America's Defense Department Is Building an 'Elite New Tech Sabotage Agency' (yahoo.com) 42
America's Defense Department "has spent months quietly building an elite new tech agency," reports Politico, "to help covertly disrupt and sabotage foreign technology programs considered threats to American military superiority."
Information on the Technology Support Office, or TSO as it is called internally, is nearly impossible to find on Pentagon websites, and the agency is mentioned by name only in several previously unreported Defense Department historical records and memoranda. While the specifics of its work are highly classified, POLITICO spoke with 12 current and former U.S. national security officials with varying degrees of knowledge about TSO to understand how the agency came to be, the broad contours of its mission and why its operations are shrouded in secrecy...
[The Pentagon's Defense Secretary and Deputy Defense Secretary] established TSO quickly and without attracting outside scrutiny because they largely built the agency by reorganizing two classified Pentagon intelligence programs that have conducted similar clandestine tech-sabotage efforts at a smaller scale since 2023. But by creating an agency dedicated to expanding that work, the Defense Department is signaling its intent to ramp up a range of aggressive covert activities abroad — potentially including cyberattacks, supply chain disruptions and disinformation operations. Many of the people who spoke to POLITICO argued that the aggressive new initiative is needed to help the Pentagon counter foreign adversaries they say are harnessing artificial intelligence and advanced commercial technologies, such as drones, in creative ways that could erode America's military advantage...
While TSO lacks the legal authority to conduct clandestine operations directly, it works closely with senior U.S. military and intelligence officers to develop cutting-edge tools and strategies to disrupt adversaries' access to critical defense technologies — or subvert them from afar. TSO is staffed with engineers, special operators and intelligence officers, and its work spans everything from building bespoke hacking tools to planning elaborate deception operations that trick adversaries into installing faulty components — likely designed by TSO — in key foreign weapons platforms. TSO's overarching goal is to "buy time or stop adversaries from developing technologies" that would most threaten the U.S. military in a major conflict, said a former U.S. intelligence official who worked closely with the agency... A second former Pentagon official and a former U.S. national security official said the agency has told some defense contractors it's interested in offensive hacking capabilities. The former senior Pentagon intelligence official estimated that its budget for classified contracts alone is likely north of $1.5 billion.
They are seeking contractors on "the leading edge of technology," that official said, and hope to procure "a whole host of tools wherever your imagination can go."
Pentagon staff had been exploring the need for a new agency for over a year, the article explains. Creating a new agency with its own budget and procurement powers "would empower the agency to more quickly integrate cutting-edge tech from the private sector," Pentagon staff concluded, "and think more strategically about which foreign defense technologies pose the biggest threats across U.S. military organizations."
"Several people who spoke to POLITICO support TSO's mission but worry that the secrecy surrounding its work could embolden current Pentagon leadership to carry out missions that flout international law or funnel coveted classified contracts to political allies."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.
[The Pentagon's Defense Secretary and Deputy Defense Secretary] established TSO quickly and without attracting outside scrutiny because they largely built the agency by reorganizing two classified Pentagon intelligence programs that have conducted similar clandestine tech-sabotage efforts at a smaller scale since 2023. But by creating an agency dedicated to expanding that work, the Defense Department is signaling its intent to ramp up a range of aggressive covert activities abroad — potentially including cyberattacks, supply chain disruptions and disinformation operations. Many of the people who spoke to POLITICO argued that the aggressive new initiative is needed to help the Pentagon counter foreign adversaries they say are harnessing artificial intelligence and advanced commercial technologies, such as drones, in creative ways that could erode America's military advantage...
While TSO lacks the legal authority to conduct clandestine operations directly, it works closely with senior U.S. military and intelligence officers to develop cutting-edge tools and strategies to disrupt adversaries' access to critical defense technologies — or subvert them from afar. TSO is staffed with engineers, special operators and intelligence officers, and its work spans everything from building bespoke hacking tools to planning elaborate deception operations that trick adversaries into installing faulty components — likely designed by TSO — in key foreign weapons platforms. TSO's overarching goal is to "buy time or stop adversaries from developing technologies" that would most threaten the U.S. military in a major conflict, said a former U.S. intelligence official who worked closely with the agency... A second former Pentagon official and a former U.S. national security official said the agency has told some defense contractors it's interested in offensive hacking capabilities. The former senior Pentagon intelligence official estimated that its budget for classified contracts alone is likely north of $1.5 billion.
They are seeking contractors on "the leading edge of technology," that official said, and hope to procure "a whole host of tools wherever your imagination can go."
Pentagon staff had been exploring the need for a new agency for over a year, the article explains. Creating a new agency with its own budget and procurement powers "would empower the agency to more quickly integrate cutting-edge tech from the private sector," Pentagon staff concluded, "and think more strategically about which foreign defense technologies pose the biggest threats across U.S. military organizations."
"Several people who spoke to POLITICO support TSO's mission but worry that the secrecy surrounding its work could embolden current Pentagon leadership to carry out missions that flout international law or funnel coveted classified contracts to political allies."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.
Elite Sabotage Agency? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh. Republicans.
Re:Elite Sabotage Agency? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh. Republicans.
And pretty sure "Elite" means something different after the DOGE purge ...
Re: (Score:2)
They've done other things as well... (Score:2)
Like trying to sell Alaska back to the ruzzkie piecemeal.
https://archive.ph/HvkyV [archive.ph]
So?
Spoiler alert (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think so (Score:3)
The tactics used in America for maintaining control are really simple. Control the media. Undermine education so that people do not learn critical thinking, used generic moral panics to keep people from voting in their economic interests, disrupt left wing and progressive get out the vote campaigns and actual effective political organization, and final
Re: (Score:3)
I don't disagree with the bulk of that, but this story isn't really centered on the media is it? And as for attacking "their own" infrastructure, well whose infrastructure exactly? The gaza genocide has shown us the blueprint of treatment for non-compliant populations.
Re: I don't think so (Score:1)
Apparently... (Score:5, Insightful)
Epic Face Palm Department was already taken.
The expendable allies (Score:5, Insightful)
But this department is aimed at the USA's economic allies. The countries the USA sells bombs and bullets to, but don't have a dedicated defense treaty with: Which means most of NATO.
I used the word "expendable" in the title but once upon a time, that meant "if you're not Canada"
Re: (Score:1)
Is the current Europe unrest part of this? (Score:5, Interesting)
Is the current unrest happening all over Europe part of their small scale sabotage to keep Europe behind?
"... planning elaborate deception operations that trick adversaries into installing faulty components — likely designed by TSO."
That is what the US has been alleging China is doing. So this then is a copy-paste from China's "TSO" book of tricks.
"lacks the legal authority" (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, like that matters.
aka terrorism. (Score:5, Insightful)
US Military takes NSA's job- (Score:5, Insightful)
You sound surprised (Score:2)
Note that the units already existed in the DOD but have been unified into this new group - allowing someone to get promoted to head the new unit. And for the career bureaucrat gaining status - and the perks that go with it - is what their life is all about.
However we shouldn't be too surprised by this revelation. When New York City introduced a single phone number for all its services, it began to discover that it has units in very different bits of the organisation doing exactly the same job. The disease g
Re: (Score:2)
wil add to your point- think the issue is also the scope and involvement...
they've (US) had many many clandastine, deniable operations that have slowly leaked, only rumored that the US was already doing this, but on a highly targeted and limited scope... few feared that they'd be victim to any of it because of how targeted and limited those were. (think pallet of gear is divereted, modified, re-sealed and sent to the final party) usually without the vendor/shipper knowing... the TSO did some of these, but
The work's been going on for decades (Score:1)
The work these shadowy agencies and departments do has been going on for decades.
Even without modern tech, shadowy people doing their work in back rooms of government agencies or in royal palaces are nothing new.
Re: (Score:2)
Meanwhile, back in 1799:
"It is unfortunate when men cannot, or will not, see danger at a distance; or seeing it, are restrained in the means which are necessary to avert, or keep it afar off. I question whether the evil arising from the French getting possession of Louisiana and the Floridas would be generally seen, until it is felt; and yet no problem in Euclid is more evident, or susceptible of clearer demonstration—Not less difficult is it to make them believe, that offensive operations, often time
Yeah right (Score:3)
Let’s see what DEI hire the administration puts in charge of this.
Re: (Score:3)
Sounds like job for the Blonde Crusader, able to flash her teeth and illiminate an entire stadium, prose that could knock a dead buzzard off a shit-wagon at 20 paces, construct sentences that will make Maggots orgasm where they stand. She'll be fighting for Truth, Justice, and not insignificant bribes to the Chief Bunko "artiste".
Better name (Score:3)
The more noble path is to simply make better technology but sounds like they want to knee cap them and though not named the prime target is likely China - This agency should be called the Tonya Harding Agency.
Re: Better name (Score:2)
The important thing is (Score:3)
Remember the Morris Worm? (Score:3)
Pepperidge Farm and I do.
The chances that something deployed by this group (no doubt with the "help" of "AI") ends up biting us all in the ass are approximately 99.99% .
America's Defense Department (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Until Congress changes the name, there most certainly is.
Wank.
Elite corruption? (Score:2)
I can see this being used to disrupt technologies owned by foreign nationals and/or competing with USA tech whenever the private tech in the USA seeks government help with competition.
Because that's how the corruption rolls here now.
Trump's Administration? (Score:5, Insightful)
America to start a firefight in a gasoline -filled (Score:1)
WASHINGTON - The Pentagon's new Technology Support Office will give the United States the ability to disrupt foreign technology programmes without going to war, provided the countries concerned agree that what happened to them was not war. Quietly sabotaging a foreign factory allows the enemy to quietly sabotage an American factory. Neither government then has to admit that hostilities are underway, and both populations can continue enjoying peace while waiting for replacement parts.
American technological s