The White House announced last week that Howard Schmidt, President Obama’s cybersecurity coordinator, met last month in Washington, D.C., with his Russian counterpart Nikolay Klimashin for in-depth discussions on strengthening bilateral relations in the area of cyberspace security. “[O]ur goal was to continue building mutual confidence in our two governments’ activities in cyberspace to reduce the risk of misperception and inadvertent crisis,” wrote Schmidt in a White House blog entry. Schmidt said this diplomatic outreach with the Russians is consistent with the White House’s cyberspace strategy released in May. He said, by year’s end, the two sides want to have three initiatives in place: regular information exchanges on technical threats like botnets; a better understanding each other’s military views on operating in cyberspace; and around-the-clock systems to communicate about cybersecurity issues that leverage existing bilateral crisis-prevention communications links. (Schmidt-Klimashin joint statement)
Due to the prolonged delay in deliveries of the Tech Refresh 3 version of the F-35 fighter, Denmark is pulling six of its TR-2-configured F-35 jets stationed in the U.S. back to home base in order to consolidate aircraft and get better training for its pilots and maintainers, the Danish…