Electronic surveillance


What is needed to split NSA and Cyber Command?

With the impending split of U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency, the focus will shift from personnel and staffing to infrastructure and tools. Undercurrent law, one of the requirements set forth in the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act calls for – among other things prior to a split – the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the secretary of defense to certify that the capabilities of Cyber Command and the NSA won’t be degraded if they split off. 

Currently, CYBERCOM, which was stood up in 2009, is co-located with the NSA — a decision that made sense at the time of CYBERCOM’s inception to rely on the infrastructure and rich cyber talent resident within the NSA. 

However, the two perform different roles: The NSA is an intelligence-gathering organization focused on national-level security as well as a combatant command-support organization; CYBERCOM performs war-fighting tasks.