U.S. Cyber Command turns 15: Is it ready to stand alone?

Terry Gerton: As we sit here in 2025, Cybercom is almost 15 years old and it’s been consistently under a dual-hat command structure between Cybercom and the National Security Agency. You’ve been vocal about retaining that relationship. Can you articulate for us why you think that’s so important?

Don Bacon: Well, first of all, I have the experience. I used to oversee cyber intel training for the Air Force. So I’ve gotten to see some of this up close and personal. And the bottom line is NSA is sort of the heart of what cyber does upfront. For cyberattack or cyber defense, you need to have a good NSA capability that is able to exploit the adversary’s cyber communications or all their electronic data that they have. So you need NSA to be good at what they’re doing to help the cyber team do the cyberattacks or cyber defense, whatever that mission is. So my point is, they’re integrated. You have to have an integrated NSA cyber team to do cyber. And if you pull them apart, you put a four-star or a different commander at NSA that’s different from the one at Cyber, it’s really easy to pull these teams apart with different priorities. You could get a lot of dysfunction. And in the end you’re gonna degrade your cyber capabilities. They’re one team today and they gotta stay one team.

Terry Gerton: So can you give us an example of where that’s been a challenge, though? They’re both big organizations. There’s a lot of administration to running them. Is there any concern that you have about maybe the workload?

Don Bacon: Well, right now you have a single four-star that oversees both NSA and Cyber. Then you have three-stars or the equivalent that do the day-to-day — one at NSA, one at Cyber Command. And it works really well. They still have their own administration over there, but for Cyber to be effective, it has to have full access and quality access to the NSA collection. And we’ve always had a dual-hat capability, we’ve always had it. We’ve never had it separated. If you had it separated, I could easily see the commander of NSA saying, I’m tired of supporting Cyber at the level that we’re supporting. We’re going to focus on signals and not cyber. And also Cyber now starts getting lower-quality data that it can’t manage for cyberattacks, for example. So it works well right now. There’s no reason to break them apart.

Terry Gerton: Why do you think the issue keeps coming up then?

Don Bacon: Some intel people think that Cyber draws resources from NSA. And so this is the only good rationale I’ve heard. And I’ve heard some that are just total baloney. But the only one that carries just a little bit of water with me is that Cyber is a draw on NSA’s resources. And they think it may take NSA away from its primary mission of just collection. What these guys do, they just do collection. But without that, Cyber can’t do its job. Without NSA telling them that there’s a cyberattack right now from China or Russia, and if you go in here and penetrate here and you can degrade that cyberattack, they can’t do any of that without NSA helping them. And so this is a synergistic team from Cyber’s perspective. Without NSA, Cyber is useless.

Terry Gerton: So there were metrics in — I believe it was the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act — to measure Cybercom’s progress and readiness to stand on its own. Are you tracking those metrics today and what are they telling you?

Don Bacon: If we are, there’s been a lot of progress, but the fact is Cyber Command has not grown to a level that I think it should right now. At the unclassified level, China has a cyber command capability that’s 10 times bigger than ours. This is at the unclassified level. At the classified level, which obviously you can’t say, but it’s worse. I’ll just leave it at that. At the unclassified levels, they’re 10 times bigger than we are. So I think Cyber Command should have grown, but that’s not Cyber Command’s fault. This is Congress and DoD making this a priority to grow Cyber. But I would say that it’s been slow getting qualified people from the services. It’s also been a drawback. But there again, that’s the services not putting the emphasis on training the right kinds of cyber people that Cyber Command needs. And so we have to demand from the services that they make Cyber Command a priority. But we’ve seen improvements in the manpower and training and qualifications in the past couple of years. There’s been progress. I just think Cyber Command should be bigger and there should be a higher priority from the services.

Terry Gerton: I’m speaking with Congressman Don Bacon, who represents Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District. So sir, can you tell us a little bit more, what is DoD’s position then on whether the two organizations should remain dual-hatted or whether they should be separated?

Don Bacon: The previous secretary of defense and chairman were pretty clear it was going to be a dual hat. We’re not going to split it. And then there was this talk — well, we want to look at it again. This is the new administration. And so that’s why I’ve been vocal. Hey, you don’t have support, at least in Armed Services on the House side or the Senate side — both the Senate and the House Armed Services and all the chairman and ranking members, Republican and Democrats — agree you gotta keep the dual-hat setup. Now, I just wanted to make that statement clear to Secretary Hegseth and to the new chairman so that he knows the lay of the land here. Now, there’s some difference of opinions in the Intelligence Committee there. So I’m going to be transparent — there are some different opinions there — but there’s unanimity on the Armed Services on the House and Senate side.

So we heard there was talk that they wanted to relook at this again. Go ahead and relook at it. But this is something I’ve been looking at for 10 years. I know where I stand. And I think sometimes people want to just do something new. Like, OK, well, you get another four-star? Another four-star there, a four-star here? I have to remind folks, Secretary of Defense Hegseth is drawing down the number of four-stars and three-stars. So to think we’re going to grow another four-star out of this — I don’t think it’s likely.

Terry Gerton: Well, not only is he drawing down the three-stars and the four-stars, but he’s drawing down troop structure collectively. So back to your point — will there be enough service members to fill the manpower needs in Cybercom?

Don Bacon: Yes, there is a challenge right now that there’s a freeze. That freeze has got to come off here pretty soon in their hiring. They’ve taken people who want to volunteer out early. And I think Cyber Command fared pretty well — though they lost some people. But the freeze will hurt them in the long run. And I’ve got to remind people again — China’s cyber is 10 times bigger than our cyber. Why are we limiting the size of cyber or cutting the size of cyber when we need to have a stronger and a bigger cyber?The same people — tend to be with the Trump administration or pro-Trump — are saying, hey, we want to split these apart and have another general, at the same time the administration is cutting generals and cutting force structure. This proposal doesn’t make sense with everything else that the administration is trying to do right now.

Terry Gerton: You’ve been pretty clear that your support is bipartisan and bicameral. What are you and your colleagues thinking about in terms of action to protect this strategy?

Don Bacon: Well, in the end, they’re going to have to have our approval to get a four-star and to reorganize if they wanted to, because we fund it and we have to approve it. And we’re making it clear — at least on the Armed Services, on the Senate and the House side, both the ranking members and the chairman, at the macro level, the big committee, and at the cyber subcommittee level — unanimously disagree with undoing the dual hat. We support the dual hat because it works. And why break something that doesn’t work? Some things we gotta do — we need to strengthen cyber. We want to build a SOCOM model for Cyber Command. SOCOM isn’t its own service, but it’s its own command. And it has elements of all the services in it. We like this model for Cyber Command, but it will only work if the services are committed to supporting it 100%. And if it doesn’t work, then we’re going to have to then look at a separate service. But I think that wouldn’t be a wise path.

Don Bacon: The right way to go here is the services support Cyber Command and give them what they need manpower-wise and the training they need. And one of the things we’ve learned — they haven’t promoted enough generals that have cyber experience. This has to be something in the field of view of all the services when it comes to their personnel strategy.

Terry Gerton: Something along the lines of Goldwater-Nichols for joint experience?

Don Bacon: Well, right now we looked at it. There’s only two generals that have cyber experience before they made general. General Hock was the most cyber-experienced guy we had in the military. We groomed him to be the Cyber Command commander for about a decade. Nobody could fill his shoes. And yet this administration fired him. I criticized it. There’s been no explanation why he got fired. The nearest thing we heard was Laura Luver came in and recommended it. Though the administration says she had nothing to do with it, but yet all five names that she wanted fired were fired the next day. So I think there was obviously a connection there. But Joe Hock I know in person — I knew him as a colonel — was the best guy we could have in charge of cyber. He had cyber experience from company-grade officer all the way through to four-star general, served as the deputy, served as an Air Force component lead. Nobody had his credentials. And so we’re still paying for it. Three months later, that seat is vacant. We only have two generals that have any cyber experience before making a general. So we don’t have the experience we need at the top.

Terry Gerton: Well, sir, the 2026 defense budget is on the Hill right now. Should we be expecting any markups that are going to defend the dual-hatted nature of Cybercom or grow it?

Don Bacon: Well, right now there’s no proposal to break it apart. We just hear talk of it. And so I don’t have an amendment right now that protects the dual hat. I don’t know that that’s needed. I know that Chairman Rogers, Ranking Member Smith — they are the chairman and the ranking member — and they’re with me on this particular mission. And I know the same thing is true in the Senate. So I would have a hard time seeing a proposal — like, if it was actually proposed, I don’t see it having maybe just a very small level of support in Congress.