I would like to thank the Fairfax County Chamber of Commerce, the Professional Services Council, and Washington Technology for recently naming me to the Greater Washington Government Contractor Hall of Fame. This is a great honor, and I very much appreciate being selected.

My daughter Mary Ann Beyster attended the awards ceremony on November 1, 2011, and accepted the award on my behalf. I regret that I wasn’t able to make the trip myself, but my recent visit to the University of Michigan was about all the excitement I could take for a while.

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I recently read a disturbing article in the Washington Post about a report released by the Office of the National Counterintelligence. According to the report, the U.S. is losing billions of dollars worth of intellectual property, trade secrets, and technology to China and Russia each year.

This theft presents our nation with an ongoing threat both to our national security and to our economy. The Office of the National Counterintelligence believes that the threat is clear, and indisputable. According to the report, “Chinese actors are the world’s most active and persistent perpetrators of economic espionage.”

It is hard for me to believe that we cannot do anything to stem this threat. If anyone has any suggestions on what we can do to defend our national interests in cyberspace, I would like to hear them.

– Bob