Surge-ready Super-supra information technologies could power and would sustain national and homeland security
Mobilizing enterprises, expert in processing information, and enterprises capable of making things to defend the nation on demand is the essential and existential national security matter at hand.
Hamas surprise land, sea and air attacks on Israel, reported by embedded Palestinian journalists, revealed the porousness of the most sophisticated security technologies.
Coming, as they did, amid the Ukraine war, China menacing Taiwan, and illegal immigrants from hostile nations and regions, who cannot and are not being screened or vetted, entering the United States with industrial efficiency, it looms ominously that the United States may face multi-front military engagements demanding surge efficiencies.
Super-supra information technologies are now indispensable for national security and citizen welfare, foundational principles of national sovereignty and identity, (e.g., “it is the Right of the People… to…lay…[the] foundation [of government] on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness,” Declaration of Independence).
Super-supra information technologies could power and would sustain surge capabilities achieving United States strategic goals and tactical objectives in kinetic wars with one or more rival superpowers by integrating defense industrial base procurement and production with timely United States armed forces logistics and deployment. Super-supra information technologies comprise impregnable shields protecting supply chain data and meta data and swift, sharp, lethal swords piercing any intrusion and lancing its boil to address and solve these challenges.
They would expedite any parallel digital technology acquisitions, which may come into being.
These efficiencies and efficacies (immutable records coupled with instantaneous encryption and simultaneous, ubiquitous decryption, distributed ledgers, quantum security) animate Defense Industrial Base participation and productivity. They are particularly conducive for standards setting and certification to adhere to National Institute of Standards requirements regarding controlled unclassified information in nonfederal systems and organizations and Department of Defense Federal Acquisition regulations.
“Defense contractors must implement the recommended requirements contained in NIST SP 800-171 to demonstrate their provision of adequate security to protect the covered defense information included in their defense contracts, as required by DFARS clause 252.204-7012. If a manufacturer is part of a DoD, General Services Administration (GSA), NASA or other federal or state agencies’ supply chain, the implementation of the security requirements included in NIST SP 800-171 is a must,” NIST indicates.
Certain systems and security requirements impel exact clearances, necessarily.
Vendors must manage both NIST confidentiality, integrity, availability standards and DOD security standards and practices to be eligible to offer goods and services to the Defense Industrial Base. Otherwise, they cannot compete. The ecosystems are highly variegated and exactingly precise. There is no one-size-fits-all uniformity. Not all vendors need the same clearances. Some require more than others depending on the security sensitivity of their components and systems. NIST devised metrics that makes it possible for vendors to efficiently address DOD specifications. But it is still an exacting set of chores to navigate both NIST and DOD templates, to align each and both accurately and efficiently, to maintain convergences and to report breeches and other anomalies to sustain compliance.
Super-supra information technologies rationalize these myriad standards and practices for Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification, notably University Affiliated Research Centers (UARCs), Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs) beyond their value-adds for industry.
Regarding President Biden’s executive order, super-supra information technologies make it easier to share threat information, innovate and update federal government cybersecurity, strengthen software supply chains, create Cybersecurity Review Board standards and practices, detect vulnerabilities in real and near real time, and provide the necessary tools to build and maintain impermeable national security systems.
These capabilities are as practicable for time sensitive, geospatial information, which is so crucial in federal natural disaster management and armed conflicts. They afford mechanisms to rationalize and expedite mobility as a service, mission synchronization and geospatial empowerment to data analysis and exploitation and locating, retrieving and sharing disperse geospatial data, among other applications.
Their timeliness is clear. “U.S. policies and financial investments are not currently oriented to support a defense ecosystem built for peer conflict,” concluded National Defense Industrial Association experts in its annual Vital Signs report. “This was a troubling truth during the last 20 years of asymmetric conflict against non-state actors. In the return of great power competition, this gap is an unsustainable indictment,” contributors assessed.
Put simply: “there is a mismatch between what our national strategies aim to achieve and how our defense industrial base is postured,”[1] industry experts evaluated.
As a consequence of congressional funding and appropriations, absences of appropriate parts result in gratuitous deaths, injuries, and damage in addition to grounding aircraft. “….[T]he number-one reason aircraft are not ready is because they are short parts,” Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Robert Neller remarked according to a news report.
There is fresh scrutiny of the reliability of critical infrastructure. “The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is putting more focus on identifying critical infrastructure entities that if they fail could pose the most risk to the U.S., and it plans to establish a program office by the end of September 2023,” Defense Daily reported in April, 2023.
Military contractor procurement fraud, bid rigging and price fixing are not uncommon. So much so, the Department of Justice is launching a procurement collusion strike force.
Mobilizing a United States rich in enterprises and individuals, expert in processing information, yet at this time deficient in enterprises and individuals capable of making things to defend the nation more or less on demand; i.e., to surge, is the essential and existential national security matter at hand.
[1] For instance, the Vital Signs report observed that “during the last two major defense industrial build-ups in U.S. history – during World War II and during the Carter and Reagan Administrations – the U.S. was able to surge the existing capacity in its commercial industrial base to augment the specialized expertise of the defense industrial base (DIB). This is not currently a viable option for several reasons, including a significant decline in the workforce with relevant skills and a consolidation of the infrastructure required to surge a ramp– up of significant capacity. The atrophy of the U.S. manufacturing sector is a critical issue in an era of economic and technological great power competition. Manufacturing is a critical, foundational element of the defense industrial workforce, and the trend line for skilled manufacturing workers is rapidly going in the wrong direction. Since its peak in June 1979, the U.S. manufacturing sector lost 7.1 million jobs – 36% of the industry’s workforce – with more than 5 million manufacturing jobs since 2000 alone. As the Department itself notes, the “advanced weaponry and supporting equipment necessary to dominate in modern warfare require highly sophisticated manufacturing, yet the domestic workforce has suffered for decades.’ ”