KnectIQ CEO Ken Morris wrote the piece below as a response to an article published in Defense One on June 28, 2025, titled “Secure comms with allies is hard. The Pentagon wants to change that.“
Secure Comms with Allies: What the Pentagon Needs Now and What it Shouldn’t Wait For
The ability to communicate securely across coalition lines, at speed and scale, is now a mission requirement, not a luxury. From the Indo-Pacific to NATO’s eastern flank, our national security depends on trusted data exchange with sovereign partners in real time.
The good news: the Pentagon has a vision to get there. The challenge: that vision is still a significant distance from material implementation.
The Long-Term Vision Is Right. The Operational Need Is Immediate.
The Department’s Mission Network-as-a-Service (MNaaS) is an important strategic step toward unifying fragmented systems under a scalable, cloud-based, zero trust architecture. But this kind of transformation takes time, technical, contractual, and geopolitical.
Meanwhile, adversaries exploit every gap in trust, access, and latency. And today’s mission can’t wait for tomorrow’s infrastructure.
Available Now – A Modern Transformative and Enhancing Option
SelectiveTRUST®, a zero trust based capability, developed by KnectIQ, offers a sovereign, commercially available solution that meets today’s operational secure communication needs while enhancing the future state. SelectiveTRUST provides:
- Device-level trust without persistent keys or centralized storage
- No dependency on PKI or shared cryptographic infrastructure
- Immediate interoperability across nations, domains, and classification levels
- Quantum-resistant protections ready from day one
- Sovereign-by-design: each nation retains complete control of its data and cryptographic boundaries
This is a software solution that can be deployed now without waiting for a hardware refresh, network rebuild, or enterprise-wide integration.
Commercial Software at Mission Speed
The Department has made it clear: commercially available software should be deployed at speed and scale wherever it can deliver operational impact. SelectiveTRUST is just that—a deployable overlay that strengthens existing systems and accelerates secure collaboration.
It does not require replacing MNaaS. It enhances it.
It doesn’t force partners to surrender control. It enables cooperation without compromise.
A Clear Path Forward
- Deploy SelectiveTRUST now for priority use cases: special operations, humanitarian coordination, coalition logistics, and rapid partner engagement.
- Continue building MNaaS as the long-term command-and-control backbone.
- Integrate sovereign trust overlays like SelectiveTRUST to enable agile, secure data-sharing while MNaaS infrastructure matures.
This is how the Pentagon can meet urgent secure communication and data sharing needs while staying aligned with its modernization strategy.
The Mission Can’t Wait
Secure coalition communications are central to national defense. The tools exist today to deliver this capability without delay and without compromising national or allied sovereignty.
This is the kind of forward-looking, practical adoption the mission demands.
Neither the mission nor the Pentagon need to wait. SWIFT action today is what matters.
See the original article posted by Ken Morris on LinkedIn.