:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/53012347/632934656.0.jpg)
This post has been updated.
Trump is expected to sign yet another executive order today. (Update: Trump won’t do this today.) This time, it’s about ensuring the national security of the executive branch, as well as the nation’s critical infrastructure, in order to protect the country from future cyber attacks, like what the CIA concluded Russia did in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election.
A draft copy of today’s executive order on cyber security obtained by the Washington Post provides a timeline for conducting a federal assessment of the security vulnerabilities in national infrastructure, as well as information systems used by the military or the federal intellegence community, like the CIA or the NSA.
The draft notes that the security vulnerability assessment will be co-chaired by Trump’s new secretary of defense, James Mattis, and the new secretary of homeland security, John Kelly; other participants in the vulnerability assessment will include Trump’s yet unnamed director of national intelligence, as well as the president’s national security adviser, Michael Flynn.
There’s nothing in the draft, however, about federal election systems or about Russia’s hacking.
Here’s what else the draft executive order outlines:
- It orders an assessment of the country’s cyber adversaries — meaning those who would want to hack the U.S. government — as well as an assessment of the capabilities and resources available to the department of defense, the DHS and the NSA. This should determine if the responsible agencies are properly organized, resourced and provided with the legal authority needed to fulfill their roles.
- The draft calls on a group co-chaired by the secretary of commerce to prepare a report on how to incentivize the private sector to adopt effective cyber security protections.
- It also calls on the secretaries of defense and homeland security to work with the department of education to asses how well American youth are being prepared in computer science, mathematics and cyber security in order to make recommendations to “best position the U.S. educational system to maintain its competitive advantage into the future.”
Right before Obama left office, the department of homeland security moved to classify national election systems, like voting machines and voter registration databases, as part of the nation’s critical infrastructure. But it is unclear if Trump’s administration will follow through with the reclassification of election systems, which are not mentioned in the draft order.
Trump did, after all, accuse the intelligence community of running a Nazi-like campaign against him to discredit his election victory after the CIA concluded the Russian government directed hackers to infiltrate servers connected with Hillary Clinton’s campaign in order to sway the election in Trump’s favor.
Trump also claimed he lost the popular vote due to the illegal casting of between three million and five million ballots — a claim that has no evidence — so it’s particularly odd that the draft cyber security order doesn’t call for further measures to be taken to secure election infrastructure.
Update: Trump’s signing of his executive order on cyber security was postponed this afternoon and no further information as to why was provided, according to a tweet from CNBC.
Read the draft executive order on cyber security, as obtained by the Washington Post, here:
The Trump administration's draft of the executive order on cybersecurity obtained by the Washington Post by April Glaser on Scribd
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
