The Obama administration is set to appoint General Keith Alexander (pictured), the current Director of the National Security Agency, to be the new Cyber Czar.
In a major departure from the past, Alexander, who will receive his fourth general’s star, will have an initial budget of around $8 billion and will control how it is spent within NSA, the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon. In effect, this will mean that the new head of NSA will report to him instead of to the Secretary of Defense on a huge area of business.
In the past five years, President Bush has had five Cyber Czars, all of whom failed miserably to get to grips with the cyber security challenge, in part because they had no money to dispense. Absent that carrot, no amount of sticks will make the slightest difference in the Washington bureaucracy.
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