“When you go to the combatant commands, they’re, of course, worried that you’re standing up a new combatant command with separate authorities, and how will that work? A big part of our outreach was going to those combatant commands and talking about how Cybercom would support them as opposed to how Cybercom would be supported. And I think that was key,” Davis said.

“The interest in cyber was across the board,” Nakasone said. “Everyone wanted to see what these folks were doing and what are you creating.”

“So, we thought we’d have a little gathering of 30 people, and there were 90 people in this room, and NSA protocols were overwhelmed, and someone then says, ‘They just let these people in without checking their clearances,’” Nakasone said. “Well, you can imagine that was gasoline on the fire. And so, it was a very, very interesting day.”