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Pentagon launches cyber apprenticeship program

Edward Graham — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 18:53:00 -0400

The Department of Defense is launching a Cyber Registered Apprenticeship Program to accelerate its onboarding of skilled cybersecurity professionals, the agency said, part of a Trump administration push to bring non-traditional talent into the federal workforce.

The initiative is being led through DOD’s Office of the Chief Information Officer and was first announced during a Labor Department signing ceremony on Monday for National Apprenticeship Week.

The 12-month program is slated to launch as a pilot this summer, with the Pentagon calling it “a significant first step in energizing the Department’s commitment to workforce innovation and rapidly delivering leading-edge expertise to the warfighter.”

The Pentagon said the apprenticeship is driven by a governmentwide focus on prioritizing skills-based hiring for technical- and cybersecurity-focused roles. The Office of Personnel Management released new standards for technology positions earlier this month that no longer include degree requirements as part of an effort to emphasize experience in the hiring process.

The new program, DOD said, will place an emphasis on preparing participants for top cybersecurity roles, including as cyber defense analysts, infrastructure support specialists and incident responders. Participants will also receive training certifications and continued education opportunities, as well as the chance to receive full-time cyber roles within DOD upon completion of the apprenticeship.

“This program is a critical investment in our people and the bedrock of our national security,” Marci McCarthy, the DOD CIO’s director of external engagements, said in a statement. “The Cyber RAP provides a direct pathway for dedicated individuals to join our mission, securing the vital networks, infrastructure, and weapon systems that our Warfighters depend on every single day.”

The effort to train and onboard new cyber talent comes as the Pentagon and other federal agencies look to fill a host of digital defense-focused roles, with the U.S. as a whole struggling to address more than 500,000 vacancies in cybersecurity positions across both the public and private sectors.

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Federal drawdown of election support ‘destroyed’ ongoing relationships, experts say

David DiMolfetta — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 18:06:00 -0400

Efforts under President Donald Trump to scale back the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and its election security resources have strained relationships with state and local officials, raising concerns that jurisdictions may be far less prepared to counter threats to the November midterms, officials in Michigan and Georgia said Tuesday.

The warnings, delivered by state officials and other experts at a hearing hosted by Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee, come as the Trump administration has sought to expand the federal role in election administration through executive orders and the growing involvement of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard in election-related matters, including an FBI raid on a Fulton County, Georgia elections office.

The drawdown of CISA election resources over the last year has “been very damaging,” said Aghogho Edevbie, Michigan’s deputy secretary of state.

“We had CISA employees and officials work alongside us,” he added, describing that CISA representatives would deploy to places where voting occurred and votes were being counted to conduct security assessments. “All of those relationships have been destroyed. We’ve had instances where our local election officials have been corresponding with members of CISA, and then, all of a sudden, there’s no response, because presumably that person has been fired.”

Earlier this month, the Justice Department demanded that Michigan’s Wayne County turn over all ballots from the November 2024 election. Edevbie, in the hearing, called the inquiry “unlawful,” aligning with other state officials.

Last year, CISA put much of its election disinformation staff on leave. The White House’s fiscal year 2027 budget proposal eliminates CISA’s election security program entirely, and would cut funding for information-sharing support to state and local officials and remove dedicated election security advisors across the nation.

Election cybersecurity threats can include ransomware attacks, phishing campaigns and efforts by foreign adversaries to probe election systems and conduct influence operations.

Larry Norden, the VP of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Elections and Government program, noted that, in a recent survey, 75% of observed state and local election officials said their governments had not provided sufficient resources to fill the gap that was created by CISA cuts.

“And perhaps most damaging of all, many election officials that we talked to no longer trust the federal partners that they used to rely on to help them coordinate around election security,” Norden said.

Mo Ivory, former county commissioner for Fulton County who is now running for commission chair, criticized the FBI raid that Gabbard attended.

It “raised immediate questions about chain of custody, voter privacy, access to public records, preservation of official materials and whether Fulton County could continue meeting its legal obligations while federal authorities had taken possession of our documents,” she said.

“It also sent a message to the public servants who administer elections: even after doing your job, even after following the law, even after audits and reviews, you can still be pulled back into a political fight over an election that ended six years ago,” she added.

In 2020, Trump lost in Georgia by roughly 11,000 votes, prompting him and supporters to press state officials to uncover supposed missing votes to change the outcome. A later hand-count of the ballots upheld the original results.

Nextgov/FCW has asked CISA for comment.

The tensions between the Trump administration and CISA date back to the 2020 election, when its then-director Chris Krebs publicly affirmed the security of the vote and was subsequently dismissed by Trump. In his second term, Trump has continued to target Krebs, including ordering a federal investigation last year into his government tenure.

Jessica Marsden, a deputy director and counsel at Protect Democracy, said such efforts are meant to erode sources of high quality information and that attacks on critics of the administration “look like an effort to silence those who will tell the truth.”

On Tuesday, Gen. Josh Rudd, the director of U.S. Cyber Command and the NSA, told senators it is “reasonable to expect” foreign adversaries would seek to interfere in the upcoming midterm elections. Rudd said he was unsure whether the Election Security Group, a joint task force central to countering foreign election sabotage since 2018, has been reconvened.

“I don’t know that an ESG has been established yet, but we are prepared to as required,” he said. “I think it is really important to set up an ESG and I will follow up with you on whether that is happening.”

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Treasury missed security controls in giving DOGE system access, GAO finds

Natalie Alms — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 16:54:00 -0400

Congress’ watchdog reported on Tuesday that the Treasury Department gave a Department of Government Efficiency associate access to the government’s payment systems last year without fully following all of its own security controls — and the DOGE team didn’t always hew to Treasury’s protocols, either.

The findings are among the first reports the Government Accountability Office has released about DOGE’s work, and GAO is working on more audits focused on DOGE access to government systems, a spokesperson confirmed with Nextgov/FCW on Tuesday.

The new report on Treasury zeroes in on atypical access to the government’s payment systems given to DOGE associates.

DOGE access to sensitive government data and systems across agencies has been a flashpoint since the early days of Trump’s second term. DOGE associates said in court testimony earlier this year that pushing for high-level access to government systems was “operating procedure” for the group.

At Treasury, soon after Trump took office last year, individuals on billionaire Elon Musk’s team reportedly began pressing for officials to hand over system access to DOGE employee Tom Krause so that the department could freeze foreign aid payments. A top Treasury official was eventually pushed out of his job after refusing to provide access to the systems.

GAO found that Treasury handed over access to view, copy and print data from the Bureau of Fiscal Service’s three payment systems to an unnamed DOGE associate, who could also see the systems’ source code.

But that member of Musk’s team never completed required security training while working at the department or signed Treasury’s “rules of behavior” policy for IT security while working there.

GAO doesn’t name this DOGE employee in its report, but other details provided by the watchdog match with public reporting on Marko Elez, like the day he resigned, Feb. 6, 2025, following reporting about his racist social media posts. He later went on to work for DOGE at other agencies.

At one point, Treasury accidentally briefly gave that same DOGE employee the ability to make changes in one of those systems, something GAO said was due in part to the agency’s lax procedures and the fact that the access being requested was changed several times before it was approved. The DOGE employee didn’t use the system during this time, GAO says. According to reporting on court records, this was also Elez.

GAO also found that Treasury’s data loss prevention tools didn’t track or block Elez from improperly sending unencrypted information on foreign aid to two DOGE associates at the General Services Administration. Elez did this without getting agency approval for sharing the information on U.S. Agency for International Development payments.

Treasury didn’t discover that incident until it conducted a forensic review of the laptop after Elez had left the department. The department didn’t find the incident sooner in part because its tools aren’t set up to look for information being sent to other government agencies, the report says.

GAO included several recommendations regarding the department’s IT security processes in the audit, only some of which Treasury formally agreed with.

The top Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., said in a statement that “GAO has confirmed our worst fears,” and called on the Treasury to implement all of GAO’s recommendations.

Among those the department didn’t formally agree or disagree with is one urging it to conduct exit interviews and get signatures on post-employment documentation from those with access to sensitive payment systems who leave the department without doing so — including the DOGE employee discussed in the report with access to systems.

The watchdog will be issuing additional reports on DOGE access to Treasury payment systems, it says in the report. The topic has also been working its way through the courts. A district court judge granted a preliminary injunction limiting DOGE access to Treasury systems with sensitive information last year, although that was later modified to allow some access to systems.

GAO also released another report Tuesday on DOGE’s access to systems at the NLRB. Just over a year ago, a whistleblower in the agency said that DOGE had extracted troves of data from the agency using secretive methods during March 2025.

The NLRB’s inspector general has an ongoing investigation into the whistleblower’s declaration, the office confirmed to Nextgov/FCW.

GAO’s new report, however, focuses only on the period after DOGE was detailed into the agency in mid-April, so “to not overlap with the NLRB Inspector General’s Investigation.”

Whistleblower Aid, which is representing the NLRB whistleblower, noted the significance of GAO beginning its review period after their client’s disclosed events took place.

“Because the GAO did not investigate any matters that fell within the timeframe disclosed by our client — in fact scoping it out of their investigation — the report cannot address our client's detailed accounts,” Whistleblower Aid told Nextgov/FCW. “Accordingly, the timeframe investigated by the GAO has no relationship to the wrongdoing witnessed by the whistleblower in February to early April 2025.”

GAO found that the DOGE team asked for access to NLRB systems, but didn’t use the access it was granted. DOGE didn’t even pick up NLRB laptops before their detail agreements expired in July, according to GAO.

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OpenAI announces availability across cloud providers

Alexandra Kelley — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 16:16:00 -0400

OpenAI and Microsoft are changing the terms of their partnership, ending exclusivity between OpenAI’s artificial intelligence models and Microsoft’s cloud offerings — as the AI developer announced new product availability through Amazon Web Services and other cloud providers.

In back to back announcements on Monday and Tuesday, OpenAI said its software will be eligible to operate on any cloud service provider, not just Microsoft. The Tuesday announcement confirmed OpenAI’s expanded partnership with AWS, with its models, Codex agentic software and agentic support for Amazon Bedrock all available to AWS customers.

Microsoft will still be OpenAI’s primary cloud partner, however, and OpenAI products will be first available on Azure platforms unless Microsoft cannot “support the necessary capabilities,” per the press release. Microsoft will also stop paying a revenue share to OpenAI as part of the amended contract and will continue to have a license to OpenAI intellectual property through 2032.

This move is meant to strengthen the companies’ “joint ability to build and operate AI platforms at scale while providing both companies the flexibility to pursue new opportunities,” the Monday press release said.

An AWS press release about the new OpenAI availability said the new capabilities on Amazon Bedrock “give customers the choice and flexibility to use the best models for their use case, on the world’s most broadly-adopted cloud.”

Coinciding with OpenAI’s new cloud distribution, the company announced that it had achieved FedRamp 20x Moderate authorization on Monday, making its products available via qualified cloud service providers for discretionary government workflows.

OpenAI’s slew of updates point to an expanded presence for a diverse customer base, particularly within the public sector.

Following the ongoing dispute between Anthropic and the Pentagon over how the company’s technology can be used, OpenAI’s announcements present the firm as an option to fill the void left behind by the government’s mandate to stop use of Anthropic’s Claude.

Microsoft and AWS are major players in the cloud computing space, with 2025 data from Synergy Research Group finding that AWS leads with 28% of the global market share among major cloud providers. The federal government is still heavily contracted with Microsoft, however, and its original partnership with OpenAI inked in 2023 enabled the company to route the AI products to its government customers.

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GSA taps Greg Hogan as head of government’s identity proofing service, Login.gov

Natalie Alms — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 18:56:00 -0400

The General Services Administration has installed Greg Hogan as the new director of Login.gov, the government's identity proofing platform, Nextgov/FCW has learned.

Hogan previously worked as the chief information officer at the Office of Personnel Management, an early stronghold for the cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency. He replaced the agency’s existing CIO on the second day of President Donald Trump’s second term. Since he left the role in September, Hogan has been working in Trump’s National Design Studio, housed in the White House.

A newcomer to public sector work before last year, Hogan previously worked at startup Comma.ai. He will now be in charge of a government-wide program that agencies use to verify that someone is who they say they are, often via facial recognition.

The Login.gov website, which allows members of the public to create a single, identity-proofed account and then use it to log in to various government websites, has over 150 million users. Trump appointees have called the identity proofing service critical to their anti-fraud agenda.

The previous director of Login.gov left the post last fall for a job with Microsoft.

Hogan will be working with the federal CIO, Greg Barbaccia, who is double-hatting as the acting head of TTS in addition to his gig at OMB. Hogan is now detailing into the agency as “acting assistant commissioner,” Barbaccia wrote in an email viewed by Nextgov/FCW.

“[Hogan] will be focused on expanding the number of people and agencies successfully using Login.gov, enhancing the user experience, and improving the cost-effectiveness while continuing to meet the highest expectations for security, privacy and reliability,” wrote Barbaccia. “All with the vision to support Login.gov truly becoming a world-class identity platform recognized beyond the federal government.”

Commercial companies have lobbied in the identity proofing space over the years, pushing their products as alternatives to Login.gov and jockeying to help power the government-run service as contractors behind the scenes.

During Hogan’s time at the government’s HR agency, OPM was sued for its handling of data.

At the center of one of those lawsuits is a government-wide mass email system set up in the early days of the administration and used to send out an initial delayed resignation offer to federal employees.

Hogan signed off on a privacy impact assessment issued for the government-wide email system after the agency was sued by anonymous federal employees alleging that OPM violated the law by not publishing a PIA before deploying the new system. His signature set the document apart from other PIAs at OPM, which are typically signed by privacy officials at the agency.

A district court judge denied an ask for a temporary restraining order preventing the government from using that system last year, finding that those suing hadn’t proved that they’d suffer irreparable injury without one, or that they had standing to sue.

Another judge did grant a preliminary injunction in a case centered on the access of DOGE associates to OPM agency records.

At Login.gov, Hogan’s work will have the potential to touch Americans who interact with the government across a swath of programs in 50 federal and state agencies.

The program is one of the core priorities for GSA’s Technology Transformation Services, which has shed 70% of its staff since Trump took office.

“We are ushering in a new era for the Technology Transformation Services as the government’s premier technology provider,” Barbaccia wrote in his Monday email. “This is about restoring confidence in how government serves the taxpayer, and delivering technology that Americans can take pride in as an expression of the nation’s strength and capability.”

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Italy extradites alleged Chinese state-backed hacker to US over theft of COVID-19 research

David DiMolfetta — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 17:44:00 -0400

A Chinese national accused of hacking U.S. universities to steal COVID-19 research and carrying out parts of a sweeping cyber espionage campaign earlier in the decade has been extradited from Italy to the United States, where he now faces federal charges tied to the yearslong intrusions.

Xu Zewei, 34, was transferred from Milan over the weekend and appeared Monday in federal court in Houston on a nine-count indictment alleging wire fraud, identity theft and unauthorized access to protected computers, the Justice Department said.

Authorities allege he was part of a network of contract hackers operating on behalf of China’s Ministry of State Security. Xu and co-conspirators were directed to conduct intrusions aimed at stealing sensitive COVID-19 vaccine, treatment and testing research from U.S. entities.

Xu was also allegedly involved in intrusions between 2020 and 2021, including attacks on U.S. research institutions and exploitation of Microsoft Exchange vulnerabilities tied to the sprawling HAFNIUM campaign, which compromised thousands of organizations worldwide, including roughly 13,000 in the United States.

The case highlights longstanding concerns within the U.S. government about China’s use of private-sector contractors to carry out cyber espionage. Prosecutors allege Xu worked for a Shanghai-based company that functioned as one of many “enabling” firms conducting hacking operations for Chinese intelligence services.

Court filings describe how Xu allegedly reported directly to Chinese intelligence officers and carried out specific tasks, including targeting the email accounts of immunologists and virologists conducting COVID-19 research. In one instance, prosecutors say Xu confirmed he had accessed the network of a Texas-based research university and later retrieved the contents of researchers’ email accounts at the direction of a state security officer.

Xu has denied the allegations through an attorney. He was arrested in Milan in July 2025.

The Justice Department first unsealed charges against Xu and an alleged co-conspirator, Zhang Yu, last year. Zhang remains at large. If convicted on all counts, Xu could face decades in prison.

“The extradition of Xu Zewei demonstrates the FBI’s reach extends well beyond U.S. borders,” Brett Leatherman, the FBI’s Cyber Division assistant director, said in a prepared statement. “Xu will now answer for his alleged role in HAFNIUM, a group responsible for a vast intrusion campaign directed by China’s Ministry of State Security that compromised more than 12,700 U.S. organizations. He is one of many contractors the Chinese government uses to obscure its hand in cyber operations, and others who do the same face the same risk.”

The case reflects both the scale of China’s hacking operations and the difficulty of holding alleged state-backed cyber operatives accountable. While U.S. authorities have increasingly sought to name and charge foreign cyber operators, arrests and extraditions remain less common due to jurisdictional and diplomatic constraints.

But the extradition could mark a notable step in that effort. Italian authorities arrested Xu at the request of U.S. officials, and American investigators credited international coordination with securing his transfer.

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Agencies doled out $186B in improper payments last year, GAO says

Natalie Alms — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 16:28:00 -0400

The federal government made at least $186 billion in improper payments in fiscal 2025, according to a report released Monday by Congress’ watchdog.

The Government Accountability Office’s new estimate comes as the Trump administration continues to doggedly pursue its “war on fraud” to hunt out fraudulent government spending.

The latest numbers offer a point-in-time look at how the government is doing with preventing payments that shouldn’t have been made or were made in the incorrect amount. The category is broader than fraud, which is defined by willful misrepresentation. Although the majority of the $186 billion evaluated by GAO are overpayments, at least $10 billion of the total is money that should’ve been sent out, but wasn’t.

The government’s improper payments total is up by about $24 billion from the prior fiscal year, although that’s largely because of changes in what programs reported data, GAO said. The watchdog audited the improper payment data from 15 agencies’ financial statements across 64 programs.

Most of the improper payments are concentrated in five programs, GAO found, including Medicare, Medicaid, the earned income tax credit and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

The Trump administration has been zeroing in on fraud in Medicare and Medicaid already, as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz announced last week that the Trump administration will require all states to revalidate Medicaid providers.

Oz has also announced state-level Medicaid probes, mostly of blue states, as part of his effort to stamp out fraud, although that rollout hasn’t been flawless. Last month, CMS admitted to an error in the fraud analysis of Medicaid in New York that it used to justify the scrutiny into the state program.

The White House is also working across federal agencies to comb through government programs as part of Trump’s anti-fraud task force being led by Vice President JD Vance.

The crackdown is happening as midterms loom, with voters saying that they’re concerned about healthcare affordability.

Critics of the administration’s anti-fraud work say the administration is using the issue as a pretext for political goals and that false claims and the dismantling of government watchdogs are worsening the problem.

“As someone who has spent my career fighting fraud, I welcome any renewed attention on ferreting out fraud,” Mark Lee Greenblatt, formerly the inspector general at Interior Department, told Nextgov/FCW. But he said some of the administration’s moves have been “puzzling.”

“They’ve proposed slashing OIG budgets markedly. And that is counterproductive to the fight against fraud,” said Greenblatt. “If you want to fight fraud, fund the fraud-fighters.”

Trump fired Greenblatt and about 20 other watchdogs soon after taking office last year. He also issued nearly three dozen pardons and commutations for people accused of fraud last year.

Lawmakers have also taken on the mantle of fraud fighting. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is planning to mark up nine bills tomorrow focused on the issue. Among them is a proposal to create a permanent anti-fraud data platform for OIGs. Oversight officials have long recommended that lawmakers improve data sharing within the government.

The bills being considered are a “huge bright spot,” Linda Miller, an anti-fraud expert who worked at GAO for years, told Nextgov/FCW. They remove “a ton of barriers that I have been talking about for a decade.”

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Lieu and Obernolte introduce consolidated AI bill package

Alexandra Kelley — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 15:18:00 -0400

Two California lawmakers introduced a sweeping bill Monday that aims to push several bipartisan artificial intelligence regulatory efforts forward via a single package.

The legislation includes six titles covering a broad range of AI goals: strengthening standards, testing and evaluations; building research infrastructure and spurring groundbreaking research; modernizing federal AI governance, procurement and security; protecting workers and empowering small businesses; safeguarding Americans and deterring harmful deepfakes; and expanding education, literacy and inclusion.

Reps. Ted Lieu, D-Calif, and Jay Obernolte, R-Calif., introduced the American Leadership in AI Act as an amalgamation of over 20 previous legislative proposals and recommendations made by the Bipartisan Artificial Intelligence Task Force that tackle aspects of the U.S. AI regulation and innovation that both parties have supported.

“The American Leadership in AI Act builds on the strong bipartisan foundation already laid by our colleagues, incorporating and advancing bipartisan legislation previously introduced by Members across the House,” both lawmakers stated in a press release. “By unifying these efforts, this package reflects the thoughtful, consensus-driven work already underway and translates it into a cohesive strategy to strengthen U.S. leadership in AI.”

Lieu and Obernolte led the Bipartisan AI Task Force that convened during the last Congress. The work from that effort culminated in a 2024 report that offered recommendations on how to best execute AI regulation nationwide, focusing on sector-specific approaches to risk mitigation.

The American Leadership in AI Act begins by asking the National Institute of Standards and Technology to participate in standards setting that ensures U.S. AI systems can operate and compete globally.

Sections that follow focus on launching multiple pilot programs to further U.S. AI objectives — including one for standards setting — and prize challenges to spur agency AI innovation.

The bill also aims to modernize government procurement, dedicating a section to supporting agency implementation and use of AI within the government. It includes a provision for “ensuring accountability” for acquisition and use of AI should it result in “flawed, inaccurate, or biased decisions that would impact individuals.”

To support society as it adapts to AI, the bill includes provisions that modify the Internal Revenue Code to offer tax deductions for employers granting their employees cybersecurity education. It also directs the federal government to participate in crafting and disseminating AI literacy and education, specifically through grant funding opportunities.

Congress has yet to pass comprehensive AI legislation, resulting in state governments that have stepped in to fill the void to regulate the growing technology.

That dynamic has led to both the White House and members of Congress proposing that the federal government place a moratorium on state laws in order to protect innovation and give the federal government more time to craft unifying regulation. State leaders, meanwhile, have argued that Congress’s failure to pass its own regulations has made it necessary for the more localized governments to step in.

The Trump administration’s recent framework envisions delineating specific lanes for states to regulate, namely child safety, while allowing the federal government to unify states under pro-innovation laws.

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Experts call for halt of AI chip exports to China after White House distillation warning

David DiMolfetta — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 14:36:00 -0400

The Trump administration is facing new calls to halt U.S. exports of advanced AI chips to China after the White House warned last week that Beijing is attempting to copy components of American AI systems to build similar models of its own.

Americans for Responsible Innovation, an AI policy advocacy group, told White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Michael Kratsios that the administration should bar exports of advanced chips that could help China use U.S. AI systems to develop similar capabilities, according to a letter sent Monday that was first seen by Nextgov/FCW.

It comes after OSTP last Thursday accused China and other foreign nations of engaging in “deliberate, industrial-scale campaigns to distill U.S. frontier AI systems,” and said the Trump administration will be taking steps to safeguard domestic AI systems. Distillation campaigns involve sending large volumes of queries to an AI model to train a competing version.

The push comes as exports of advanced chips, such as Nvidia’s H200, remain in limbo. The Trump administration approved limited H200 sales earlier this year, but none have reached China. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said last week that “we have not sold them chips as of yet” and that Beijing has not allowed domestic firms to purchase the hardware.

The letter argues that China cannot effectively replicate capabilities derived from U.S. AI tools if it doesn’t have access to cutting-edge chips.

“If we are serious about preventing adversaries from appropriating the capabilities of U.S. frontier models, we must be equally serious about restricting their access to the computational infrastructure that enables adversarial distillation, as well as the training and deployment of models built on data obtained through such malicious activity,” said the letter, which is signed by ARI executive director Eric Gastfriend.

Nextgov/FCW has asked OSTP and the Commerce Department for comment.

Hardware like Nvidia’s H200 underpins the computing power needed to train and run powerful AI models, including the large-scale querying required for distillation campaigns. Limiting access to those chips could slow China’s ability to develop and deploy competing models, though it likely wouldn’t halt those efforts altogether.

“Nation-state level AI competition is very, very real, and has been going on for some time, and it continues to increase in its intensity and sophistication,” Peter Kant, CEO of Enabled Intelligence, said in an interview. Distillation efforts are “a whole new attack vector and domain that will only increase over time. I don’t see this [White House memo] as a one-off at all,” he added.

Anthropic in February accused three Chinese-based AI companies — DeepSeek, Moonshot AI and MiniMax — of overwhelming its Claude model with 16 million exchanges from roughly 24,000 fraudulent accounts.

The same month, OpenAI sent a letter to members of the House China Select Committee that said it had seen evidence “indicative of ongoing attempts by DeepSeek to distill frontier models of OpenAI and other US frontier labs, including through new, obfuscated methods.”

Last week’s White House warning about China-based distillation campaigns marks the latest escalation in the U.S.-China race for AI dominance. It comes as major American firms are deploying increasingly advanced models with cybersecurity capabilities that could pose national security risks if they fall into the wrong hands.

A small group of unauthorized users has accessed Anthropic’s new Mythos AI model, which the company previously said has identified thousands of vulnerabilities and is powerful enough to enable dangerous cyberattacks, Bloomberg News reported last week.

“This is just the early days,” Lonny Anderson, president of BlueVoyant Government Solutions and former chief technology officer of the NSA, told Nextgov/FCW. “This is only gonna get faster and it’s gonna get more dramatic.”

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Pentagon adds Google’s latest model to GenAI.mil as usage soars

Frank Konkel — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 12:00:00 -0400

LAS VEGAS — Users of the Pentagon’s enterprise-wide generative-AI platform now have access to Google Cloud’s latest and most advanced commercial AI model, Gemini 3.1 Pro, after several weeks of using the software in preview mode.

The software is available to defense users through the GenAI.mil platform and will also be available for all Gemini for Government users across the federal government.

“Gemini 3.1 Pro is Google’s most sophisticated model yet, and it really represents the frontier of American AI,” Pentagon Chief Data Officer Gavin Kliger said in an interview Thursday. “And so the department is working with our engineering team together to make sure we can have this capability available across the department.”

It’s the latest upgrade for the platform, which launched in December with initial plans to integrate Gemini for Government, and later announced plans to incorporate AI models from OpenAI and xAI.

Up to 3 million users have access to GenAI.mil, which is actively being used by more than 1.3 million of them, Kliger said. They are tapping the generative-AI software to automate tasks and workloads, streamline laborious processes, and disseminate and summarize data-heavy documentation in the department’s Impact Level 5 environments, which handle sensitive unclassified data.

Kliger’s team offered several examples of how defense personnel are using generative AI shared by the department. One user at Navy Recruiting Command used Gemini to cut the time to build an automated database to manage personnel and accounts from several years to three months, saving an estimated 10 weeks of labor annually. And a lab director at the Defense Logistics Agency used generative AI to reduce the time to draft statements of work “from weeks to hours,” helping secure $1 million in last-minute funding for a laboratory modernization.

Google Public Sector Chief Executive Officer Karen Dahut said the company’s decision to software-define its commercial cloud and bring it to the government market—as opposed to using physically separate data centers for government users—allows the company to accredit its commercial software faster than competitors. That speed-to-market advantage is most critical in defense missions, she said.

“The key thing is that this [Gemini 3.1 Pro] is our most recent, newest, most capable model, period,” Dahut said on the sidelines of Google Cloud Next in Las Vegas. “So GenAI.mil users are getting it only eight weeks behind all the commercial customers,” who gained access in February.

GenAI.mil, launched on Dec. 9, accumulated 500,000 users within a week and 1 million users within a month “with zero latency issues and zero downtime,” Dahut said.

“No other cloud provider could have launched at that scale,” she said.

Kliger said “one of the cool things about all the growth is that it’s been organic”: the department makes modern AI tools available to its employees but isn’t prescriptive about their use.

Kliger also said increased collaboration with industry is critical in ensuring AI dominance over adversaries including China.“The work we do now is going to set the tone for the next decade, and these are super important technologies for the national defense, our national security,” Kliger said. “China, of course, has a really tight collaboration between the government and its private sector, effectively a controlling relationship. And so making sure we’re engaging with the frontier labs, working together closely like we are with Google, is incredibly important for the nation. Google has been a great partner with the department.”

The Pentagon enters its vibe-coding era

Over the past several weeks, users have tapped another Google Cloud product made available through GenAI.mil, Agent Designer, to vibe-code thousands of agentic AI agents. AI agents are autonomous systems that use large language models such as Gemini to perform tasks without human intervention at each turn.

At the Box Federal Summit Thursday, Jacob Glassman, deputy assistant defense secretary for science and technology foundations in the research and engineering directorate, said users had already built more than 100,000 AI agents on GenAI.mil.

These AI agents have authorizations to operate at IL5, which means they can be used for the department’s most sensitive unclassified data. They also don’t require much coding experience or training to use.

Agent Designer “allows anyone, be they technical or not, to kind of use natural language to describe the system they want to set up,” Kliger said. “One of the big changes we’re seeing is moving from the old concept of the large language models being just a chat interface to being an actual platform where it can run tasks on its own.”

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Tech bills of the week: Creating data privacy standards; Securing critical infrastructure from drones; and more

Alexandra Kelley, Natalie Alms, Edward Graham, and David DiMolfetta — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 17:11:00 -0400

Data privacy framework

A group of Republican lawmakers announced the introduction of two new data privacy bills on April 22: the SECURE Data Act and the GUARD Financial Data Act. Top Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the House Financial Services Committee — led by Reps. Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., and French Hill, R-Ark., respectively — teamed up to create and introduce the proposals.

Both measures focus on the same six pillars: data minimization, data access rights, data deletion rights, sensitive data, national standards and avoiding dual regulation.

The majority of these pillars give consumers control over how their data is collected and shared between institutions. It also defines sensitive data and mandates that controllers of that data take on more responsibility to inform consumers as to why and how their data is being collected and provide opt-out options.

They also create national standards to avoid the patchwork of differing laws across states.

“The Energy and Commerce Data Privacy Working Group was created to reset the discussion on comprehensive data privacy, taking wide ranging input from stakeholders and crafting a consensus bill that protects the privacy and security of Americans’ personal data,” the press release reads. “The SECURE Data Act is the result. This bill establishes clear, enforceable protections so that Americans remain in charge of their own data and companies are held accountable for its safe keeping.”

Protecting critical infrastructure from drones

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., introduced legislation on Thursday that would allow critical infrastructure operators to better guard against drone incursions, including enabling them to use kinetic solutions to bring down rogue aerial systems.

While federal, state, local and tribal entities and law enforcement officials have the authority to use counter-drone measures, the bill says that “private owners and operators of critical infrastructure lack clear statutory authority to independently detect, track, and mitigate in-flight unmanned aircraft systems threats.”

The legislation would establish a national certification program that would allow trained critical infrastructure owners and operators to take down unauthorized drones. Additionally, the proposal would direct the Department of Homeland Security to create a grant program that would enable critical infrastructure personnel to “purchase, install, and operate approved counter-unmanned aircraft systems.”

“Our hospitals, power plants, water treatment facilities, and other critical infrastructure sites can’t remain sitting ducks for potential drone attacks,” Cotton said in a statement. “My bill will ensure these important sites are protected from all unauthorized drones.”

No AI chatbots in kids' toys

The AI Children's Toy Safety Act, introduced by Rep. Blake Moore, R-Utah, aims to completely ban the creation and manufacturing of toys that include AI chatbots, citing data privacy concerns.

“Every aspect of how we adopt artificial intelligence must be human-centric,” Moore’s press release reads. “America will continue to compete, innovate, and strive to break barriers in AI development, but we must prioritize basic ethics and restrain these tools where they will negatively impact human activity when it comes to privacy, safety, human development, and addiction.”

Federal action against biosecurity threats

Sens. Tim Kaine, D-Va., and Ted Budd, R-N.C., both on the Senate Armed Services Committee, introduced legislation on Tuesday to protect against biological threats at a national security level.

The Engineering Biology Readiness Act comes as advanced generative artificial intelligence is projected to have a major impact on scientific research and discovery. It seeks to renew requirements for a National Biodefense Strategy and creates an interagency coordination effort to offer recommendations to mitigate the risks associated with frontier biological research.

“Bioengineering has tremendous potential to accelerate innovation in health care, science, industry, and more. But there are also significant risks if these innovations are used the wrong way,” said Kaine. “As this field continues to change and grow, this bipartisan legislation would help Congress assess and mitigate those risks, while ensuring Americans continue to benefit from advances in biotechnology.”

The proposed bill would specifically renew the congressional reporting requirement for the biodefense strategy and have it last for five years to ensure the inclusion of advances in biotechnology.

Balancing tech’s energy costs with low prices

A cohort of Republican House lawmakers introduced legislation on Tuesday that attempts to thread the needle between increasing manufacturing and technology usage while keeping energy prices low.

The DATA Act of 2026, introduced in the lower chamber by Reps. Nick Begich, R-Ark., Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, and Burgess Owens, R-Utah, targets updating federal regulations to allow hyperscalers to maintain isolated, off-grid power plants to support energy generation for their individual products, thereby protecting consumers from rising rates.

“America must win the race to lead in artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies,” said Begich in the press release. “The DATA Act allows manufacturers to operate on fully self-contained, ‘grid-of-one’ power systems, so innovation can scale without forcing households to subsidize massive new energy demands or straining local utilities. For Alaska, this approach is especially critical. By leveraging our stranded energy assets and vast resource potential, this legislation creates a pathway for new jobs, new revenue, and long-term economic growth without raising energy costs for American families.”

Companion legislation exists in the Senate, introduced by Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark.

Creating clear export control standards for chip sales to China

The chairman of the House China Select Committee rolled out legislation on Tuesday that would set guidelines on the types of advanced semiconductors that can be sold by U.S. companies to China-based firms.

The measure, from Rep. John Moolenaar, R-Mich., attempts to limit China’s access to the most powerful chips that underpin artificial intelligence technologies. His bill, the Semiconductor Controls Adjusted to Limit Exports — or SCALE — Act, would direct the Secretary of Commerce, in coordination with the Director of National Intelligence, “to implement a process for establishing a rolling annual standard for the sale of certain integrated circuits to certain countries.”

The bill also sets a “rolling technical threshold” on the types of chips that can be sold to the Chinese market, with a press release from the congressman’s office saying that exports would only be permitted “up to 110 percent of the performance of chips that U.S. adversaries can already manufacture domestically at meaningful production levels which can be defined as at least 25 percent of their annual demand.”

Some U.S. lawmakers are concerned about China gaining access to American-made semiconductors and manufacturing equipment that can allow Beijing to ramp up development of its own more powerful AI tools. The bill’s introduction comes the same week that the House Foreign Affairs Committee advanced a package of similar export control measures designed to limit China’s access to powerful chips.

“The SCALE Act will help secure the future of America’s dominance in artificial intelligence by ensuring American companies never sell the best chips in the world to China,” Moolenaar said in a statement. “By grounding semiconductor export controls in objective metrics, we can ensure a level playing field for American business, while protecting national security as China races to catch up to us.”

Improving agencies’ use of risk assessment tools

A bipartisan House proposal introduced on Tuesday looks to establish a federal commission to verify that agencies are using appropriate and accurate hazard risk assessment tools purchased from the private sector.

The bill, the Advancing Consistent and Credible Use of Risk Assessment Tools and Evaluation — or ACCURATE — Act, is sponsored by Reps. Scott Franklin, R-Fla., and Gabe Amo, D-R.I.

Rep. Max Miller, R-Ohio, introduced the measure in the previous Congress.

The legislation would direct the Under Secretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology to create a “Commission on Hazard Risk Assessment Tools.” In a press release, Franklin’s office said this body “will recommend standards, methodologies, and procurement best practices to make these tools more consistent, credible, and transparent,” which would then be reviewed by the under secretary to determine whether or not they should be mandated for federal agencies to follow.

“Federal agencies are making significant decisions about disaster response, infrastructure, and insurance using private-sector risk tools, but too often there is no consistent standard for how those tools are evaluated,” Franklin said in a statement. “The ACCURATE Act brings greater transparency and accountability to the process by establishing clear guidelines for how these tools are reviewed and used. This is about making sure federal decisions are based on sound, reliable data and taxpayer dollars are being spent wisely.”

Postal Service electronic notifications

Rep. Hillary Scholten, D-Mich., introduced legislation on Thursday that would direct the U.S. Postal Service to study the feasibility of providing customers with electronic notifications about weather events and their impact on mail delivery times.

Scholten’s office said in a press release that USPS is currently not authorized to contact mail recipients to inform them of delivery delays.

“My Postal Alert and Weather Preparedness Act would take a commonsense step to modernize USPS communications so families can be better informed, plan ahead, and stay safe during inclement weather,” Scholten said in a statement. “This is about making sure our federal agencies are working smarter and more effectively for the people they serve.”

Grants for AI-powered veteran suicide prevention

Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, R-Pa., formally introduced a measure on Thursday that would direct the Department of Veterans Affairs to establish a grant program to provide support to organizations outside the agency looking to leverage artificial intelligence and more powerful predictive analytics for veteran-focused suicide prevention efforts. The bill is co-sponsored by Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J.

A discussion draft of Mackenzie’s bill, the Data-Driven Suicide Prevention and Outreach Act, previously received consideration during a House Veterans’ Affairs Subcommittee on Health legislative hearing in January.

The pilot program created through the legislation would be in effect through 2029 and include guardrails around the use, security and privacy of veterans’ data. VA has an internal predictive model, known as the Recovery Engagement and Coordination for Health-Veteran Enhanced Treatment — or REACH VET — program, that uses machine learning to identify veterans in the top 0.1% of suicide risk by analyzing health records for specific indicators of potential self-harm.

In an interview with Nextgov/FCW last month, Mackenzie said his proposal builds upon VA models, like REACH VET, “that already have been out there and use predictive analytics to identify vets who are at the highest statistical risk for suicide, and proactively kind of connect them with tailored care and outreach.”

He added that his measure would “allow grant funding for the development of those predictive models created with AI and machine learning, so that we can figure out what’s best to evaluate those risk factors and figure out which ones are the ones that we should be paying attention to most closely that contribute to incidents of suicide.”

Stopping fraud in federal programs

On Thursday, the heads of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform and the House Budget Committee, James Comer, R-Ky., and Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, introduced two bills meant to tamp down on fraud in government programs.

The first directs agencies to delay government payments if there’s reason to think that they’re fraudulent, and allows the Treasury Department to return payment requests to government agencies if they’re at risk of fraud.

The other directs Treasury to work with agencies to verify payment information before they go out the door by expanding tools like the existing Do Not Pay system.

Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, also unveiled an anti-fraud legislative package, bundling several existing proposals, this week.

Warrant requirements for searching Americans’ data

Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., introduced legislation on Thursday that would require the government to obtain a warrant before conducting searches of U.S. citizens’ personal data, as well as provide Americans with a “right of action” to sue if their Fourth Amendment protections are violated. The bill aims to address gray areas and controversial surveillance practices where existing law allows the government to access Americans’ data without judicial permission.

The measure, the Surveillance Accountability Act, would mandate that the government “not access any data, metadata, or personal information held by a third party, including financial services providers, telecommunication service providers, internet service providers, cloud storage companies, or data brokers, without a valid warrant, regardless of whether the third party consents or cooperates.”

It includes a list of exceptions, including for plain view searches, verification of government-issued photo IDs and the collection and review of publicly available data. These exceptions, however, would not extend to biometric data obtained through facial recognition systems or to vehicle metadata collected from license plate readers.

In a press release, Massie said “warrantless searches are unconstitutional, and this does not change when the data the government seeks is in digital formats or held by a third party.”

Three-year extension of FISA 702

House Republicans rolled out a new measure on Thursday to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act for an additional three years. The bill includes minimal reforms to the controversial surveillance measure but does not require the FBI to obtain a warrant before conducting searches of U.S. citizens’ data collected through the program.

The proposed 702 reauthorization, which is set to expire on April 30 after Congress passed a 10-day extension of the program last week, does include several new oversight provisions.

The statute lets intelligence agencies compel internet service providers to furnish communications of foreigners located abroad without a warrant. But the process can also collect U.S. person communications if they are in contact with a foreign target, raising Fourth Amendment concerns when the contents of those U.S. person calls, text messages and emails are subsequently searched.

The measure would direct the attorney general to issue new procedures around congressional access to the proceedings of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and also require monthly audits of the FBI’s 702-related searches of Americans’ data by a civil liberties protection officer within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

It would also expand criminal penalties for abuse of Americans’ collected data, including prohibiting government personnel from targeting U.S. citizens through the program. The Government Accountability Office would also be mandated to audit targeting procedures and report its findings to Congress.

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., also introduced a clean reauthorization bill in the upper chamber that would extend Section 702 for an additional three years that does not include any of the oversight reforms included in the House proposal.

Transparency standards for AI-generated content

Rep. Valerie Foushee, D-N.C., introduced legislation on Friday that would direct the National Institute of Standards and Technology “to facilitate and inform the development of technical standards and guidelines relating to the identification of content created by generative artificial intelligence” — including digital watermarking and fingerprinting for audio or visual content generated by AI.

The measure, co-sponsored by Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., and Republican Delegate James Moylan of Guam, would also require NIST to assist content providers with labeling content that has been modified at all through the use of AI.

“Deepfakes and AI-generated audio and visual content poses major risks to consumers, our elections, and public trust,” Foushee said in a statement. “Clear labeling and transparency of this content must be required so Americans can distinguish what images, audio, and videos are artificially generated.”

Congressional commission to review economic impacts of AI

House lawmakers introduced a measure on Monday to help prepare for the coming impact of broad artificial intelligence adoption on the U.S. economy by establishing a bipartisan, bicameral commission to develop policy recommendations for Congress.

The bill, from Reps. Jay Obernolte, R-Calif., and Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., would direct this commission to “evaluate workforce development, education systems, federal AI adoption, and strategies to strengthen U.S. competitiveness in emerging technologies.”

The House measure is a companion to legislation introduced in the upper chamber last month by Sens. Mark Warner, D-Va., and Mike Rounds, R-S.D.

“Artificial intelligence will reshape every sector of our economy, and Congress has a responsibility to prepare for those changes,” Obernolte said in a statement. “This legislation brings together experts and lawmakers to develop clear, actionable recommendations to strengthen our workforce, support American workers, and ensure the United States continues to lead the world in innovation.”

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House lawmakers introduce quantum initiative reauthorization

Alexandra Kelley — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 15:07:00 -0400

House lawmakers introduced their version of the National Quantum Initiative Reauthorization Act on Thursday, which focuses on developing and advancing quantum information sciences and technology applications.

Led by Rep. Randy Weber, R-Texas, and cosponsored by Reps. Brian Babin, R-Texas, and Jay Obernolte, R-Calif., the bill’s agenda is coordinated through the National Science and Technology Council’s Subcommittee on Quantum Information Science, which steers federal agencies to identify use cases for quantum information technologies as well as hurdles to development and scaling.

The bill also reinstates the National Quantum Advisory Committee, a provision included in the original NQIA as well as in the Senate version of the reauthorization. It also supports the creation of international and private sector partnerships.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology would be tasked to help set standards for new QIST technologies under the House text. Some of these standards are related to the deployment of post-quantum cryptography, and the bill also directs the NIST head to conduct an analysis that can promote the deployment of post-quantum cryptography standards –– a subject that is omitted from a draft QIST executive order that has yet to be formally debuted.

A markup of the House NQIA is scheduled for April 29.

The Senate introduced its version of the reauthorization early in the year, led by Sens. Todd Young, R-Ind., and Maria Cantwell, D-Wash. The bill passed out of committee following an April 14 markup, where seven amendments were added to the text. It will now go to the Senate floor for a vote.

As with the Senate version, industry’s reaction primarily focuses on how the NQIA Reauthorization legislation will help quantum technology innovations make it from the lab to market.

Matt Cimaglia, the founder and managing partner of Quantum Coast Capital, told Nextgov/FCW that the focus needs to be on how QIST systems are applied and secured, as well as how institutions prepare for their impact.

“What stands out about the House’s approach to the National Quantum Initiative Act is the recognition that quantum technology is becoming part of our national infrastructure,” Cimaglia said. “If we approach this thoughtfully, quantum technology won’t be something we react to. It will be something we’re ready to use.”

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NIST is giving fingerprint examiners better tools for a messy job

John Breeden II — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 14:21:00 -0400

Americans have spent generations watching detectives in dark trenchcoats pore over complex crime scenes in movies and on television. They examine the room, snap photos and break out the familiar blue powder to dust for fingerprints. The ritual is so familiar that it can seem almost automatic.

What those scenes rarely capture is how much effort goes into making fingerprint examination more accurate, more consistent and easier to teach. That quieter work is exactly what the National Institute of Standards and Technology is trying to strengthen.

NIST recently released two resources aimed at helping forensic fingerprint examiners do their jobs better. One is a fully annotated version of NIST’s Special Database 302, a collection of roughly 10,000 latent fingerprint images. The other is what NIST calls OpenLQM, newly created open-source software that helps assess the quality of latent fingerprints and sort them according to how much useful detail they contain. NIST says the two releases are meant to improve forensic fingerprint examination, which remains an important part of many criminal investigations.

Fingerprint analysis is one of those forensic tools that many people assume was perfected long ago. In reality, examiners often work with partial, smudged or otherwise imperfect prints recovered from real-world objects. Training people to evaluate those prints well takes experience, repetition and good examples. It also increasingly requires better ways to train software systems that can assist human examiners without replacing them.

NIST says the newly completed dataset will help train both human examiners and machine learning algorithms to distinguish important features and weigh their value as evidence.

The most vivid part of the NIST fingerprint accuracy project is how ordinary the source material really was. As NIST computer scientist Greg Fiumara explained, “The prints are from people we recruited to come in and do things like write a note, pick up a circuit board, handle a dollar bill, that sort of thing. Then we recovered the prints they left behind using different methods that crime scene investigators commonly use.”

So the new collection is not made up of idealized prints from a textbook. They are the kinds of latent impressions that people leave behind all the time while moving through everyday life.

That realism has been part of the project from the beginning. When NIST first released SD 302 in 2019, it described the database as a set of latent fingerprints left on everyday items by a few hundred volunteers in a lab setting, with other personal information stripped away. The point was not to create a neat archive of perfect examples, but to give researchers and examiners a more realistic way to measure accuracy and test methods against the kinds of prints they actually encounter.

What is new now is that the entire collection has been annotated. Those annotations mark details about fingerprint quality, including regions where ridge patterns are clear, smudged or incomplete.

NIST says those markings make the dataset much more valuable as a teaching tool because they show both humans and algorithms what to look for and what to avoid when evaluating a print. The annotations add structure and interpretive guidance to a dataset that already had broad global use. NIST says more than 1,000 research organizations in more than 90 countries have downloaded the collection since its initial release.

The second part of the project is just as practical. OpenLQM gives examiners a way to score the quality of a latent print on a scale from zero to 100. And it can run as a standard executable or be embedded inside another program or application for maximum portability. The new software can help investigators sort through large volumes of prints and focus their attention first on the ones most likely to contain useful identifying details.

As Fiumara put it, “you give OpenLQM a fingerprint and it returns a number from zero to 100 that is an assessment of the print’s quality.” NIST says the software was adapted from a tool once limited to U.S. law enforcement. It is now being made openly available in a form that can run on Mac, Windows or Linux.

Since the software is open-source and available for anyone to download, NIST is not just improving a government tool for internal use; it’s pushing better forensic resources into the wider scientific and practitioner community. The agency’s biometrics resources page now lists both Special Database 302 and OpenLQM among its available forensic databases and software tools, reinforcing the point that this is part of a broader effort to build reproducible, shareable infrastructure around forensic biometrics.

What makes the fingerprint accuracy project especially useful is that it focuses on the less glamorous side of forensic work. Instead of chasing some dramatic new breakthrough, NIST is improving the underlying tools that fingerprint examiners rely on every day. Better data, clearer annotations and a faster way to assess print quality may not look dramatic from the outside, but they can make difficult work more consistent and efficient.

That is what gives this release its value. It strengthens one of forensic science’s oldest disciplines without pretending to reinvent it. Human judgment still matters, and fingerprint work will probably always involve a measure of skill and interpretation.

So all those movies and TV shows with investigators (still wearing stylish black trenchcoats) dusting for prints will still be accurate — at least for now. But with better training material and advanced tools, that work can become more consistent and easier to teach while also producing more trustworthy results.

John Breeden II is an award-winning journalist and reviewer with over 20 years of experience covering technology. He is the CEO of the Tech Writers Bureau, a group that creates technological thought leadership content for organizations of all sizes. Twitter: @LabGuys

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Commerce goes direct to hyperscalers with $4.1B cloud pact

Nick Wakeman — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 13:52:00 -0400

The Commerce Department is planning a 10-year, $4.1 billion blanket purchase agreement for cloud computing capabilities and only the big hyperscalers need apply.

In a Sam.gov notice posted Thurday, the department said the BPA will only be open to native hyperscale cloud services providers.

The department said it is going with a direct to CSP strategy because of the “highly specialized technical requirements, including massive compute elasticity (25,000+ concurrent vCPUs), proprietary 100+ tbps (terabits per second) global backbones, and specific hardware density for AI/ML, and weather modeling.”

Given those requirements, Commerce decided that only “original equipment manufacturers acting as cloud service providers” will be eligible for award. The inclusion of the OEM language effectively locks out resellers and systems integrators from competing as primes.

Commerce is using the General Services Administration’s eBuy portal to create the BPA, so any bidders will need to hold a GSA Schedule for cloud services.

The Sam.gov notice does not ask for any comments or responses. Commerce said the posting was to give notice of its cloud strategy.

In many ways, Commerce is following a strategy similar to the Defense Department and its Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability vehicle with Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Oracle and Google Cloud.

JWCC was awarded in December 2022 and has a $9 billion ceiling. It runs through June 2028.

According to GovTribe data, 185 task orders have been awarded under JWCC. AWS has captured 77 of those, followed by Microsoft with 75. Oracle has won 19 task orders and Google follows with 14.

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White House accuses China of ‘deliberate, industrial-scale campaigns’ to steal US AI models

Edward Graham and David DiMolfetta — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 17:40:00 -0400

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy on Thursday accused China and other foreign entities of engaging in “deliberate, industrial-scale campaigns to distill U.S. frontier AI systems,” and said that the Trump administration will be taking steps to safeguard domestic artificial intelligence products.

In a memo sent to federal agencies, the White House office warned that these distillation campaigns — in which a deluge of requests are sent to an AI model in order to train a knockoff version of it — are allowing bad actors to steal proprietary information from U.S. companies.

“Models developed from surreptitious, unauthorized distillation campaigns like this do not replicate the full performance of the original,” the memo said. “They do, however, enable foreign actors to release products that appear to perform comparably on select benchmarks at a fraction of the cost.”

Those allegations came the same month that OpenAI sent a letter to members of the House China Select Committee that said, in part, that it had seen evidence “indicative of ongoing attempts by DeepSeek to distill frontier models of OpenAI and other US frontier labs, including through new, obfuscated methods.”

Thursday’s memo does not cite any specific companies engaged in distillation campaigns against U.S. AI firms. But OSTP Director Michael Kratsios said in an X post that “these foreign entities are using tens of thousands of proxies and jailbreaking techniques in coordinated campaigns to systematically extract American breakthroughs.”

OSTP told agencies that the Trump administration will be taking a series of steps to expand engagement with U.S. companies and crack down on foreign-based distillation campaigns.

These include sharing more information with the private sector about attempts to conduct large-scale distillation attacks, enabling companies “to better coordinate against such attacks;” partnering with firms to develop a set of best practices to counter these campaigns; and looking at developing new steps to hold foreign actors accountable for their actions.

The memo said these actions are consistent with the White House’s AI Action Plan, which was released in July 2025 and emphasizes the importance of “preventing our adversaries from free-riding on our innovation and investment.”

The White House’s warning about China-based distillation campaigns is the latest salvo in the U.S. and China’s ongoing competition to lead the global AI race. It also comes as major American AI firms have rolled out what they say are advanced AI models that have exquisite cybersecurity capabilities that could cause national security risks if they fall into the wrong hands.

Retired Gen. Paul Nakasone, who led the NSA and U.S. Cyber Command, said the administration may consider export controls, diplomatic protests and tailored technology restrictions as potential responses to the distillation efforts.

“And we’re going to be very, very careful about how we’re going to share that [AI technology] with a series of different partners,” he said, speaking at a Wednesday roundtable with reporters in Nashville when asked about the campaigns. Nakasone now leads Vanderbilt University’s Institute of National Security.

Given China’s increasingly bellicose tone toward Taiwan, and the potential for preemptive actions against the U.S. in advance of a full-scale invasion of that country, lawmakers have also been worried about how technology advances will ultimately benefit Beijing. Through China’s military-civil fusion strategy, the country has moved to enhance its military strength by removing barriers with its commercial sector.

President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are scheduled to meet next month in Beijing for a summit to discuss a host of issues, including export controls on semiconductors and IP theft.

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IRS lacks transparent plans to leverage tech in the face of staffing cuts, GAO and employees say

Natalie Alms — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 16:16:00 -0400

The IRS is banking on using technology to do more with fewer employees. But staff inside the IRS say that how the agency will do that — considering that its own IT shop has lost personnel — is still unclear, and Congress’ watchdog says that the IRS still isn’t being transparent about its long-term tech plans.

The IRS continues to rely on some systems that date back to the 1960s. It’s been trying to modernize them for decades, and was using some of the money from the Inflation Reduction Act to do so under the Biden administration. Congress has since clawed back most of that funding, and the remainder is set to run out in fiscal year 2028.

A few months after President Donald Trump returned to the Oval Office, the IRS paused its modernization work to re-evaluate its strategy. IRS leadership said they wanted to rely more on generative artificial intelligence to convert legacy code into modern programming languages, and the agency set a goal to finish most of its tech modernization efforts within two years.

Over a year later, the IRS still hasn’t provided the Government Accountability Office with details on its new modernization plan, said David Hinchman, director of IT and cybersecurity at GAO, during a recent roundtable on the IRS.

“Recent changes to IRS' long-term plans have also cast uncertainty over what the agency's modernized end state will look like,” said Hinchman, explaining that the IRS has published “very little” on its new approach.

That’s despite the fact that technological progress is a lynchpin in the IRS’ bigger, overall strategy. After already pushing out over 28,000 employees since Trump took office, the tax agency is aiming to shed more staff and use technology to make up the difference, it said in its recent budget request.

“Without modernization, the IRS would be unable to sustain performance with a reduced headcount,” the budget request said.

Compounding the lack of transparency is a pause in strategic workforce planning, said Hinchman, which would help ensure that the IRS has the right workforce to get the job done.

The IRS didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The IRS hasn’t spared its IT shop from the workforce upheaval that has taken place over the last year. The IRS lost over 2,600 IT employees between January 25 and December 18 of last year, a 31% reduction, according to the National Taxpayer Advocate’s 2025 report.

The IRS also moved over 1,000 IT staff to the office of the chief operating officer last winter, and transferred some of those to jobs helping with filing season, along with human resources specialists.

Agency IT leadership recently told staff that the agency plans to hire 175 IT employees, a tech employee at the agency said.

Even so, IRS leadership isn’t sharing much information internally on the agency’s current plan for its technology, a second tech employee told Nextgov/FCW. Detailed IT strategic plans used to be available within the agency, they said. What’s now available is very abstract.

“It’s hilarious,” they said of the claim that the IRS can use tech to make up for fewer employees.

Using technology to do more with less might be possible in the long run, but “not right now,” the first IT employee told Nextgov/FCW. “We are so short-staffed.”

Despite the staffing shortages, the IRS is planning to capitalize on updates to the online accounts it offers for taxpayers to give Americans access to more self-service options.

The agency is also building a single interface for customer service representatives to allow them to see data about taxpayers that’s currently stored in disparate systems in one centralized place. The IRS thinks this will cut down on call times by speeding up the work of those manning the phone lines. The agency has been trying to build this system since the second Obama administration.

The IRS has also long been working to modernize its core system for individual tax account data, called the individual master file.

The tax agency did put its long-awaited new processing engine for the system into production last year, it said, but more work needs to be done. The effort is one of the most complex modernization efforts in the federal government, and the individual master file touches hundreds of other IRS applications.

“They are shoving AI at us and they think that with that, things can be converted super quickly,” the first employee said of efforts to modernize legacy systems. “But they don’t have the right tools for us yet.”

Frank Bisignano — the head of the Social Security Administration who is also helming a new chief executive officer role at the IRS — told senators earlier this month that data and AI are helping the tax agency with enforcement, even as it’s lost staff and is set to lose more under the Trump administration’s recent budget request.

But GAO reported recently that the agency is facing a skills shortage that could hamper its ability to roll out AI, including systems to prioritize audits.

Among the things that aren’t clear to Congress’ watchdog are how the IRS’ new plans relate to its old strategy to modernize, as well as how and if certain endeavors are continuing, said Hinchman. This isn’t the first time that watchdogs have dinged the IRS for a lack of IT planning.

Leadership under the new administration has altered at least some efforts started during the Biden years. The IRS launched an initiative to digitize paper with funding from the Inflation Reduction Act in 2023 by developing an in-house system. Last spring, leadership directed the IRS to stop working on the project, despite spending $61 million on it already, and shifted to a new approach using contractors, according to a watchdog report.

The IRS also shuttered the Direct File program, launched in 2024 to help certain eligible Americans file their taxes with the government online for free.

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Autonomous weapons will be ‘key and essential part’ of warfare, Joint Chiefs chair says

David DiMolfetta — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 13:35:00 -0400

NASHVILLE — Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine said Thursday that autonomous weapons are going to be a “key and essential part of everything we do” when asked about how such tools would fit into the future of warfare.

Speaking during a fireside chat at Vanderbilt University’s Asness Summit on Modern Conflict and Emerging Threats, Caine said “we are doing a lot of thinking about this in the joint force right now” on how autonomous tech would be applied to areas like drones and command-and-control operations.

His remarks signal that the U.S. military is keen on crafting plans to further adopt artificial intelligence tools and other evolving technologies that would automate national security decisions made in the Defense Department.

“Probably everybody in this room uses some flavor of a [large language model] every single day,” he said, adding the same can’t be said for staff in the halls of the Pentagon. “So, we have to really normalize this and become early adopters.”

The remarks come as observers weigh tensions between the Pentagon and Anthropic, which recently unveiled a powerful frontier AI model, Mythos Preview, that was held back from public release over cybersecurity risks, paired with a new initiative to study its effects on global networks.

Intelligence community units have expressed interest in Mythos, Nextgov/FCW previously reported. The NSA, a component of the DOD, has been granted access to it, Axios reported Sunday.

Earlier this year, Anthropic declined to ease restrictions against its tools being used for domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons for Pentagon use, triggering a “supply chain risk” designation from the Defense Department and a White House order that all federal agencies phase out their uses of Anthropic tools.

The company has legally challenged the move, and a federal judge issued a temporary injunction on the designation and ban in late March. The government has said it intends to appeal the injunction.

This week, President Donald Trump said in a CNBC interview that the company is “shaping up” and can “be of great use” in the future, a sign that tensions between Anthropic and the government may be easing up.

The use of AI in military operations often draws scrutiny because it can speed up battlefield decisions while blurring human accountability, and it can raise doubts about whether such systems would reliably comply with the laws of war. Lawmakers have asked the Pentagon if AI systems were used in a deadly strike on a school in Iran that occurred in the opening hours of the U.S.-Israel war against Tehran.

Caine also said U.S. government agencies need to be “better buyers” for the private sector. “We have to write better contracts,” he said, elaborating that current acquisition frameworks are slowing contract workflows.

Contracts should be structured so risk is shared between buyers and sellers with the goal of bringing better outcomes for servicemembers, he added.

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GSA announces latest cohort of Presidential Innovation Fellows

Edward Graham — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 11:47:00 -0400

The General Services Administration on Thursday announced its 2026 cohort of Presidential Innovation Fellows, with the hand-picked technology experts set to be embedded within 10 different federal agencies.

In a release announcing the latest PIF class, GSA said the 17 technologists selected for the program include experts from leading U.S. companies and highlight the agency’s focus “on hiring top technology talent to deliver on key Administration and priority projects.”

The fellows will now spend a yearlong tour of duty at one of the 10 federal agencies selected to participate in this year’s PIF program, including the:

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency
Department of Energy
Department of State
Department of Veterans Affairs
Executive Office of the President
National Institute of Standards and Technology
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
U.S. Coast Guard

To participate in the PIF program, agencies submit project proposals to GSA detailing the issue areas they would like fellows to address, including outlining whether those focuses are “problems of critical agency and/or national priority,” and detailing a “clear line to positive impact, benefit, or customer experience for the public.” GSA then chooses the fellows and details them to some of the agencies.

“We are driving President [Donald] Trump’s mandate to deliver the most skilled technology workforce in the history of the U.S. government,” GSA Administrator Edward Forst said in a statement. “To achieve high-impact work that advances Administration priorities, we are embedding strong technical leaders who can perform with discipline and speed, filling critical skills gaps across our partner agencies and preparing them to meet the demands of the future.”

GSA said PIF fellows will provide guidance and support for projects designed to enhance public services and customer experience, including helping with implementation of the Cyber Incident Reporting for Critical Infrastructure Act, developing artificial intelligence tools to help speed up permitting for new infrastructure projects and helping to establish “an AI-ready Department of Veterans Affairs workforce and executing concrete AI and automation initiatives that improve veteran care delivery.”

The PIF program was first launched in 2012 during the Obama administration and was later codified by President Barack Obama in an August 2015 executive order. The fellowship operates as a part of GSA’s Technology Transformation Services.

“This class of PIFs represents the highest standard of technical talent in the federal government,” Greg Barbaccia, federal chief information officer and acting TTF director, said in a statement. “Their advanced expertise will advise our partner agencies on how they can best scale, secure, and transform the technologies that power our government.”

Since the start of the second Trump administration, the president — aided by the cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency — has slashed the federal workforce, including eliminating GSA’s 18F consulting office that helped agencies with their technology needs. The U.S. Digital Service, which was founded the same year as 18F and helps agencies modernize their systems, has also been rebranded as the U.S. DOGE Service.

Almost 20,000 technology, data and telecommunications employees left their jobs in 2025 following Trump’s return to the Oval Office, according to government data previously analyzed by Nextgov/FCW.

Despite this government upheaval, the administration has placed an emphasis on hiring technologists and modernizing agency services, including loosening degree requirements to prioritize skills and experience. The White House also launched the U.S. Tech Force in December to help the government recruit AI talent.

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Andrew Vanjani becomes CIO for USCIS

Natalie Alms — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 17:56:00 -0400

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which oversees lawful immigration from within the Department of Homeland Security, has a new chief information officer.

Andrew Vanjani took over the position on Tuesday, he posted on his LinkedIn. Vanjani has previously worked within the General Services Administration, for the state of Maryland and mostly recently at the Organization of American States.

The agency’s last CIO listed on its website, Bill McElhaney, left the agency last May, according to his LinkedIn. He had been the CIO since 2018.

Vanjani wrote in his LinkedIn post that he will be focused on leveraging emerging technology to combat fraud risks and designing future-ready infrastructure in his new role.

The agency has been focused on using technology to reduce its backlog of immigration applications and improve efficiency for years, including via electronic case processing. It’s also been working to modernize its IT infrastructure.

“We are incredibly pleased that Andrew Vanjani has joined USCIS as the new Chief Information Officer,” USCIS spokesman Zach Kahler said in a statement. “He shares the director’s vision of using advanced technology to create more efficient government and to protect the American people.”

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Trump nominates third VA CIO since the start of his administration

Edward Graham — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 17:42:00 -0400

President Donald Trump on Tuesday nominated Gary Shatswell to serve as the next chief information officer and assistant secretary for information and technology for the Department of Veterans Affairs, the third such candidate the White House has put forth to serve in the Senate-confirmed role.

Shatswell’s nomination comes roughly nine months after Trump withdrew former nominee Ryan Cote from consideration for the dual-hatted position. Cote, who served as the Transportation Department’s CIO during the first Trump administration, was initially picked by Trump to serve in the role last July, although the president retracted the nomination just weeks later.

Alan Boehme, who served as chief technology officer at H&M Group and held other executive leadership roles in the private sector, was similarly picked by Trump last June to serve as VA’s IT chief. His nomination was also withdrawn by the president at the end of that month.

Unlike the previous nominees, Shatswell is a current agency employee, having served as senior advisor to VA Secretary Doug Collins since December.

In a Dec. 2 LinkedIn post, Deputy Secretary Paul Lawrence — who has been performing the duties of the dual IT role in lieu of a permanent official — announced Shatswell’s swearing in as a senior advisor and said he “has a proven record of driving strategic transformation, improving operational performance, and leading high-performing technology organizations.”

Prior to joining VA, Shatswell held a variety of tech leadership roles across private industry. From August 2021 to November 2025, he served as Group CIO at Unilever Prestige. On his LinkedIn page, Shatswell said he was the division’s first CIO and “established centralized IT capabilities while advising brand leadership across the portfolio.”

Before holding that position, Shatswell also served as CIO at Paula's Choice Skincare, vice president of IT at Sur La Table and CIO at Sizzling Platter.

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Plankey withdraws nomination to lead CISA

David DiMolfetta — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 17:01:00 -0400

Sean Plankey, President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, has withdrawn himself from consideration for the role a year after being nominated, he confirmed to Nextgov/FCW.

“After thirteen months since my initial nomination, it has become clear the Senate will not confirm me,” he said in a statement sent to the White House that he confirmed. Politico first reported his withdrawal and the statement.

“While I humbly request the removal of my nomination, I wholeheartedly support President Trump’s upcoming nomination for CISA and look forward to the continued success of the United States of America,” it adds.

Plankey held an advisory role in the U.S. Coast Guard throughout much of the confirmation process, but was caught up in issues concerning Coast Guard cutter contracts with Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., who had put a hold on his nomination at the end of last year.

Plankey left the Coast Guard last month, which he said was intended to show Scott that he’s no longer involved in those contracts, Nextgov/FCW first reported.

Even after Plankey’s departure, it wasn’t clear that Scott had changed his mind on the CISA nomination, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.

Plankey was first nominated last March, and his nomination was reupped in January after he remained unconfirmed through 2025.

The move is the latest setback for the cyber agency, which has lost around a third of its workforce since Trump returned to office. Nick Andersen has been leading the agency in an acting capacity after its previous acting leader, Madhu Gottumukkala, left in February amid a series of leadership incidents during his tenure.

It’s not clear who will be nominated to lead the cyberdefense agency now. CISA and the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“This is an important position and I sincerely hope it has permanent leadership soon. If there is any hope that we can rebuild CISA after it has been decimated by the Trump administration, a qualified professional must be nominated and confirmed swiftly,” Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, the lead Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, said in a statement. “Our nation faces real threats from retaliation by Iran and to our critical infrastructure, additionally there’s a crucial need for CISA to help secure our federal elections this year.”

Rep. Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y., the panel’s chairman, also said "I am sad to hear that he has withdrawn.”

“We are at a pivotal time as America faces heightened cyber threats, and I’ve continued to say that CISA needs a Senate-confirmed director to steer the ship," Garbarino said in a statement. "I thank Sean for his work over the last year and for his DHS service. I look forward to working with the administration when a new nominee is put forward, and I hope this is a quick process given how long CISA has been without confirmed leadership. The Senate needs to do its job.”

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to include statements from Reps. Andrew Garbarino and Bennie Thompson.

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‘Faster and more disruptive’ tech underscores need to revamp the Fed's operations, its governor says

Edward Graham — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 15:19:00 -0400

Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller called for an overhaul of the central bank’s operations on Tuesday, saying that external factors like new technologies and the need for modernization necessitate a push to streamline the 12 regional reserve banks’ business functions.

Speaking at a Brookings Institution event, Waller said core operations like human resources, IT oversight and procurement, and vendor management “are increasingly platform-based, technology-driven and scale-intensive,” adding that “these functions are not delivered better or more efficiently with geographic dispersion.”

These types of operations are currently overseen by each of the reserve banks individually. Waller said that the Fed needs to revamp this model because “the external environment has changed.” This decentralized oversight approach, he added, conflicts with “faster and more disruptive” technologies.

“Artificial Intelligence is a coming storm that threatens to alter — and I believe, improve — all organizations,” Waller said. “The pace of technological change today means that the Fed does not have the time to sit back and ruminate about changes for months and years on end. If we are going to ride this wave and not be drowned by it, we need greater agility to capture efficiencies and manage risk, such as cybersecurity, and incorporating AI into our system processes.”

The Fed has already operationalized some AI capabilities to improve its systems. In a February speech on its AI use, Waller said the 12 regional banks were “moving toward a Federal Reserve System-first approach — with shared standards and infrastructure, while preserving decentralization where it matters most, particularly for monetary policy and economic research.” He added that “AI is a case study of what this approach looks like in practice.”

Waller — who is the Fed governor responsible for reserve bank oversight — outlined two models for overhauling these core business functions. The first approach, Waller said, would focus on “standardization within centralized system leadership.”

Under this model, “ the current physical footprint of the Reserve Banks remains largely intact, but each major support function — IT, HR, finance, procurement, vendor, management facilities — is placed under a single senior leader who runs that function within a reserve bank for the entire system.”

The second approach, Waller said, “goes further” and “adds physical consolidation across key functions, or placing stuff in low-cost, appropriate-talent cities.”

In this proposed scenario, he said “some reserve banks may face lower levels of employment in the future,” and added that “I believe we will need to rethink the physical footprint of the reserve banks going forward.”

Waller’s remarks came the same day that Kevin Warsh, President Donald Trump's nominee to lead the Fed, testified before the Senate Banking Committee and said he believed that greater AI adoption across the U.S. workforce will ultimately help to boost the economy.

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Microsoft to test third-party AI models for incorporation in its security offerings

Alexandra Kelley — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 13:11:00 -0400

Microsoft will be evaluating third-party artificial intelligence systems to pair with its network monitoring to see if powerful AI models can meet its internal cybersecurity benchmarking standards.

In a Wednesday announcement, Microsoft detailed plans to partner with other members of the AI industry to eventually integrate its products into the company’s security platforms to defend against external, AI-driven threats.

“Recent advances in AI model capabilities are changing how vulnerabilities are discovered and exploited,” Microsoft Security Chief Architect and Corporate Vice President Ales Holecek said in a blog post. “We are accelerating this work and partnering with the industry to use leading models, paired with our platforms and expertise, to turn AI-driven discovery into protection at scale.”

The announcement follows Anthropic’s debut of its ultra-powerful Claude Mythos Preview AI model earlier this month and the associated Project Glasswing, through which companies like Microsoft have been granted access to Mythos to test the system’s vulnerability discovery capabilities. Microsoft confirmed in its blog post that it is working with Mythos and other companies to coordinate a defensive response to the model’s discoveries.

Leveraging its own open-source model, CTI-REALM, Microsoft is testing models like Mythos to monitor its digital network security. Microsoft said it will focus on using the models for continuous network vulnerability scans, reducing attack exposure and building new solutions designed to help customers use advanced AI for security needs. That review will also include select open-source code bases.

Each of these three implementation areas incorporates existing Microsoft solutions, such as Microsoft Defender, Microsoft Security Exposure Management and the company’s Security Development Lifecycle framework to support effective AI model testing and implementation.

Microsoft will also be updating the Security Exposure Management solution to offer greater visibility and guidance into threat identification through a new component called Secure Now, along with next steps for customers to take to be proactive about securing their systems.

“While models are powerful on their own, without prioritization and context, large volumes of results can overwhelm development teams,” the blog post reads. “These new solutions are designed to pair model output with the context and security solutions needed for enterprises to drive security effectiveness at scale.”

Microsoft also said that it will continue to share updates as the testing process gets underway. In June, the company is expected to debut a new multi-modal security scanner powered by AI to leverage multiple types of data to detect sophisticated threats.

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Cyber Command carried out over 8,000 missions in 2025, director says

David DiMolfetta — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 12:54:00 -0400

U.S. Cyber Command, the digital combatant command tasked with defending the nation’s cyberspace and supporting other military components’ offensive and defensive operations, carried out over 8,000 missions in 2025, its new director said Tuesday.

Gen. Josh Rudd, recently confirmed to lead Cyber Command and the NSA in a dual-hatted capacity, told lawmakers on the House Armed Services Committee that he expects that number to increase through the remainder of 2026. He testified alongside Katie Sutton, the assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy.

The 2025 total is a 25% increase compared to 2024, Rudd added. The figures, which he did not elaborate on, help to underscore how cyber elements are becoming more ingrained into military activities.

The Trump administration has sought to highlight the command’s involvement in its broader military missions. Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has acknowledged Cyber Command’s role in operations that targeted Iranian nuclear facilities and the ousting of Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela. More recently, the command has played a role in Iran war efforts.

“Our participation in Operation Absolute Resolve and Operation Epic Fury are prime examples of this integration in action,” said Rudd, referring to Venezuela and Iran, respectively.

Cyber Command often conducts “hunt forward” operations, defensive missions designed to identify, mitigate and learn from foreign cyber threats that target allied host nation networks.

Sutton, in her testimony, said her office is working on a new cyber strategy expected for release this summer.

“We’re taking all of those and really making it an integrated approach that’s going to be a very bold transformation of how we think about cyberspace,” she said, describing how the Defense Department is drawing on previous national security strategies to inform the crafting of this new framework.

The department last released a cyber strategy in 2023.

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US needs to flesh out strategy to counter China’s robotics advances, lawmakers say

Edward Graham — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 10:08:00 -0400

Even as more advanced artificial intelligence capabilities drive greater progress in the field of robotics, lawmakers said on Tuesday that the U.S. still needs to develop a more effective strategy to counter China’s dominance in developing these technologies.

Although robots have been around for decades — primarily in manufacturing and to assist with other human-led tasks, such as medical procedures — these more powerful AI-infused machines can operate with greater autonomy. But even as the U.S. maintains its lead over China when it comes to global AI dominance, Congress and industry experts are concerned that America is ceding the robotics lead to Beijing.

During a House Science, Space and Technology Subcommittee on Research and Technology hearing, lawmakers and private sector representatives drew a contrast between fast-paced AI advances, and the development of actual, machine-based robots.

Michael Robbins, CEO of the Association for Uncrewed Vehicle Systems International, said, “we are entering an era of embodied AI — or physical AI — where AI is the brain and robotics is the body,” warning the panel that “today, America may still be winning the race to build the brains, but we are losing the race to build and deploy the bodies.”

Rep. Haley Stevens, D-Mich. — the subcommittee’s top Democrat — echoed his comments, also noting that “America is home to the best and brightest AI scientists who are developing the brains,” but that “when robots are made in the U.S., they're often assembled with Chinese parts.”

China has increasingly touted its robotics progress, most recently by holding a race in which one of its humanoid machines beat the human half-marathon world record time. Beijing’s military-civil fusion strategy also means that its private sector advances directly benefit its military ambitions, posing a national security threat to the U.S.

But China’s dominance in robotics also extends to the supply chains necessary for American companies to develop their own robots, Stevens noted. The country’s massive control of rare earth minerals and other components needed for developing robots and other advanced technologies, for instance, raises significant concerns about how best to decouple U.S. manufacturers from the Chinese market.

Jeff Burnstein, president of the A3 Association for Advancing Automation, said he wasn’t sure if banning Chinese-made robots — one potential way to drive domestic progress in the development of robotics — was a good idea because “right now, we do need those rare earth magnets here in the U.S., and I worry about, if we start a war over robotics, that we could lose some of those components that are vital to our goals.”

Rep. Jay Obernolte, R-Calif., who chairs the House panel, said the U.S. needs to adopt a national robotics strategy to counter China’s ambitions and also embolden domestic manufacturing and workforce adoption of robots. He noted that China and some U.S. allies, like South Korea and Japan, already have their own strategies, and added that, “there's such an obvious linkage between a robotics strategy and our national economy and national security.”

Obernolte, alongside Reps. Jennifer McClellan, D-Va., and Bob Latta, R-Ohio, introduced a measure in February seeking to establish a commission to evaluate and drive U.S. leadership in robotics.

Some agencies, such as the Department of Veterans Affairs, have already been experimenting with using robots, although the benefits actually provided by these machines have been mixed. Still, lawmakers and officials see a need to further expand uses of these technologies in both the public and private sectors, despite widespread adoption likely being a few years away.

Politico reported in December that Trump administration officials, including Commerce Department Secretary Howard Lutnick, were holding meetings with leaders from the robotics industry to discuss ways of turbocharging development of the advanced machines.

The White House’s AI Action Plan, released in July 2025, also included a section on supporting the development of next-generation manufacturing — a proposal that, Obernolte said, “notes the importance of this intersection between AI and robotics.”

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., the ranking member of the full House Science, Space and Technology Committee, said, however, that the single robotics-based recommendation in the action plan is not enough.

“While individual science agencies continue to make investments in robotics, there’s no coherent strategy for U.S. leadership,” Lofgren said, adding that “we can and still must lead in the field of robotics, but to achieve that goal, we need a concerted national effort to support innovation across the full robotics system.”

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