Unlike the negative spin put on this by Politico, it does have actual tangible usecases in encryption and locking down your attack surface from a process based attack standpoint, as well as minimizing side channel attacks.
When you're dealing with nation state level espionage, it's a valid attack surface.
This is also the underlying research that enabled the entire Confidental Computing segment (eg. Fortanix and Hashicorp Vault)
Edit:
What is confidential computing?
Basically how to process data in use without knowing the underlying data itself.
So, if I need to train a model on PII, I can encrypt that PII dataset yet still get an equally functional model.
This means requiring trusted execution on R/W+ functions, ideally via some form of a trusted VM. Sort of like eBPF's VM but even more lower stack.
Every modern smartphone user benefits from the mobile flavors of confidential computing today, protecting biometrics or mobile pay wallets with implementations like Apple's Secure Enclave or Samsung Knox (based on ARM TrustZone).
It protects from real attacks seen in the wild. For example, Volt Typhoon (state-level actor) as reported by CISA https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/cybersecurity-advisories/aa... , or the attack against CircleCI in 2023 as I wrote in https://www.anjuna.io/blog/memory-dumping-attacks-are-not-ju... .
Exactly!
That said, $3B is a ton of money for who knows exactly what. How will this effort help and who? Ideally this would fund good efforts that everyone could use to advance the general state of computing security. But in all probability, this will get buried away in DoD projects that don't help anyone.
One shout out, while looking for more information on CHIPS, I ran across this wikipedia blurb,
> And $1.5 billion funds the USA Telecommunications Act of 2020, which aims to enhance competitiveness of software and hardware supply chains of open RAN 5G networks
That's cool! That's how we should be funding advancements!
Facebook/Meta donated a huge amount of super awesome work on their 5g EvenStar platform to OpenCompute, which seems to have incredibly solid figures-of-merit, built with hyperscaler minded cut-throat cost-effectiveness. I'd love to see these kind of blistering cutting edge state of the art works get support help & advancement!
Politico is NOT right wing.
I used to be a staffer with the DNC and we'd prefer them over The Hill (the GOP version) though we both would talk with both.
> for who knows exactly what
Confidential Computing.
Basically how to process data in use without knowing the underlying data itself.
So, if I need to train a model on PII, I can encrypt that PII dataset yet still get an equally functional model.
Furthermore, it's used to minimize hardware stack attacks after Supermicro (yes it did happen).
As for confidential computing & secure enclaves, yeah, I am somewhat aware of the field. My complaint is more that this money was stealth redirected, and it seems unlikely to me to help the broader industry. This feels like a bit of a slush fund for the area for Intel. Which like, back in ARPA days was a winning ticket: find alpha geeks, give them money, & let them cook. But those geeks were also sharing & collaborating & expanding the envelope for everyone, where-as here it feels like we're probably only helping Intel or whomever else on their own efforts.
Let me tell you a secret. /s
As if the DOD doesn't have enough funds, they have to pull new taxpayers funds for this clearly wasteful program.
Some super secretive, non-collaborative, non-competitive, bureaucratic run foundry will surely be worse over the long run.
Sounds like DoD wants their own foundry but won't even reach into their existing bloated budget to do it. Shameful. Would be a bad idea even if it was from their budget but less terrible than the current situation.
