I think we should take Deputy Secretary of Defense John Hambre at his
word (from the White House briefing):
"MR. HAMRE: ... The national security establishment -- the Department
of Defense, the intelligence community -- strongly supports this
strategy. Indeed, we created the first draft of the strategy and
presented it to our colleagues in the interagency process. We in the
Defense Department did it because I think we feel the problem more
intensively than does anyone else in the United States. We are the
largest-single entity that operates in cyberspace. No one is as large
as we are. We are just as vulnerable in cyberspace as is anybody, and
we strongly need the sorts of protections that come with strong
encryption and a key infrastructure that we're calling for in this
strategy."
I suspect his security experts realized that export controls were
ineffective in keeping crypto out of the hands of bad guys and that
the DOD was suffering because the commercial products on which it
depends lack strong security.
Arnold Reinhold
