I find the fact that the Defense dept issues stuff like this almost more interesting than the content itself. Says a lot about what keeps them up at night
Having worked exactly in this space, this is a perfectly normal document. Architects and principal engineers aren't bothered to the point of distraction but it is definitely something that's taken seriously. And it isn't just the DoD, it's every federal agency.
You may also find the US Government Accountability Office interesting.
They do a mix of various reviews and audits of government services and projects, and publish and targeted recommendations; But to form a basis for those reviews and audits they have a position on what "good" looks like and publish that as guidance.
I used to work in a really niche engineering field. The amount of stuff I used from documents released by the US military was non-trivial. Never anything directly, but most of the time the docs were useful enough to shed deeper light and context on the trade publications and standards I was using when the history and intent behind a lot of calculations wasn't clear.
The nsa is a bit of an oddity. It has conflicting branches within it's own organization. Parts of it want to keep you (and the rest of government) secure and the other parts want backdoors into everything.
No, there are two teams. That's Joe. His job and budget is to secure everything. That's John. His job and budget are to get us access to everything. Joe and John work for the same group, but they don't really work together. Although I can see John looking at what Joe is about to publish a few days before.
Wait until you hear how wall street firms can have investments that are directly correlated to stock price and inversely correlated to stock price on the same stock!
It's totally possible for one firm to have two traders on opposite side of a trade both working for them. Just like the NSA can hire hardening experts and breaking in experts.
