This week the Senate passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and it contains one little noticed provision that is big deal. So big in fact that will severely impact our national security.
The NDAA contains almost $700 billion in authorizations in discretionary funding for the next year. The Trump Administration objected to many provisions in the bill, including the $4.4 billion in reduction in authorizations of overseas operations. With many of the fights over the top line numbers and Defense Department policies, a provision that may dramatically hurt the ability of the Pentagon to contract with private tech companies was overlooked.
Current law protects privately developed source codes for tech companies, yet Sections 881 through 886 of the NDAA in the Senate would flip that policy in reverse and make these codes open source. This is a holdover policy of the Obama Administration that created two government agencies to
