HMM: Microsoft President Brad Smith warns that U.S. is repeating a key Sept. 11 mistake in digital era.

Tightly controlled silos of information about cyberattacks persist among U.S. government agencies, Smith writes in a new update to his book, Tools and Weapons: The Promise and the Peril of the Digital Age, originally published two years ago.

“It’s impossible to avoid the grave conclusion that the sharing of cybersecurity threat intelligence today is even more challenged than it was for terrorist threats before 9/11,” writes Smith, with co-author Carol Ann Browne, in one of three new chapters in the paperback edition of the book, released Tuesday.

One anecdote illustrates the challenge from Microsoft’s perspective:

“Repeatedly in late 2020 we found people in federal agencies asking us about information in other parts of the government, because it was easier to get it from us than directly from other federal employees. A culture of holding information tightly is so ingrained in the government that even its contracts with us forbid us from letting one part of the government know that another part has been attacked.”

The next big war will be a war of digital systems and ours aren’t nearly hard enough.