Controlled Unclassified Information

Back in the day, the US government had a program called SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) that funded small businesses to do research and development. I recall sitting in our dorm in college, reading through a giant printed catalog of SBIR grants just to amuse ourselves by brainstorming solutions over bad pizza.. So, I got curious the other day: what does the SBIR landscape look like now? I can tell you right now: do not even try to read an SBIR solicitation on your local machine. You are opening yourself up to a world of absolute, unmitigated pain. You might think, what harm could there be in simply opening a file? Well, in the modern compliance panopticon, any manipulation of digital information that comes from the govenment has the potential to spawn CUI (Controlled Unclassified Information). CUI is basically a digital pathogen; once you download that file, *anything whatsover* derived from it, including notes and metadata, instantly becomes CUI by association. The moment…