From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov Transcript for: Protecting Critical Technologies Used in Military Weapons From Adversarial Threats Description: The Department of Defense spends billions of dollars every year developing high-tech weapons to maintain our battlefield superiority. Sometimes, we sell these weapons to our allies overseas in an effort to support U.S. national security, foreign policy, or economic interests. However, these high-tech weapons can become the targets of theft, espionage and reverse engineering. So, how does the U.S. government identify and respond to those threats? We talk with GAO’s Bill Russell to find out more. Related GAO Work: GAO-21-158, DOD Critical Technologies: Plans for Communicating, Assessing, and Overseeing Protection Efforts Should Be Completed Released: January 2021 [Intro music:] [Bill Russell:] DOD's made important progress to identify and prioritize some of the critical technologies that need to be protected. [Holly Hobbs:] Hi, and welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for news and information from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. I'm Holly Hobbs. The Department of Defense spends billions of dollars every year developing high-tech weapons to maintain our battlefield superiority. And sometimes, we sell these weapons to our allies overseas in an effort to support U.S. national security, foreign policy, or economic interests. However, these high-tech weapons can become the targets of theft, espionage, and reverse engineering. So, how does the U.S. government identify and respond to those threats? Today, we talk with GAO's Bill Russell, an expert on defense security and a director in our Contracting and National Security Acquisitions Team. Thanks for joining us Bill! [Bill Russell:] Thanks for having me, Holly. [Holly Hobbs:] So Bill, what are the threats facing high-tech weapons, and can you give us some examples of the kind of technology being targeted? [Bill Russell:] I think there's a lot of interest in maintaining the U.S. technological advantage. It’s a whole of government approach. And that involves-you know-what we do sell overseas, so think of everything from jet fighters to missile systems. Other technologies that go along with it. And then there are necessarily going to be attempts from adversaries and other bad actors to try to acquire those technologies through illicit means. Some of the things that have been targeted, as recently as 2018, include various types of aeronautics, different armaments, and space systems. And we also have to think about protection of some of the immerging technologies that are going to be important to defense systems going forward-like artificial intelligence. [Holly Hobbs:] So, how do we protect these weapons from threats like theft or espionage? [Bill Russell:] Well there's a safety net of programs across the government. You know, if you think about the State Department, Commerce Department administer various export control regimes that put restrictions on what can be sold, and different caveats on how those weapons or other technologies can be used once they are sold. Department of Treasury administers a process that reviews when a U.S. company is acquired and if there are any national security concerns that need to be mitigated there. So that’s on top of everything that the Department of Defense is doing in terms of protecting technologies from reverse engineering and other protection efforts. [Holly Hobbs:] How are DOD, Treasury, Commerce, and other agencies coordinating their oversight? [Bill Russell:] Well that coordination is critical and one of the key aspects is-one, determining what is critical in the first place. And that's something that we focused on in this report. You know, how does DOD go about identifying what’s critical technology information, what are critical programs, and then ultimately how do you protect those programs and information. And ultimately share it with some of those other stakeholders. [Holly Hobbs:] This issue has been on GAO's High Risk List since 2007. What does that mean, and what are the concerns that have kept it on our list? [Bill Russell:] Our High Risk List is really those issues that are so important they require immediate, sustained, and whole of government approach to try to mitigate risks. [Holly Hobbs] So did we identify any new concerns in this report? [Bill Russell] So, in this report we really took a look at what DOD's efforts have been to identify what technologies and programs are critical and the extent to which they have shared that information with some of the key stakeholders in the technology protection process. And what we found is that DOD has made progress. They’ve come up with a new process for identifying critical technologies and programs, and they’ve made progress to identify how they would protect those technologies. But they've fallen short in communicating that actual list of technologies and programs to both internal stakeholders within the Department of Defense, and some of those external agencies. The second part is DOD has plans to actually come up with metrics to assess how effective their protection efforts are, but they haven't yet selected those metrics and put them in place, and we think that's a key issue for them to address. And last, while the department has made progress in identifying some of those key technologies. They haven't yet found a home within the Department of Defense to maintain the progress that they've made and to fulfill some of the key actions needed going forward. [Music] [Holly Hobbs] So, it sounds like high-tech weapons are important-not only for maintaining the U.S.'s military advantage-but also as foreign policy and economic tool. And because of their importance, they also become the targets of threats by our adversaries. Bill, did we make any recommendations to help DOD protect these technologies? [Bill Russell] We did. We made 3 key recommendations. And this is really aimed at helping DOD to complete some of the tasks that it has already identified that it needs to do. First, as I mentioned, they've made a lot of good progress in identifying what the actual critical technologies are and some of the critical acquisition programs that need to be protected. They still need to make progress to fully and formally communicate that list both internally within DOD and also to other critical agencies that help protect technologies-and that includes Department of State, Department of Commerce, and Department of Treasury. Once you have that in place, you need good metrics that you're going to use to assess how effective the protection measures are. DOD has plans to do that, but they have not yet selected the metrics so they can assess and apply good oversight for the progress in the coming years. And last is DOD needs to select an organization that's going to maintain these efforts and oversee some of the future protection efforts. DOD is thinking about that now, but they haven't yet made a decision on what part of the Department of Defense will actually administer this effort going forward. And we think it's important that they do so. [Holly Hobbs] And Bill, last question-what's the bottom line of this report? [Bill Russell] The bottom line is DOD has made important progress to identify and prioritize some of the critical technologies that need to be protected. But they really need to follow through on communicating, assessing, and overseeing these efforts. [Holly Hobbs] That was Bill Russell talking about GAO's recent review of Defense Critical Technologies. Thank you for your time Bill! [Bill Russell] Thank you, Holly. [Holly Hobbs] And thank you for listening to the Watchdog Report. To hear more podcasts, subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts. And make sure you leave a rating and review to let others know about the work we're doing. For more from the congressional watchdog, the U.S. Government Accountability Office, visit us at GAO.gov.