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)
The Air Force and Boeing agreed to a nearly $2.4 billion contract for a new lot of KC-46 aerial tankers on Nov. 21. The deal, announced by the Pentagon, is for 15 new aircraft in Lot 11 at a cost of $2.389 billion—some $159 million per tail.