Lawfare Daily: How Our Growing Software Dependence Threatens National Security

Lawfare Book Review Editor Jonathan Cedarbaum sits down with the Soufan Center’s Executive Director Colin Clarke and Senior Research Fellow Chad Serena, to discuss the Center’s recent report, “Closing the Gap: Software Understanding and U.S. National Security.” They explore what the authors call the “software understanding gap”—the growing disconnect between the rapid pace of software development and our ability to fully understand, assess, and secure increasingly complex systems. They discuss how adversarial state actors and criminal groups can exploit this gap, the ways in which it poses a national security challenge, and what government agencies, private industry, and software developers can do to better mitigate risks and strengthen U.S. cybersecurity.

Additional reading:

• Douglas Ghormley, Tod Amon, Christopher Harrison, and Tim Loffredo, “The National Need for Software Understanding: The Present Crisis, Technical Capability Gaps, and Path Forward,” Sandia National Laboratories (March 2025)

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