National Security Adviser John Bolton recently said that the U.S. budget deficit, at its current level, has national security implications, Defense News reported Friday.

Speaking at a recent event hosted by the Alexander Hamilton Institute, Bolton also commented that “when your national debt gets to the level that ours is, that it constitutes an existential threat to the society.”

Bolton went on to say that he expected reductions in discretionary spending but none in mandatory expenditures.

Last month, the Treasury Department and the Office of Management and Budget announced via a joint statement that, in fiscal 2018, the country had incurred a budget deficit worth $779B, or 3.9 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.

The FY 2018 deficit, driven in part by tax cuts, is the highest in six years.

The Government Accountability Office has recommended that the Defense Department further define the roles, responsibilities and methods for communication and collaboration for groups tasked to address challenges in the oversight for the nuclear enterprise.

The GAO said in a report published Thursday that the DoD still lacks clear standards that the Nuclear Deterrent Enterprise Review Group and nuclear command, control and communications oversight bodies can follow to resolve issues in U.S. nuclear operations and policies.

The department should also update its NC3 oversight guidance to help senior DoD officials internally organize resources and manage risks.

The new recommendations come after the GAO found that the DoD and military service branches such as the U.S. Air Force and Navy still have insufficient practices for overseeing the implementation of suggestions stated in the 2014 nuclear enterprise reviews and 2015 NC3 review despite making progress in the effort.

Then Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel formed the NDERG in 2014 to address concerns in resources, personnel, organization and enterprise policies needed to protect the U.S. nuclear enterprise.

Some cybersecurity experts have expressed their views on cyber strategies issued by the White House and the Defense Department in September, National Defense reported Thursday.

Daniel Charles, CEO and co-founder of Charles Bernard Ventures, said both strategies outline key initiatives, such as efforts to increase accountability among contractors and DoD’s move to prioritize partnerships with foreign allies to address future issues.

That “is something new that has been talked about quietly but hasn’t really ever come out in the light,” Charles, also a cybersecurity fellow at think tank New America, said of international collaboration.

Gary Shiffman, CEO of software firm Giant Oak, said budgetary changes and programmatic activities should follow the release of such strategies in order to effect change.

“At the national level, these kinds of high-level documents provide the top cover for the rest of government to follow in terms of … their future year planning and budgeting,” added Shiffman, a professor at Georgetown University.
 

Vice Adm. Nancy Norton, director of the Defense Information Systems Agency, has said the Defense Department is working on employing new technologies and implementing faster processes to change its cybersecurity culture, MeriTalk reported Thursday.

Norton, who also serves as the commander of the Joint Force Headquarters-Department of Defense Information Network, noted during a Fifth Domain-hosted event that the government’s strategies in defense and cybersecurity pushes DoD to rethink its culture, priorities and decisions to respond to increasing cyber threats from adversaries.

Norton added that changes in DoD’s use of information technology availability, protection of data integrity and engagement with both allies and adversaries, among others are needed to continue using DODIN to deter threats.

“We must operate the DODIN with a warfighting mindset, to ensure our data and our ability to move it remains resilient to adversary activities, in cyberspace and the other warfighting domains,” she said.

Lastly, the DISA official addressed the need to adopt agile development processes to drop standard and lengthy acquisition practices. 

Defense Secretary James Mattis has formed a new task force that aims to protect the Pentagon’s critical technology, classified data and controlled unclassified information from expropriation and theft.

Mattis directs Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan to name a director and deputy chief to oversee the Protecting Critical Technology Task Force, according to an Oct. 24 memo obtained by Inside Cybersecurity.

Air Force Maj. Gen. Thomas Murphy will serve as PCTTF director until Shanahan names a permanent chief.

The director of the cross-functional task force will gather a team of personnel from the Defense Department and service branches and report to Shanahan and Gen. Paul Selva, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to provide recommendations and updates on progress and requirements.

Mattis will require the task force to launch 30-day and three-month sprints to address fundamental issues.

The office of the defense undersecretary for research and engineering will serve as the task force’s executive secretary.

Bloomberg reported that Mattis’ memo was drafted a week before the U.S. government sued a Chinese state-owned firm for conspiring to steal U.S.-based chip manufacturer Micron Technology’s trade secrets.
 

The cybersecurity teams of the departments of Defense and Homeland Security have started preparing to respond to cyberattacks that may arise in the upcoming U.S. elections, FCW reported Thursday.

John Felker, director of the DHS’ National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center, said at the Professional Services Council’s Vision conference that DHS is employing and training 50 personnel from the U.S. Cyber Command for cyber incident response operations in a real environment.

He added that DHS will lose some of its skilled staff if CYBERCOM forces do not participate in hands-on exercises for incident response.

The effort complies with a Defense Support of Civil Authorities request that seeks to give permission to the DoD and DHS to facilitate critical infrastructure cyberattack mitigation initiatives.

Jeanette Manfra, assistant secretary for the Office of Cybersecurity and Communications at DHS, clarified at a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace event that the department is currently only focused in preparing for potential cyberattacks during the midterm elections.

“To be very clear, there is no intelligence or anything that would suggest we would be in that situation, but we wanted to have all of the various, different bureaucratic and legal agreements pre-negotiated, settled,” she said.

Researchers at a joint institute of the National Institute of Standards and Technology and University of Colorado in Boulder have measured multiparticle interactions among groups of atoms arrayed within an atomic clock.

JILA researchers used a three-dimensioned strontium lattice clock to control several arrays of atoms and used a new imaging technique to measure the particles’ subsequent quantum states, NIST said Wednesday.

The research team created arrays made up of as few as one atom, or as many as five atoms per lattice cell within the atomic clock. The team then triggered the particle interactions using a laser.

Jun Ye, a JILA Fellow, said that the resulting observations could yield knowledge that would make it possible to improve atomic clocks.

Information from the study could also help advance quantum information processing and enhance various kinds of sensors, according to NIST.

NIST sponsored the research effort with NASA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Army Research Office, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, National Science Foundation.