The White House. Photo: US government

The White House released President Trump’s Cyber Strategy for America in mid-March with six policy pillars, including securing critical infrastructure and maintaining superiority in emerging technologies. While there may not have been any particularly major surprises in the strategy, there were one to two pillars that stood out.

One of the six pillars covered securing critical infrastructure. It is seen as a priority to harden America’s critical infrastructure and secure its supply chains, including defense critical infrastructure and adjacent vendors, private companies, networks, and services — such as the energy grid, financial and telecommunication systems, data centers, water utilities, and hospitals — securing information and operational technology supply chains. The strategy spoke of moving away from adversary vendors and products, and promoting and employing U.S. technologies. It is seen as key to deny the U.S’s adversaries’ initial access, and in the event of an incident, the key is to be able to recover quickly.

This story was first published for Space Security Sentinel, a cybersecurity newsletter from Via Satellite. Subscribe to S3 here

One of other pillars that was notable was concerning sustaining superiority in critical and emerging technologies. There were some interesting points here. The U.S. aims to build secure technologies and supply chains that protect user privacy from design to deployment, including supporting the security of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies. It will also promote the adoption of post-quantum cryptography and secure quantum computing.

This pillar also spoke about securing the AI technology stack, including data centers, and promote innovation in AI security. It talks of swiftly implementing AI-enabled cyber tools to detect, divert, and deceive threat actors. The U.S. aims to rapidly adopt and promote agentic AI in ways that securely scale network defense and disruption.

The U.S. wants to ensure that AI, particularly generative AI and agentic AI, advances innovation and global stability. It talks of securing the data, infrastructure, and models that underpin U.S. leadership in AI and the U.S. will call out and frustrate the spread of foreign AI platforms that censor, surveil, and mislead their users.

“The pillar of Sustain Superiority in Critical and Emerging Technologies stood out because they mention cryptocurrency and quantum and AI but no space,” Dr. Gregory Falco, assistant professor, Cornell University, told S3.

Lauryn Williams, deputy director and senior fellow for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says she believes that the real power of strategy will lie in the implementation details.

“In this case, where we have very little detail on how the Administration will execute on priorities, we need to see whether they will follow up with concrete specifics. On space, there is opportunity to outline cyber priorities for space in later implementation or action plans, but we don’t yet have an indication of whether that’s their intent.”

“What stands out for me is the notable offensive shift. It directs the use of “the full suite of U.S. government defensive and offensive cyber operations” and states the U.S. “will not confine our responses to the ‘cyber’ realm,’ said Megan Moloney, associate director of the Defense & Security Segment for Guidehouse Federal. “It accelerates the blurring of boundaries between domains. Cyber operations, space systems, and even SOF missions are now intertwined, creating a fused battlespace where actions in one realm ripple instantly into others. The future fight won’t be land, sea, air, cyber, or space — it will be all of them, simultaneously.”

Bob Gourley, CEO and founder of OODA, said the thing that surprised him was the shift in positioning to recognize that disrupting adversary actions is not just going to be a strictly defensive endeavor. He talked of how the administration makes it clear that the full spectrum of U.S. government offensive cyber operations can be used against adversaries.

Lisa Donnan, founder and CEO of The Donnan Group said the pillar that stood out for her is related to talent.

“Globally there are roughly 4.8 million cybersecurity jobs open — significant increase over the last several years so ‘eliminate roadblocks that prevent industry, academia, government, and the military from aligning incentives and building a highly skilled cyber workforce’ is critical. As Chairman of the Advisory Board at George Mason University College of Engineering and Computing we developed the first in world cybersecurity engineering program many years ago, collaboration between academia and government is essential,” she said.