Think the $20 million hacking competition announced by the Biden administration earlier this month is a big-money spend by the government to recruit the best and brightest hackers and cyber security minds in the world? Think again. The DARPA-funded initiative only scratches the surface of hackers’ involvement in the United States’ cyber security and surveillance machine, according to journalist Glenn Greenwald.
The journalist famous for breaking the Edward Snowden story in 2013 – which demonstrated how government institutions such as the NSA secretly surveilled American citizens without their knowledge – spoke on the Patrick Bet-David podcast last week about the current state of the US government’s cyber security and surveillance capabilities and activities and about what the bottom line in the “secret budget” for recruiting hackers is.
“There has been an amazing recruitment effort, especially in the wake of Snowden,” Greenwald says, “to recruit the top scientific hacking talent into the government.”
According to Greenwald, the government has a nearly unlimited budget to pay hackers and cyber security experts.
“A lot of the best hackers, analysts and experts have been hired by the US government,” Greenwald continues. “And it’s all funded by the taxpayer… According to the last secret budget I saw, we spend $75 billion – which is probably like $110 to $120 billion now – on this sector.”
In the press release for the $20 million DARPA-funded competition, the Biden administration says: “(This) will drive the creation of new technologies to rapidly improve the security of computer code, one of cybersecurity’s most pressing challenges.”
As the US continues to ramp up spending on cyber security, AI and tech initiatives, the market for MSPs and critical services will only continue to grow. The years ahead will continue to present “Blue Ocean” (aka big money) opportunities across sectors. As previously reported in MSP Success, consulting firm McKinsey predicts cyber security total market value will soon eclipse $2 trillion. That’s a LOT of potential opportunities for MSPs.
“Eighty to ninety percent of business purchases are made to avoid loss,” says TMT founder Robin Robins when discussing the Compliance Toolkit. “People are more wired for risk avoidance and loss avoidance than they are for gain.
“Your job as a marketing and sales person is not to create alchemy,” Robins adds. “Go sift and sort and find the diamonds in the rough. You want to find the people who are spending money and get them to spend with you rather than someone else.”
A $75 billion budget is only the beginning.
