Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

4. Department of Defense · Notable

Expand defensive cyber-effects operations under NSPM-13

Not started

120 4. Department of Defense

“Expand defensive cyber-effects operations authorized by President Trump's classified National Security Presidential Memorandum 13, "United States Cyber Operations Policy."”

What has happened

  1. Not started

    Nothing found, and the negative is now measured against the record the round-2 note said would carry it. NSPM-13 is classified and neither it nor any successor appears on an allowlisted host; "NSPM-13" and "National Security Presidential Memorandum 13" return zero hits in the FY2026 NDAA, the reconciliation act and the FY2026 defense appropriation, and zero in the Federal Register and the whitehouse.gov presidential actions listing in the window (cluster negative search run 2026-08-28; see the Chapter 4 cluster negative search for page 120). The round-2 note said a change would surface, if at all, in congressional testimony on `cybercom.mil` — which it recorded as HTTP 403. **The host answers, and both in-window posture statements were read in full on 2026-09-06.** General Rudd's statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee of 2026-04-28 and Lieutenant General Hartman's of April 2025 contain zero occurrences of "NSPM", "National Security Presidential Memorandum" or any cyber-operations policy authority by name; the authorities they do discuss at length are the Command's congressionally granted Service-like ones (Joint Force Trainer, Enhanced Budget Control, acquisition) and FISA §702 collection. What Rudd does record is activity in the ask's subject area, which is why this Primary is attached under §3b rule 4 as moved-nearby rather than as delivery: the Cyber National Mission Force conducted "more than two dozen" hunt-forward missions in 2025 across over 30 countries, and the Command "realigned forces" and is "increasing CMF talent, resources, and focus" for homeland defense. Those are defensive cyber operations on partner and Department networks, not the defensive cyber-*effects* operations the Quote names, and the one cyber-effects reference in either statement is offensive integration with USSOUTHCOM in Venezuela. The other adjacent in-window action is section 20009(20) of the reconciliation act, $1,000,000,000 for offensive cyber operations — again offensive, and not tied to NSPM-13 in the enacted text. This negative reaches published testimony, enacted law and the Federal Register; it cannot reach a classified memorandum, and the `not-started` stamp here means "no public record", not "nothing happened".

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

One search covered the page 120 cyber asks, #241, #242 and #243.

  • The instrument is a classified presidential memorandum. A change to it would surface, if at all, in congressional testimony on cybercom.mil or war.gov. This is close to unverifiable by construction, and the not started stamp here means “no public record”, not “nothing happened”.
  • Neither site refuses us (re-read 2026-09-06). www.cybercom.mil answers a normal browser request and, unlike war.gov, builds its news index on the server: the whole archive is eight pages of news listings, 78 articles in total, of which ten fall inside the evidence window. Two of the ten are the posture statements now carried as Evidence; the rest are exercises (Cyber Guard 25-2, Cyber Flag 25-2), a change of command, a talent-management hiring event and partner engagements. All ten were read and searched: “NSPM” and “National Security Presidential Memorandum” return zero across every one of them, and the three exercise items that do use the phrase “defensive cyber operations” use it of Cyber Guard and Cyber Flag training with allied partners, which is not the defensive cyber-effects operations the Quote names. The news feed that opens war.gov returns an empty shell on this site whatever site id is tried, so paging through the index is the way to read it.
Action
expand
Object
defensive cyber-effects operations under NSPM-13
ID
241