Lawfare Daily: Grading the Trump Administration's Cybersecurity Efforts, with Rear Admiral (Ret.) Mark Montgomery
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 1 December 2025
⏱️ 36 minutes
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Summary
Rear Admiral (Ret.) Mark Montgomery is the Senior Director of the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He spent 32 years in the Navy as a nuclear-trained surface warfare officer, retiring as a rear admiral in 2017. After leaving the Navy, Admiral Montgomery worked as policy director for the Senate Armed Services Committee during Senator John McCain's chairmanship, and as Executive Director of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, a congressionally created commission directed to “develop a consensus on a strategic approach to defending the United States in cyberspace against cyber attacks of significant consequences.”
In this episode, Lawfare Book Review Editor Jonathan Cedarbaum sits down with Admiral Montgomery to discuss the fifth annual implementation report prepared by the Cyberspace Solarium Commission 2.0, which assesses how the federal government has done over the last year in implementing the Solarium Commission's recommendations for strengthening the United States' cybersecurity posture. The report, whose lead author was Admiral Montgomery, concludes that "[o]ur nation’s ability to protect itself and its allies from cyber threats is stalling and, in several areas, slipping."
They discuss the scope and impacts of the Trump administration funding and staffing cuts in leading agencies responsible for cybersecurity; the weakening of public-private collaboration, including the closing of the Critical Infrastructure Partnership Advisory Council; and the weakening of recruitment efforts to build the cyber workforce the country needs.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Nearly every news alert in 2025 has raised questions, some old, some new, about the law and national security. |
| 0:08.0 | And now you get the chance to ask Lawfare directly. It's time for our annual Ask Us Anything Mailbag podcast, an opportunity for you to ask Lawfare this year's most burning questions. |
| 0:19.0 | You can submit your question by leaving a voicemail at |
| 0:22.1 | 202-643-8474 or by sending a recording of yourself asking your question to Ask Us Anything Lawfare |
| 0:32.8 | at gmail.com by December 16th. |
| 0:38.4 | Particularly in the workforce or needs a workforce to execute it, that's where you saw the |
| 0:43.8 | degradation of slippage, where we changed our assessment of where the government |
| 0:48.0 | stood. |
| 0:49.3 | It's the Lawfare podcast. |
| 0:51.7 | I'm Jonathan Cedarbaum, Lawfair's Bookerview Editor, with retired Rear Admiral Mark |
| 0:57.9 | Montgomery, who is Senior Director of the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. |
| 1:07.1 | From my point of view, these things are small but important, and they add up to a very important element of U.S. foreign policy that is kind of in tatters right now. |
| 1:17.4 | No one nominated to lead anything. People leaving left and right because you don't know what the final organization is going to be like. |
| 1:24.9 | You know, this was an absolute own goal. |
| 1:29.0 | Today, we're talking about the 2025 annual report on implementation produced by the |
| 1:36.0 | Cyberspace Silarium Commission 2.0. |
| 1:39.1 | Before we get into your recent annual implementation report, I wondered if you could just remind our listeners |
| 1:46.1 | about the work of the Salarium Commission in its original form and some of its overarching |
| 1:53.9 | or key conclusions. |
| 1:56.2 | Yeah, thanks. So the Salarian Commission was set up in 2018 in the National Defense Authorization Act that then |
| 2:03.4 | allowed us to start the commission in March of 2019. There was going to be a three-year commission |
| 2:08.9 | about $4 million. I'll say right up front, we finished on time and under budget. You don't |
... |
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