Federal Government Information Technology

Pentagon Risks ‘Paralyzing Ourselves’ as Tech Priorities Keep Shifting

NextGov: Mac Thornberry knows what it’s like to have good technical ideas thwarted by the politics of public perception. In 2011, the Republican congressman and some colleagues came up with a list of cybersecurity recommendations at the behest of then-House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.

“Just as we were releasing our recommendations, we had the Snowden leaks. We had Wikileaks,” said Thornberry, who is departing Congress as the minority leader of the House Armed Services Committee. “Everybody decided that the government was reading your emails to Grandma” and it became “politically impossible to consider any sort of cyber-related legislation in Congress for several years.”

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