Imma up this from a comment on a link for Trump’s new EO on “Strengthening the Cybersecurity of Federal Networks and Critical Infrastructure” (props to Biz Mitchell for the pointer):
/// I’ve read lots and lots of this kind of stuff, but only as a hobbyist and occasional writer on tech/governance stuff way back, so take this all with a lump of salt. That said, it seems like a real dog’s breakfast. It’s really lumpy and skewed, written by amateurs (read: Jared and his staff) who asked around outside of deliberative process and are trying to put together a package that Daddy will like and will fracture opposition and garner support across the executive branch. Inter alia it (1) goes after leakers without openly saying so, (2) is an open call for crony capitalists, (3) tries to subordinate everything to depts that are loyal to Trump like DHS, and (4) panders to Sili Valley. I think there’s also some larval anti-crypto read meat for the FBI too, but it’s muddy, probably to avoid offending SV. The administrative schedules don’t make any sense, as if the person who collated it just scattered deadlines around to cover the fact that, Comey-style, they already know what they want to do — hand out crony contracts to SV pals like Thiel. Whoever wrote it read a book about “risk management” and thinks it’s a cloak of invisibility they can use to reorganize the USG. The NIST Framework (Jan 2017) it refers to is worth glancing at as a study in contrast: it makes clear just how deeply enmeshed and embodied that world is, IOW how material ‘the cyber’ is. And I think that’s how serious technocrats will read this document — as a hilariously transparent attempt by some n00bs to do some big-think end-run around them. I think the pitch to DJT was (a) crush leakers, (b) lots of contracts, and (c) Jared.
And I hate to say this because my thoughts about the Russia stuff are complicated, but basically if the RIS had dictated a strategic plan to totally pwn the US, this is it — a torrent of docs that would provide historical overviews of US weaknesses and advanced roadmaps for attacks combined with the entire USG settling on a single cloud architecture. (I can’t overstress that surreal aspect of it, which is like a lot of other Trump stuff: the most Occam-friendly explanation is simply that his clique really are witting Russian agents. I don’t think I believe that, but, like I said, it’s complicated.
(Oh, right, and the publicly traded thing? I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s Miller throwing bureaucratic white-power signs by excluding minority-owned businesses. Not joking.) ///