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Pentagon to fast-track cyberweapons acquisition: WashPo

On April 9th, 2012, Ellen Nakashima reported for the Washington Post on cyberweapons acquisitions.  According to the article, the Pentagon wants to have a cyberweapon acquisition process that can create specific cyberweapons for specific targets in a matter of days.  That acquisition process would have two tracks: a rapid cyberweapon development track and deliberate cyberweapon development track.  Rapid cyberweapon development "will take advantage of existing . . . hardware and software" to pump out new cyberweapons in days.  The deliberate process will create cyberweapons that "carr[y] greater risks" and should take roughly nine months.

The WashPo quoted Herbert S. Lin, National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, on the benefits of the new acquisition process:

Cyberweapons are fundamentally different [than conventional weapons] . . . You can make a general-purpose fighter plane and it will function more or less the same in the Pacific as in the Atlantic.  The same is not true for going after a Russian cyber-target versus a Chinese target.

You can find the WashPo source article here.

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