US Defense Budget to Both Regulate and Proliferate Cyber Weapons

US Defense Budget to Both Regulate and Proliferate Cyber Weapons: The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2014 approved by Congress seeks to regulate the proliferation of cyber weapons while simultaneously providing bigger budgets for the military to develop more sophisticated cyber attack capabilities.

The intention of the Cyber Security Initiative is to both suppress international trade in cyber weapons and supporting services that “can be used for criminal, terrorist and military activities,” while providing nations with the right to use those same those tools in “legitimate self-defense.”

The defense act specifically states that “the President shall establish an interagency process to provide for the establishment of an integrated policy to control the proliferation of cyber weapons through unilateral and cooperative law enforcement activities, financial means, diplomatic engagement, and such other means as the President considers appropriate.”

At the same times, the act provides:

• $68 million to operate the central Cyber Command
• $14 million for the Air Force’s cyberspace offensive program
• $5.8 million for cyber defense
• Nearly $19 million for cyber security research
• $20 million for “cyber security advanced research”
• $169 million to build or expand facilities to house all that cyber operations at Fort Meade’s Marforcybercom HQ-Ops Building and the Cybercom Joint Operations Center

Interestingly, the much-debated term “cyber” appeared only twelve times in the 2012 defense appropriations bill, sixty-one times in 2013′s budget documents, and a whopping 127 times in the spending 2014 bill.