by Suzanne Smalley at Cyber Scoop
The Biden administration is reviewing whether and how to change a Trump-era policy that gave unprecedented authority to the Department of Defense and U.S. Cyber Command to authorize cyber-operations without White House approval, two sources briefed on the discussions said.
The administration has launched an “interagency review process” paving the way for revisions to the Trump-era National Security Presidential Memorandum-13 (NSPM-13), one of the sources said. The White House National Security Council is spearheading the effort, according to the sources.
NSPM-13, which became policy in 2018, allowed the delegation of “well-defined authorities to the Secretary of Defense to conduct time-sensitive military operations in cyberspace,” according to a 2020 speech given by Paul Ney, then the general counsel for the DOD.
A spokeswoman for the National Security Council declined to comment.
NSPM-13 has long been controversial, and many Washington insiders called its 2018 implementation an unusual response by the Trump administration to historically slow decision-making in the cyber realm, particularly during the Obama administration…