I don't know why Obama didn't take the recommendation, but as someone in the military I can tell you it's probably because the downsides outweigh the gains. Fr

I don't know why Obama didn't take the recommendation, but as someone in the military I can tell you it's probably because the downsides outweigh the gains. From the perspective of civil liberties NSA is the threat because of its extensive capabilities. But it is exactly that suite of capabilities that makes it useful for USCYBERCOM. You wouldn't expect to see USSTRATCOM without its collection of silos, bombers, and SSBNs, would you? Splitting up CYBERCOM and NSA would leave the capabilities substantially still in the hands of NSA, so they'd still need to coordinate often (but now it would be much more difficult, reducing military readiness for CYBERCOM). But it wouldn't eliminate the threat to civil liberties from NSA (since those come substantially from the NSA's capabilities). If you instead give CYBERCOM equivalent capability to NSA (at great expense, mind you), you'd simply have two large octopi that are civil liberties risks, instead of one. And only one of those would be substantially overseen by FISC and Congress, since the President would have direct military control over CYBERCOM's actions. Does this sound better? Leaving CYBERCOM dependent on NSA for its ability to conduct overseas cyberattack actually makes it easier to ensure civil liberties oversight is implemented and performed, and that NSA can't evade those oversight controls by pawning off an illegal search on their friendly neighborhood CYBERCOM with equivalent (or better) cyber capability.