The Army is angry about budget "uncertainty" + Quantum Dawn 2

From Defense News. Choice quotes:

"Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno...complained that his two-year tour as head of the service has 'been nothing but budget uncertainty. No budgets, continuing resolutions, no planning, wasteful programs because we can’t predict what budgets we’re going to have as we move forward.'"

"McHugh also pointedly took issue with how the Army’s decreasing budgets have been reported in the press, complaining that some reporters portray future Army budgets as merely being a reversal to peacetime 2002 or 2003-era budgets...'This isn’t 2002. Or 2003,' he said during a late morning press conference. 'The costs we pay for things have gone up significantly. … Obviously the needs of our soldiers and our families are much more extensive' now than they were a decade ago, before tens of thousands of soldiers were wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan."

As someone who hopes to join the Army (I am planning to go before the officer board next month), and who works on an Army base (which meant I was furloughed for a week this month), I understand their frustrations: It affects me personally, and almost all of my close friends in DC.

In other news, Quantum Dawn 2, the financial industry's most high-profile cyber attack exercise, has wrapped. The consulting firm Deloitte, which coordinated the exercise with the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA), has just released the after-action report. I haven't looked at it yet, but the Business Insider article linked earlier has this choice quote:

"One key lesson from the drill was that the private sector and government authorities must share information more freely and quickly, said Ed Powers, the national managing principal of Deloitte & Touche's security and privacy practice. While firms have detailed information about individual attacks, authorities can help prevent a crisis by sharing information about broader threats when appropriate, he said."

Sharing information about threats is, of course, what the National Institute of Standards' and Technology's cyber security framework is supposed to promote. I'm getting a little bit worn out by all of these warnings that don't seem to be heeded, because right now, it looks as though Wall Street, like most sectors of the economy, is paying good money to consultants to prove again and again what is intuitive at this point. On a side note: I wonder how many Deloitte consultants worked on this contract and felt a sense of ennui: "Why are we putting all these hours into this damn report if nobody is ever going to listen to us?" Then again, maybe this is why every Deloitte consultant I know can drink me under the table, and all on their company tab.