Month: March 2022

The secret US mission to bolster Ukraine’s cyber defenses ahead of Russia’s invasion

Throughout 2021, US soldiers, experts worked to thwart an expected Russian cyber attack

The secret US mission to bolster Ukraine’s cyber defenses ahead of Russia’s invasion

Enlarge (credit: gwengoat | Getty Images)

Months before the Russian invasion, a team of Americans fanned out across Ukraine looking for a very specific kind of threat.

Some were soldiers, with the US Army’s Cyber Command. Others were civilian contractors and some employees of American companies that help defend critical infrastructure from the kind of cyber attacks that Russian agencies had inflicted upon Ukraine for years.

The US had been helping Ukraine bolster its cyber defenses for years, ever since an infamous 2015 attack on its power grid left part of Kyiv without electricity for hours.

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M1 Ultra: Apples geheimes Doppel-Design

Eine verborgene Verbindung verknüpft zwei Apple-Silicon-Chips: Der M1 Ultra soll sich mit der derzeit schnellsten Desktop-Hardware anlegen. Eine Analyse von Marc Sauter (Apple Silicon, Apple)

Eine verborgene Verbindung verknüpft zwei Apple-Silicon-Chips: Der M1 Ultra soll sich mit der derzeit schnellsten Desktop-Hardware anlegen. Eine Analyse von Marc Sauter (Apple Silicon, Apple)

Congress finally delivers a budget, and NASA gets most of what it wants

Congress’s favorite rocket, of course, got extra funding, while science did not.

NASA administrator Bill Nelson will probably be pretty happy with NASA's final budget, even if it's late.

Enlarge / NASA administrator Bill Nelson will probably be pretty happy with NASA's final budget, even if it's late. (credit: NASA)

Let's face it, the US budgeting process is largely broken. The current budget year, fiscal year 2022, began back on October 1. This year is now nearly half gone, and the US Congress has yet to pass a budget for it.

To handle this situation federal agencies, including NASA, have kept their doors open with a series of "continuing resolutions" that more or less keep funding at the level of previous years. These provide stopgap funding to prevent a government shutdown.

The problem with this is, if you need to reduce funding for programs that are ending or increase funding for something like a Moon landing during the middle of this decade, you're out of luck. Due to partisan differences, this is how the budget process has worked for several years in the United States.

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