Coincidences sure are funny things. Booz Allen Hamilton -- the defense contractor that's become synonymous with the idea that the U.S. is getting its ass kicked in an ongoing cyberwar -- has racked up more than $400 million worth of deals in the past six weeks to help the Defense Department fight that digital conflict. Strange how that worked out, huh?
Everyone in the Pentagon from Defense Secretary Bob Gates on down says that the military needs to cut its reliance on outside contractors. But few firms are as well-connected as Booz Allen, the one-time management consultancy that today pulls in more than $2.7 billion in government work. And few firms sound the alarm as loudly about a crisis that they're in the business of fixing. Back in February, for instance, former National Security Agency director and Booz Allen Hamilton executive vice president Mike McConnell declared that "the United States is fighting a cyber-war today, and we are losing." The White House's information security czar is one of many experts who calls such rhetoric overheated, at best. That hasn't stopped Booz Allen from pocketing hundreds of millions of dollars from Washington to wage those battles.
Booz Allen's latest awards were announced last Thursday -- nine contracts with the Air Force, totaling over $150 million. One deal gives the firm $24 million to "provide combat-ready forces to conduct secure cyber operations in and through the electromagnetic spectrum." A $19.8 million contract asks Booz Allen to "define information assurance scientific and technical analysis to be applied to future military satellite communication systems development." Earlier in the month, the company got $14 million to "provide threat monitoring, detection, characterization, and actionable information for the computer network operations in order to help advance Department of Defense Global Information Grid initiative and nationally oriented cyber security priorities."
That sounds not dissimilar to what McConnell asked for in February. "We need to develop an early-warning system to monitor cyberspace, identify intrusions and locate the source of attacks with a trail of evidence that can support diplomatic, military and legal options -- and we must be able to do this in milliseconds," he wrote.
I asked Booz Allen spokesman James Fisher what the government was really getting for all that cash. His response: "I'm sorry but I don't have any additional information on these beyond what's been issued publicly."
And what, if anything, do these contracts have to do with Mike McConnell's um, inflated, estimation of network war? "Admiral Mike McConnell has become well versed in the seriousness of the cyberthreat in public service during the last 15 years, and as Director of National Intelligence he delivered the same messages of concern about the vulnerability of our cyber infrastructure to President George W. Bush and presidential candidate Barack Obama -- well before McConnell's more recent public comments on the subject," Fisher e-mailed. "As a longstanding intelligence professional, McConnell has an awareness across the full spectrum of classification, and sees it as his duty in public service to foster the right kind of discussion so the nation's leadership can debate and mitigate the risks."
Photo: USAF
See Also:
- Cyberwar Doomsayer Lands $34 Million in Government Cyberwar Contracts
- White House Cyber Czar: 'There Is No Cyberwar'
- Cyberwar Hype Intended to Destroy the Open Internet
- Does the Pentagon Have a Brain?
- Prospective U.S. Cyber Commander Talks Terms of Digital Warfare
- U.S. Cyber Command: 404 Error, Mission Not (Yet) Found
