unmanned systems as threats.

The events and demographic change category includes infectious diseases, climate change and international and international migration, while the weapons category covers hypersonics, cyber weapons, electronic warfare, missiles and weapons of mass destruction.

The report is based on GAO’s content analysis of questionnaire responses from 45 government organizations and assessment of documents and national security strategies provided by the four federal agencies.
 

The Department of Defense continues to make progress transferring the authority to process security clearances from the Office of Personnel Management to the agency. An official noted that the Pentagon is working with interagency partners to transfer the functions, personnel and resources of OPM’s National Background Investigations Bureau to the Defense Security Service, according to a statement posted Friday. 

Garry Reid, director for defense intelligence at the DoD, and Charles Phalen Jr., director of NBIB, told lawmakers the Pentagon and OPM have already implemented changes in background investigations to speed up clearance procedures. 

“Overall, these new measures have helped reduce the inventory of DoD investigations by almost 18 percent over the past four months,” Reid said. “We will build on this work in the coming months – continuing to focus on backlog reduction as we develop detailed plans for the transfer and transition,” he added. 

Phalen said NBIB has reduced the clearance backlog by 3,000 to 4,000 cases every week, with the figure falling from 725,000 in April to 605,000 to date. The DoD plans to establish a Personnel Vetting Transformation Office as part of the transition to help process security clearances. 

The Department of Veterans Affairs and the Federal Trade Commission renewed an agreement to address acts of fraud against military servicemen, veterans and their dependents on education benefits and services.

The renewed agreement presents a cooperative framework to guide investigations and actions against organizations attempting to deceive servicemen with false education advertising, FTC said Friday. The agreement lays out how the VA’s director of education service would issue referrals to the FTC for investigations. The director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection would then assess the referral and decide on what action to take.

Upon the need for investigation, a team of FTC-based investigators would evaluate referred institutions and submit preliminary findings to the VA.

NASA‘s advisory council recommends the agency review existing policies on preventing extraplanetary matter from contaminating earth and Earth-based spacecraft from contaminating foreign planets, Space News reported Friday.

Following a two-day meeting, the council advises NASA to establish a committee to conduct this review on planetary protection and formulate policies that balance exchanges between Earth and other planetary bodies. The council urges NASA to form this group of experts from industry, science and government communities. The recommendation aims to scientifically, socially and economically support the country’s space missions, the report noted.

Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for science at NASA, said he supports the formation of the recommended task force for a more balanced planetary protection policy.

The Department of Defense inspector general office has recommended that DoD enforce the use of multi-factor authentication methods to secure classified systems that store, process and transmit technical information about the country’s Ballistic Missile Defense System.

The OIG issued the recommendation after it found during an audit that department officials lack consistency in efforts to implement BMDS data security processes and controls, the office said in a Dec. 10 report.

The report called on DoD to craft and adopt a plan to mitigate known system vulnerabilities, encrypt technical data on removable media and install security cameras at facilities where personnel manage the information.

Authorized government or contractor personnel manage BMDS data that include military or space research, engineering drawings, source codes and specifications.

Disclosure of such details may increase the country’s risk to adversarial long-range missile attacks, the OIG noted.