- Proposed Subordinate Unified Command
- Located at Fort Meade, MD
- Directed by LTG Keith B. Alexander
Overview
The U.S. Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM) is a proposed Major Command of the United States armed forces set to be operational by October of 2009 and at full operational capacity later the following year. 1 The command will be located at Fort Meade, Maryland in the same installation as the National Security Agency. The proposed director of U.S. Cyber Command is Lieutenant General Keith B. Alexander, the current director of the National Security Agency. Mr. Alexander is also the former Director of Intelligence for CENTCOM and an attendee of the 2009 Bilderberg meeting in Athens, Greece.2 The U.S. Cyber Command will be a subordinate unified command under the U.S. Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM).
According to the Wall Street Journal, “The move comes amid rising concern in the government about attacks on U.S. networks. The command will run military cybersecurity operations and provide support to civil authorities, according to the memo reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. NSA Director Keith Alexander, a three-star general, is expected to earn a fourth star when he moves to his new job at the Cyber Command. The memo doesn’t state that directly, but says that his deputy at the new command will be of a three-star rank. It isn’t clear who will succeed him at the NSA.”3
The command’s official announcement by Defense Secretary Robert Gates took place on June 23, 2009.4 The announcement came less than six months after the former chief government official on cybersecurity resigned, protesting that the NSA has to much control over cybersecurity. Rod Beckstrom, the former Director of the National Cybersecurity Center (NCSC), said in his resignation letter:
NSA effectively controls DHS cyber efforts through detailees, technology insertions, and the proposed move of NPPD and the NCSC to a Fort Meade NSA racility. NSA currently dominates most national cyber efforts. while acknowledging the critical importance of NSA to our intelligence efforts, I believe this is a bad strategy on multiple grounds. The intelligence culture is very different than a network operations or security culture. In addition, the threats to our democratic processes are significant if all top level government network security and monitoring are handled by any one organization (either directly or indirectly). During my term as Director we have been unwilling to subjugate the NCSC underneath the NSA. Instead, we advocated a model where there is a credible civilian government cybersecurity capability which interfaces with, but is not controlled by, the NSA.5
