{"id":199424,"date":"2026-03-26T13:23:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T17:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/26\/former-nsa-chiefs-worry-american-offensive-edge-in-cybersecurity-is-slipping\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T13:30:16","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T17:30:16","slug":"former-nsa-chiefs-worry-american-offensive-edge-in-cybersecurity-is-slipping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/26\/former-nsa-chiefs-worry-american-offensive-edge-in-cybersecurity-is-slipping\/","title":{"rendered":"Former NSA chiefs worry American offensive edge in cybersecurity is slipping"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former NSA chiefs worry American offensive edge in cybersecurity is slipping<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/cyberscoop.com\/former-nsa-chiefs-offensive-edge-rsac\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-03-26 13:23:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: cyberscoop.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Author: <\/a><\/p>\n

Using an unordered list, summarize the following article with between 4 and 8 key points. <\/p>\n

SAN FRANCISCO \u2014 Four former National Security Agency directors shared varying concerns about a lack of earnest and widespread response to growing threats in cyberspace during a discussion at the RSAC 2026 Conference on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Accelerating threats posed by artificial intelligence, China and cybercriminals at large are testing the country\u2019s resolve and determination to foster meaningful public-private collaboration, the former commanders of U.S. Cyber Command said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While the four-star military officials remain confident in the country\u2019s resources and people committed to defending the nation from cyberattacks, they voiced unease about challenges that could upend technological dominance and diminish a collective response to serious intrusions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we\u2019ve become numb to it,\u201d retired Gen. Paul Nakasone said. \u201cWe continue to see these different intrusions, and intrusions have gotten to a size that the scale is just incredible to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

The nation and industry aren\u2019t keeping up with adversaries amid a brain drain across the U.S. government,\u00a0 the founding director of Vanderbilt University\u2019s Institute of National Security said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve lost ground with regards to our outreach to the private sector\u201d within the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative and NSA\u2019s Cybersecurity Collaboration Center, Nakasone said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Retired U.S. Navy Admiral Mike Rogers also criticized the U.S. government for areas of inaction and decay. \u201cI see a government that\u2019s unwilling to expend political capital to really drive fundamental change in cyber, and it\u2019s a reflection of the fact that politically we are so divided, and as a society we are so divided,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re the largest economy in the world. We don\u2019t have a single federal privacy framework. We don\u2019t have a single major piece of cyber legislation,\u201d Rogers added. \u201cThat frustrates the hell out of me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Retired Gen. Keith Alexander, the first chief of U.S. Cyber Command, said the key players remain committed and are working as hard as ever to combat cyber threats. Yet, he\u2019s concerned about what the nation is doing to confront China and all the ways it could inflict harm, particularly in the realm of AI.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will be challenged in this area. We will fight in this area, and it will be both the government and you all helping to protect this country to ensure that we live through it,\u201d Alexander said.<\/p>\n

The U.S. government\u2019s collaborative efforts with private companies provides an incredible intelligence advantage, said retired Gen. Tim Haugh. But, he warned, China has replicated similar capabilities and pre-positioned itself inside critical infrastructure networks.<\/p>\n

Under his leadership, Haugh said he tried to encourage debate among policymakers to consider more offensive responses to China\u2019s malicious cyber activities, particularly actions that might be equivalent to effects that would occur in armed conflict.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Frustration and mounting concern was palpable as the former NSA and U.S. Cyber Command bosses held court on stage together for the first time this week.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re starting to accept this, in some ways, as the price of living in the digital age. And we have not yet had a level of trauma that has driven fundamental behavioral change,\u201d Rogers said. \u201cWe haven\u2019t had thousands die. I hope we never do, don\u2019t get me wrong, but it seems like we just haven\u2019t had a level of pain that\u2019s fundamentally shifted the calculus.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\tWritten by Matt Kapko
\n\t\t\tMatt Kapko is a reporter at CyberScoop. His beat includes cybercrime, ransomware, software defects and vulnerability (mis)management. The lifelong Californian started his journalism career in 2001 with previous stops at Cybersecurity Dive, CIO, SDxCentral and RCR Wireless News. Matt has a degree in journalism and history from Humboldt State University.\t\t<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Former NSA chiefs worry American offensive edge in cybersecurity is slipping https:\/\/cyberscoop.com\/former-nsa-chiefs-offensive-edge-rsac\/ Publish Date: 2026-03-26…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":199425,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cyberscoop.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2025\/02\/MattKapko.jpg?w=150&h=150&crop=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[26,20,24,27],"class_list":["post-199424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cybersecurity","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-cybersecurity","tag-vulnerability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199424"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199424"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":199426,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199424\/revisions\/199426"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}