CYBERWAR/INTELLIGENCE/MILITARY/OBAMA ADMIN/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “The Trump administration this week took a major step toward empowering the military to conduct more cyberattacks. President Donald Trump rescinded Presidential Policy Directive 20, an Obama-era document that required high-level discussions between many agencies before the military could conduct significant cyber operations. The change gives the military freer rein to deploy its advanced hacking tools without pushback from the State Department, the Commerce Department and the intelligence community. U.S. Cyber Command can now conduct attacks based on the administration’s strategic decisions without needing to get White House sign-off on individual digital strikes — just like other combatant commands do in the kinetic world. The move is the latest example of Trump’s desire to push decision-making authority down the chain of command…But as maligned as it was, PPD-20 also reflected the unavoidable need to weigh legal, economic and diplomatic concerns that the military alone may not sufficiently consider. It also helped balance the equities of the military and the intelligence community; U.S. spies worry about military operations because they sometimes expose its painstakingly deployed surveillance implants. ‘In military affairs, blaming the lawyers, or the process, is often easier than having good ideas,’ said R. David Edelman, who was a National Security Council director for international cyber policy during the Obama administration. “
–Tim Starks, “Ramifications of Trump revoking Obama’s cyber offense order,” Politico, August 17, 2018 10:00 am