Nicolas Chaillan (pictured) is the US Air Force’s first chief software officer, charged with securing US Government systems and strengthening US cyber warfare capabilities.
Or at least he was, until he resigned last month.
Chaillan resigned in September, and he didn’t mince words when he left. According to him, the US is far behind China on not only cyber security, but specifically on the use of AI to conduct both defensive and offensive cyber warfare. He posted his resignation on LinkedIn, where he listed the accomplishments and DoD have made over the last few years….and then went on to list all of the negatives. And boy, there are a lot of them.
You can read the full text on LinkedIn if you want, but the essence of the post highlights issues such as:
- Officers put in charge of cyber warfare and security, who no nothing about cyber warfare or security
- Government programs and R&D which are underfunded, and/or are too slow to move
- A seeming unwillingness to truly go head-to-head with those state actors (*cough*China*coughcough*North Korea*coughcoughcough*Russia) who are actively working to take the US down from within
Part of the issue is, and has been for a long time, that the DoD and other groups in the FedGov see cyber warfare and security as ‘nerd stuff’, and treat it as such. And they need to change that attitude, before the lights go out. Or the water supplies are poisoned. Or we can’t communicate with our deployed forces around the world. Think that won’t happen?
