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Minutes before the end of President Donald Trump’s term, a young Florida-based company reportedly took control of a large portion of the Pentagon’s internet space.
The Washington Post reported on Friday that it was given back to the Department of Defense after eight months, but questions still remain about the program.
At one point, the company owned 175 million IP addresses. This gave it more control over the internet than some of the biggest internet companies in the world, like Comcast and AT&T.
Kevin Shalvey of Insider reported in April that the company was called Global Resource Systems LLC and had its main office in Plantation, Florida. The company looked like it was started in the fall of last year. In October, paperwork was filed in Florida, and the company was incorporated in Delaware.
When the news of the transfer of the internet space came out in April, the Department of Defense told the Associated Press that it was done to “assess, evaluate, and prevent unauthorized use of DoD IP address space.”
But the AP said that officials couldn’t explain why Global Resource Systems, a company that seemed to have been around for less than six months, was chosen to take over the space.
The Post reported on Friday that the Pentagon got back 175 million IP addresses, which is 6% of the whole internet.
A Pentagon spokesperson told the news outlet that the cybersecurity program, which was started by a “swat team of nerds” from the Defense Digital Service, was over. They also confirmed that the Department of Defense Information Network was back in charge of the internet space.
Russell Goemaere, a spokesman for the Defense Department, told The Post that the Defense Digital Service made a plan to start the cybersecurity pilot and then hand over control of the project to DoD partners.
“After the DDS pilot, moving DoD Internet Protocol (IP) advertising to DoD’s traditional operations and well-developed network security processes keeps DODIN consistent. This makes it possible to actively manage the IP space and gives the Department the operational room it needs to keep and improve DODIN’s resilience “what was being said.
Goemaere said that the program started in the fall and that the date of the transfer didn’t depend on who was in charge at the time.
The Pentagon did not say what the program was for or why that company was chosen. Insider, The Post, and the AP all asked Global Resource Systems for a comment, but the company did not answer.
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