Now it is official: The most significant breach of U.S. military computers was caused by a flash drive inserted into a U.S. military laptop on a post in the Middle East in 2008.
In an article to be published Wednesday discussing the Pentagon's cyberstrategy, Deputy Defense Secretary William J. Lynn III says malicious code placed on the drive by a foreign intelligence agency uploaded itself onto a network run by the U.S. military's Central Command.
"That code spread undetected on both classified and unclassified systems, establishing what amounted to a digital beachhead, from which data could be transferred to servers under foreign control," he says in the Foreign Affairs article.
"It was a network administrator's worst fear: a rogue program operating silently, poised to deliver operational plans into the hands of an unknown adversary."



A controversial move by the Pentagon to reclassify casualties in the Iran war is being taken...
When the ‘“department of government efficiency” was raging unchecked through the federal government in February 2025,...
Pete Hegseth’s controversial plan to screen older soldiers for testosterone deficiencies and offer them more of...





























