Sequestration would force the Defense Department and other federal agencies to lay off workers long before the defense industry had to, said a report released today by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
Defense contractors wouldn’t feel the full effect of automatic budget cuts for three or four years as weapons programs are facing only a 3.5 percent reduction next year, according to an independent research group.
In the past few months a number of high profile developments have pushed the issue of cyber security into the spotlight. Revelations regarding the Stuxnet program, a cyber weapon that targeted Iranian uranium enrichment centrifuges, emerged in early June, along with reports regarding Flame, an alleged effort to extract data from the computers of Iranian nuclear scientists. The following month, President Obama penned an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal describing critical U.S. infrastructure as vulnerable to cyber attack. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta went further in warning that “The next Pearl Harbor we confront could very well be a cyber attack that cripples our power systems, our [electric] grid, our security systems, our financial systems, our governmental systems.”
For months, lawmakers and military leaders have issued dire predictions about what might happen if Congress doesn’t stop the $500 billion in automatic defense spending cuts set to start in January/…/
A tentative deal for a six-month continuing resolution would, if approved, avert the threat of a government shutdown until March — but it also would set back plans for new and expanded programs/…/
CSBA Senior Fellow Todd Harrison participates in an expert roundtable on sequestration, the 2013 defense budget and cybersecurity.
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