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Tech bills of the week: Improved biological data for research; Section 702 reform; and more

Alexandra Kelley — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 17:48:00 -0400

AI-ready biological datasets

On Thursday, Sens. Todd Young, R-Ind., and Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., jointly introduced the AI-Ready Bio-Data Standards Act, a new bill that aims to set standards for biological data so that it can be used to train AI models tailored to working on biological and medical breakthroughs.

Citing biological data as a strategic asset that can enhance U.S. national security posture, the bill directs the National Institute of Standards and Technology to “establish definitions, standards, resources, and frameworks” for biological datasets for research use.

In the House, Reps. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and Jay Obernotle, R-Calif., introduced companion legislation.

“Ushering in the Golden Age of Innovation is about more than just winning the global tech race — it’s about securing the safety and prosperity of our country for generations to come. Our bill is an important step in this effort and will better ensure the United States has the infrastructure in place to lead the 21st century,” Young said in a press release.

Reigning in Section 702

A bicameral team of lawmakers are taking on reforming the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, in an effort to plug the longstanding loophole that allows the government to purchase Americans’ data from databrokers without a warrant, as well as reauthorize and further reform Section 702 of that law, which allows law enforcement to collect data on non-U.S. persons abroad.

Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Mike Lee, R-Utah, joined Reps. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, and Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., to introduce an updated Government Surveillance Reform Act on Thursday.

The bill looks to impose stronger access controls on citizen data and private communications, specifically by requiring the federal government to get warrants before accessing U.S. persons’ communications gathered incidentally under Section 702, with an exception for emergency scenarios. It also prohibits federal agencies from using surveillance on a foreign person overseas as a pretext to then collect data on a U.S. person they are communicating with.

Beyond Section 702, the bill repeals the “make everyone a spy” expansion established in 2024 that allows the government to force companies to secretly spy on its behalf, among other changes. It also places warrant requirements on a variety of methods law enforcement agencies use to collect data on Americans and prevents them from using non-statuatory authorities to collect such information.

“Advances in technology, from AI to the explosion of Americans’ data available for purchase, have far outpaced the laws protecting Americans’ privacy and civil liberties,” Wyden said in a press release. “I’m proud to introduce this bipartisan bill as a leader of the Ben Franklin caucus, which stands for the proposition that liberty and security aren’t mutually exclusive.”

Lawmakers have recently targeted overhauling Section 702 as authorization for the authority approaches expiration, with Lee introducing the SAFE Act alongside Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., last month to mandate warrants for Section 702 searches that target U.S. persons.

Section 702 is set to sunset on April 20 of this year without further reauthorization.

Fortifying the workforce from AI

On March 11, Sens. Mark Warner, D-Va., and Mike Rounds, R-S.D,, introduced the Economy of the Future Commission Act, a bill that would establish a cohort of policymakers to devise steps Congress can take to fortify the U.S. workforce against negative economic headwinds from artificial intelligence by strengthening workforce training efforts.

If passed, the commission would be first tasked with compiling and publishing an interim report that forecasts expected employment changes resulting from increased AI use and adoption. The report would also offer resources for the public to better understand AI.

Within 13 months, the commission would deliver a final report with recommendations specifically for legislators to author policy that addresses issues like AI education and workforce training, reskilling programs, unemployment insurance policies, taxation policies and other strategies to help the U.S. stay at the forefront of the global AI and tech race.

“America’s workforce must be equipped to lead the transformation of the economy happening due to AI. This commission would help keep America ahead of our global competitors and keep America prosperous and innovative,” Rounds said in the press release.

Membership of the commission would include members of Congress from both parties, along with experts from industry, academia and government agencies whose areas of expertise range from labor, commerce, economic policy and education.

AI transparency in Medicare Advantage

Sen. Marshall Roger, R-Kan., submitted an amendment to the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act on Monday that, among other things, requires more transparency regarding how often artificial intelligence, machine learning and other technologies are involved in the approval and denial of requests made through a Medicare Advantage Plan.

The amendment also asks for clarity on how the determinations of “routinely approved items and services made solely through automation and artificial intelligence” impact Medicare Advantage patient access, focusing on potential disparities in access for rural and low-income beneficiaries.

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Lawmakers seek watchdog probe into former acting CISA chief’s polygraph failures

David DiMolfetta — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 15:04:00 -0400

A group of House lawmakers is asking federal watchdogs to investigate how officials handled an incident involving former acting Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Madhu Gottumukkala after he failed a required counter-intelligence polygraph. In a Friday letter requesting the probe, lawmakers said Gottumukkala also failed a second polygraph examination while serving in the role.

The letter was led by Rep. James Walkinshaw, D-Va. and signed by four others, asking the Department of Homeland Security and Intelligence Community inspectors general to conduct an investigation into the matter. The lawmakers said the development raises questions about whether officials adhered to established intelligence security rules and whether career CISA staff were improperly targeted after administering the exams.

“We write with deep concern regarding the Department of Homeland Security’s investigation into whether cybersecurity staff provided false information to the former Acting Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency,” the letter says. Reps. Suhas Subramanyam, D-Va., Shontel Brown, D-Ohio, Eric Swalwell, D-Calif. and D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton also signed on.

Extensive Politico reporting late last year indicated that, in July 2025, Gottumukkala requested access to a Controlled Access Program, or CAP, a category of highly sensitive intelligence programs that require officials to demonstrate a specific need-to-know and pass a counter-intelligence polygraph before being granted access. He did not pass, and CISA staff involved in the polygraph administration were subsequently placed on leave.

The letter, however, indicates Gottumukkala failed two polygraph exams. House Homeland Security Committee staff were informed about the second polygraph exam and its results by one of the individuals placed on leave, a person familiar with the matter told Nextgov/FCW.

Under intelligence community procedures, failing such a polygraph typically triggers a security review process overseen by agency security officials and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The letter, citing procedural documentation, states that CISA’s chief security officer is required to notify ODNI and initiate a review of the individual’s clearance. The lawmakers said it remains unclear whether those steps were taken.

“We are concerned that Dr. Gottumukkala failed to adhere to established Intelligence Community and Security Executive Agent directives after failing a CAP,” they wrote.

At least five career CISA staff members and one contractor involved in scheduling or approving the polygraph examinations received letters from DHS Acting Chief Security Officer Michael Boyajian informing them their security clearances were suspended, according to the lawmakers. Boyajian’s notice reportedly accused those staff members of misleading Gottumukkala about the requirement to complete a polygraph examination before accessing the controlled program.

Three days later, the employees received additional notification from CISA’s acting chief human capital officer that they had been placed on administrative leave pending an investigation, lawmakers wrote. As of February, their clearances had remained suspended and they were still on administrative leave, the letter says.

The lawmakers also asked the watchdogs to examine whether the suspension of staff could constitute retaliation or a prohibited personnel practice under federal law governing whistleblower protections within the intelligence community.

A spokesperson for DNI Tulsi Gabbard referred Nextgov/FCW to the ODNI IG office, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment. DHS has also been asked for comment.

The polygraph incident was among a smattering of other matters reported in recent months by Politico about Gottumukkala’s tenure. Last month, Gottumukkala was moved into a strategic implementation role in DHS, and executive assistant director for cybersecurity Nick Andersen took his place leading CISA in an acting capacity.

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Stryker hack could set stage for more pro-Iran cyber sabotage

David DiMolfetta — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 12:33:00 -0400

Cybersecurity experts say the recent hack of medical technology giant Stryker may be an early indicator of wider, pro-Iran cyber sabotage activity.

Pro-Iran and pro-Palestinian hacking group Handala claimed responsibility for the cyberattack, which saw the hacking collective apparently deploy wiper malware targeting Microsoft InTune management services installed on employees’ phones, including their personal devices.

Pro-Iran hacking groups frequently target systems in the U.S. and Israel, as seen in late 2023 when a group defaced water treatment systems in Pennsylvania that utilized Israel-made Unitronics equipment. Stryker acquired the Israeli medical technology company OrthoSpace in 2019 and holds significant contracts with the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs.

The Unit 42 threat intelligence arm of Palo Alto Networks is “tracking an increased risk of wiper attacks related to the conflict with Iran, including multiple related incidents impacting organizations in Israel and the U.S.,” the company said in a Thursday blog post.

“The reported wiper attack … may represent a similar dynamic, an early signal of activity that could expand beyond a single target,” said Justin Kohler, a former Air Force analyst and chief product officer at SpecterOps. “Organizations need to assume that attackers will gain a foothold and focus on proactively shutting down the attack paths adversaries rely on to escalate privileges, move laterally and expand their impact.”

A wiper-style attack on a company like Stryker is dangerous because “it targets operational continuity rather than just data theft. In the healthcare ecosystem, outages affecting device manufacturers or support systems can ripple across hospitals, supply chains and patient care environments,” said Ensar Seker, chief information security officer at SOCRadar.

The hack has challenged notions that direct physical targeting of apparent Iran state-funded cyberwarfare infrastructure would reduce the likelihood of any successful hacking attempts tied to the war. Pro-Iran hacking groups, until recently, have typically made overstated, unverifiable or false claims about their wartime activities.

“Organizations should take this as a reminder that destructive cyber operations are no longer limited to nation-state military targets,” Seker added.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said Thursday it is investigating the Stryker incident. The war, which broke out Feb. 28, was expected to test the strength of U.S. cyberdefenses.

California Rep. Eric Swalwell, the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee’s cybersecurity panel, told reporters Thursday that his team was in touch with Stryker and evaluating how they’re working with federal responders, as well as how the hack may have impacted others that rely on the company’s devices.

“We want to understand from CISA … what is the vulnerability status right now for companies in the United States because of Iran’s capabilities?” he said, referring to workforce reduction mechanisms put in place over the last year within the Department of Homeland Security cyber agency that have shed around a third of its staff.

Complicating matters is an ongoing DHS shutdown, which has further reduced the number of working employees at CISA. Those employees are also not getting paid while the shutdown continues.

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VA’s top tech and AI official announces departure

Edward Graham — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 10:52:00 -0400

The longtime tech and artificial intelligence lead for the Department of Veterans Affairs announced on Thursday that he is leaving the agency.

VA Chief Technology Officer and Chief AI Officer Charles Worthington said in a LinkedIn post that “the time is right for me to step down” from his role. He did not immediately say what he will do following his departure.

“I came to government to close the gap between what the best companies in the world were doing with technology and the way our government delivers services,” he wrote. “I'm proud to say our team made a dent.”

Worthington helped spearhead a number of tech and AI initiatives across VA since joining the agency in 2017, many of which he referenced in his post.

Among these, he noted that his team launched the VA: Health and Benefits App, which was designed to make scheduling healthcare visits and accessing benefits information more efficient for veterans, and it has reached 4 million downloads. Worthington also worked to modernize VA.gov to make it more accessible and veteran-friendly.

“When I joined VA, the Office of the CTO didn’t exist, and the VA Digital Service team didn’t have an institutional home,” he wrote. “Today, our 100+ engineers, designers, architects, and [product managers] have built something I’m immensely proud of, and I will be rooting for every one of them.”

As the agency’s AI lead, Worthington has also helped to drive VA’s embrace of the emerging capabilities to enhance internal operations and veteran-facing services and healthcare.

In an October 2024 interview with Nextgov/FCW, he said his approach was to identify key areas that could best benefit from use of the emerging capabilities.

“For our most important problems — for example, clinician burnout is one of these problems that we’re trying to tackle — we’re thinking about ways in which technology, including AI, might be able to help with that,” he said, adding that “I like approaching things that way, where we're starting with the problem in mind and then figuring out what tech might fit and then going and acquiring it if we need it.”

VA’s 2025 AI use case inventory, released in January, lists 367 examples of the agency looking to adopt AI tools. In his LinkedIn post, Worthington called the inventory “one of the most transparent AI inventories in health care,” and said the agency has been “using AI-powered document processing to help [the Veterans Health Administration] eliminate a 70,000 case application backlog.”

The agency’s AI inventory includes several use cases focused on using predictive models and other advanced capabilities to identify veterans at risk of suicide. As part of a reporting project, Nextgov/FCW previously explored in-depth how VA is using AI to enhance its suicide prevention efforts.

During a House hearing last year, Worthington told lawmakers that one of these use cases, the Recovery Engagement and Coordination for Health-Veteran Enhanced Treatment — or REACH VET — program, “has used AI algorithms to identify over 130,000 veterans at elevated risk, improving outpatient care and reducing suicide attempts.”

Prior to joining VA, Worthington served as a founding member of the U.S. Digital Service — which has since been rebranded as the U.S. DOGE Service under the Trump administration — and as a senior advisor to the federal CTO. He first joined the government in 2013 as a presidential innovation fellow.

“Serving at VA has been the most rewarding chapter of my career so far, but I'm equally excited about what's next,” Worthington wrote on LinkedIn. “We are in the early innings of the most important technology shift since the Internet. The deep integration of AI into the systems that power how we live, work, and experience critical services has barely begun, and I plan to be building at this frontier at scale.”

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FBI queries of Americans’ data under FISA 702 rose 35% in 2025

David DiMolfetta — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 18:21:00 -0400

FBI searches of U.S. person data collected using a controversial spying authority rose some 35% in 2025, according to an FBI letter to Congress that was obtained by Nextgov/FCW.

The bureau’s searches of Americans’ data, collected under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, rose from 5,518 in December 2024 to 7,413 in November 2025, according to the March 11 letter signed by Ted Groves, the acting assistant director of the FBI’s Office of Congressional Affairs.

The letter was sent to Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the top lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The 702 authority, which permits the NSA, FBI and other agencies to access foreigners’ communications overseas without a court warrant, can incidentally sweep up communications of Americans talking to targeted persons, raising major civil liberties concerns.

The number of U.S. person communications gathered under 702 is often a key statistic cited by civil society organizations that have long pushed for major reforms to the law.

In 2024, only 38% of queries “returned either content or non-content 702-acquired information,” the letter says, adding that the figure dropped to 28% in 2025.

“Content” refers to the substance of the communications, such as the actual text of emails, chat messages or recorded phone calls. Conversely, “non-content” information is metadata about communications, including details like the email addresses or phone numbers used, IP addresses or the time a message was transmitted.

Collected 702 communications are stored in classified databases, where analysts query them for foreign intelligence. Search terms — known as “selectors” — can include names, phone numbers or email addresses of targeted individuals. Analysts may query stored U.S. person data when they believe doing so is reasonably likely to return useful information for investigations.

The letter was reported earlier by The Record, the news unit of cyber threat intelligence firm Recorded Future.

The FBI declined to comment.

Section 702 is due to expire in April unless Congress acts to renew it.

The Trump administration is pushing for a clean reauthorization of the law. FBI Director Kash Patel and CIA Director John Ratcliffe met privately with Senate Republicans Wednesday to push for an extension, as House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said he intends to try passing a renewal the week before the authority lapses.

Ratcliffe has previously told Congress that the Trump administration attributes many of its national security achievements to Section 702, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share details of private discussions about the statute.

The increase outlined in the FBI letter will likely disappoint civil liberties groups, which have long pushed for a warrant requirement for searches of U.S. person data. National security officials have historically and successfully pushed back against a warrant measure in prior reauthorization cycles, though it came close to fruition during the 2024 reauthorization debate, when a House amendment failed in a 212–212 vote.

The FBI has acknowledged its improper use of Section 702, specifically admitting to searching for information on individuals involved in the January 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot, as well as people arrested during 2020 racial justice protests following the police killing of George Floyd.

The law, enacted in 2008, codified parts of the once-secret Stellarwind surveillance program created under the Bush administration after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. In 2013, former NSA contractor Edward Snowden disclosed documents detailing how the authority was used, fueling a global debate over privacy and mass surveillance.

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Vought takes aim at GAO in new guidance

Natalie Alms — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 17:36:00 -0400

The Office of Management and Budget called into question the authority of Congress’ watchdog, the Government Accountability Office, in a Tuesday update to the government’s guidance on internal controls.

OMB Director Russell Vought has long clashed with GAO, dating back to his tenure in the first Trump administration. In September, he said that he didn’t think the congressional oversight office should exist at all, calling it a “quasi-legislative independent entity.”

This week, Vought wrote in new guidance that OMB has been deferring too much to GAO, which sets internal control standards for agencies.

“Doing so has failed to prioritize agency internal control processes to adequately protect American taxpayer dollars, leading to documented examples of widespread abuse,” he wrote.

In 1982, Congress passed a law requiring agencies to establish internal accounting and administrative controls in line with standards prescribed by the head of GAO, the Comptroller General.

Congress directed OMB to establish guidelines for evaluating agency accounting and control systems to see if they’re in compliance, in consultation with GAO.

Despite all this, Vought wrote that prior versions of OMB’s guidance have “overly deferred to the direction and priorities of external entities whose views are not binding on the Executive Branch, such as the Government Accountability Office.” His assertion that GAO’s recommendations are not binding to executive federal agencies is a position OMB has established in other guidance as well.

"We stand by our work for the Congress on fraud, improper payments, and ensuring the taxpayers’ dollars are efficiently and effectively spent,” a GAO spokesperson told Nextgov/FCW in a statement.

They noted that “by law, GAO and OMB are responsible for establishing internal controls for federal agencies in consultation with each other.”

Vought wrote in the introduction to the new guidance that the update reflects the Trump White House’s commitment to combatting waste, fraud and abuse — something that is part of GAO’s mission via its work auditing federal programs, reporting to Congress and providing recommendations. GAO’s work has resulted in about $1.5 trillion in financial benefits since 2002, according to its spokesperson.

GAO is also responsible for monitoring cases of impoundment, where agencies withhold funding enacted by Congress, an issue that came up in Trump’s first term. Trump has said that he wants to challenge the law against impoundment, which he says is unconstitutional. Vought has declined to commit to adhering to that law when asked during congressional hearings.

As of July 2025, GAO had opened at least 46 impoundment investigations and found in some cases that agencies had violated the Impoundment Control Act. The White House said after one such finding that it would cooperate with the top watchdog only when it does not “unduly burden” Trump’s agenda.

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AI has created ‘almost infinite demand’ for memory components, Dell execs say

Alexandra Kelley — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 16:18:00 -0400

Executives at Dell Technologies see data-storing memory capacities as the chief supply chain challenge facing the U.S. today, and are looking to D.C. regulators to reduce further barriers to scaling the nation's artificial intelligence infrastructure.

Dell Global Chief Technology Officer and Chief AI Officer John Roese briefed press on the sidelines of the Dell Technologies Federal Symposium on Thursday about the current landscape of the technology supply chain, highlighting a specific shortage: computer memory.

“We didn’t build … out any new fabs for a period of time that would cause the problem eventually. But then we amplified it by having a thing called AI happen,” Roese said.

Memory in computing refers to specific types of semiconductor chips that allow for large data storage, and they are crucial in facilitating advanced computational workflows where AI systems need to process large volumes of data.

“We've created almost infinite demand, and it will take time for us to catch up,” Roese continued, adding that limited supply and increasing demand keep prices for memory hardware high.

Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell reiterated the current imbalance in supply and demand for key components of computing architectures.

“The constraints are ones we all know about,” he said on Bloomberg TV following a keynote address with Darío Gil, the undersecretary for science at the Energy Department. “It’s memory, silicon. It’s advanced node semiconductors, and power, and the infrastructure to build up the power.”

Roese said that Dell — with one of the largest technology supply chains in the world — sees supply chain disruptions as inevitable, and adapting to new system architectures is one way to counteract bottlenecks in fundamental materials.

“You have good architectures that can adapt,” Roese said. “It's not just about getting more sources; it's about changing your architecture. It's about optimizing the system. It's a very complex set of tools that we use to basically navigate what effectively looks like infinite demand.”

To further mitigate disruptions in the fragile supply chain, Roese said Dell’s messaging to policymakers is “pretty unambiguous” in advocating for balanced regulations.

“We are clear with [regulators and policymakers] that it’s helpful if they don't create more obstacles,” Roese said.

The Trump administration’s National Security Strategy is partly focused on monitoring and fortifying the global supply chain.

Editor's note: This article ha been updated to better reflect the type of regulations that Dell would like to see.

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AI ‘nihilism’ is a barrier to better health care, CMS lead says

Edward Graham — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 14:34:00 -0400

LAS VEGAS — Artificial intelligence has the potential to transform the delivery of healthcare services across the U.S., but patient distrust of the technology’s capabilities needs to be met with a greater response by clinicians on how it can maximize medical care, the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said on Thursday.

During a keynote session at the HIMSS conference in Las Vegas, CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz said new tools like AI can radically improve the delivery of care from rural communities to large cities, but that “our biggest — and your biggest — challenge is nihilism.”

He said internal data collected from querying Medicare patients found that they still do not trust AI — a barrier to greater adoption and deployment of these tools, since “no one has gotten to them with the use case of why it will transform their life for the better.”

To help overcome this continuing hesitancy, he said healthcare professionals “need to embrace the reality that both in health and in medical, we need to reach the people who are using these tools and compel an idea to come up, which is, ‘If we use this right, it will save lives, transform your ability to get access to care, allow us to manage a $1.8 trillion business, and we'll all be better off.”

CMS is itself already looking at how it can further deploy AI to enhance services for Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries.

Oz said the agency has had internal discussions about introducing agentic AI “for every beneficiary” by the end of the year, but added that “by [the] time we're done in this administration, for sure, it should be out there.”

Agentic AI systems are able to operate largely autonomously and can take steps to meet a specific goal, rather than just simply responding to user prompts for information.

“If you can buy a mortgage with agentic AI giving you advice, you should be able to use that same technology to help you pick … your [Medicare] Advantage plan, or which doctor to go to,” Oz said.

Private companies and some federal agencies have encouraged their workforces to experiment with using AI tools, such as chatbots like ChatGPT. Oz said healthcare professionals attending the conference should also begin to incrementally use the technology for mundane tasks to build up their familiarity with its capabilities.

It’s an approach that Oz said CMS has incorporated into its operations.

For internal meetings, agency personnel will split off into groups of two or three to have more engaging discussions about a specific problem they are hoping to address. Those small groups then share their best ideas with the rest of their meeting colleagues, with those presentations recorded and then uploaded to an AI system.

That output, Oz said, provides “more sophisticated, deeper thoughts about what we should do about that problem, and this has been incredibly effective, transformative in making their meetings more efficient.”

He added that he wants the approach to be used “by everybody at all levels of the administration.”

Under the Trump administration, CMS has also doubled-down on the use of AI to help address waste, fraud and abuse across its network. But Kim Brandt — deputy administrator and chief operating officer at CMS, who also spoke during Thursday’s keynote session — said AI used in this context can also provide broader benefits.

“One of our big things is we want to use AI to be able to find the bad actors, but we also want to help it to be able to determine where we have policies that are confusing or that need change, and educate providers to help them so that they can better understand and get it right,” she said. “So for us, it's a graduated approach: We wanted to use AI to really help us be able to find out where the problems are.”

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Microsoft takes Anthropic's side in DOD fight, warns it sets a new precedent

Nick Wakeman — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 13:20:00 -0400

Microsoft has filed a brief in support of Anthropic in the artificial intelligence tech company's ongoing battle with the Defense Department.

The company filed on Tuesday at the U.S. District Court in Northern California, where Anthropic filed suit earlier this month challenging DOD’s determination that the company is a supply chain risk to national security.

Microsoft is arguing for a temporary restraining order on enforcement of the determination. Microsoft believes the ban would harm the company and other contractors that have deeply embedded Anthropic’s technology into their products.

Known as an amicus brief, the three-page document from Microsoft also lays out its argument over why DOD’s determination that Anthropic is a supply chain risk sets a dangerous precedent that puts all government contractors at risk.

A restraining order would also buy time for the two sides to resolve their dispute.

"We believe everyone involved shares common goals, and we need time and a process to find common ground," a Microsoft spokesperson said. "Everyone wants to ensure AI not used for mass domestic surveillance or to start a war without human control. The government, the entire tech sector, and the American public need a path to achieve all these goals together."

In its brief, Microsoft argues that DOD’s determination is an unprecedented use of the statute that describes “supply chain risk.”

This statute has never been used against a U.S. company before and has only been used against one foreign company, the Switzerland-headquartered Acronis AG.

In July 2025, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued an order prohibiting the use of Acronis products by intel agencies. The General Services Administration expanded the prohibition to all agencies.

Microsoft calls the action against Anthropic “drastic.” After DOD made its determination, President Trump ordered all federal agencies to stop using Anthropic.

“The determination has, without explaining the basis, labeled Anthropic a ‘supply chain risk’ against whom extraordinary measures are needed ‘to protect national security,’” Microsoft wrote. “The authority for the determination itself permits this action only against an adversary that poses an articulated threat to the United States.”

The word “adversary” is a key part of Microsoft’s argument that because Anthropic is a U.S. company, declaring them an adversary over a contract dispute is extreme.

Microsoft argues DOD does not explain why it considers Anthropic an adversary, which the statute requires before such a determination can be issued.

Microsoft also argues that a negotiated settlement is possible because DOD and Anthropic fundamentally agree on the guardrails that should govern the use of AI.

Their dispute arose over the specific terms and conditions. In a footnote, Microsoft refers to DOD’s recent agreement with OpenAI as proof that negotiations are possible.

A temporary restraining order would allow time for the negotiation without companies like Microsoft having to dismantle products containing Anthropic, which could be extremely disruptive and expensive.

“Government suppliers will also have to expend substantial effort removing Anthropic and Anthropic products from their offerings to [DOD] in cases where alternatives are unavailable or Anthropic products are embedded,” Microsoft writes. “The costs for these actions—including reengineering, reprocurement, and associated legal and administrative costs—will be incurred immediately as suppliers will have to invest time, energy, personnel, and money into modifying and rebuilding offerings that incorporate Anthropic’s products and confirming the new versions of those offerings meet the contractual requirements.”

DOD’s action against Anthropic has the potential to delay all ongoing IT contracting at the department because contractors will have to review all their offerings to identify where they are using Anthropic, Microsoft said.

Microsoft wants the restraining order so the court can determine whether DOD followed the statutory requirements to make the determination.

Ultimately, Microsoft's brief frames DOD's action as a dramatic overreach because of the determination process' intent as focusing on foreign adversaries.

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CISA launches investigation into Stryker cyberattack

David DiMolfetta — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 11:00:00 -0400

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has launched an investigation into the hack of medical technology giant Stryker a day after an apparent pro-Tehran hacker group sabotaged employees’ devices around the world in response to the U.S.-Israel war against Iran.

The worldwide cyberattack wiped employees’ phones and prevented workers from accessing their computers. The logo of Handala, a pro-Iran and pro-Palestinian hacking group, reportedly appeared on employee login pages, and the hacking collective’s X account also claimed responsibility.

“We are working shoulder-to-shoulder with our public- and private‑sector partners as we continue to uncover relevant information and provide technical assistance for the targeted attack on Stryker, while steadfastly standing at the ready to defend our nation’s critical infrastructure,” CISA acting director Nick Andersen said in a statement to Nextgov/FCW. “As with all cyber incidents, we have launched an investigation into this matter.”

Stryker is based in Michigan and has business units worldwide. The company is one of the largest medical technology organizations in the world and specializes in creating devices and equipment for use in hospitals and surgeries.

Pro-Iran hacking groups have made a habit of targeting any computer systems tied to nations deemed foreign adversaries to Tehran, especially the U.S. and Israel. In late 2023, amid the Israel-Hamas war, one hacker group defaced the interfaces of water treatment systems in Pennsylvania, which had Israel-made Unitronics equipment built inside.

In 2019, Stryker acquired Israeli medical technology company OrthoSpace. The company and some of its business units have major contracts with the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs.

In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Stryker said it believes the hack is “contained” but is expected to continue causing “disruptions and limitations of access” to certain company information systems and applications supporting parts of their operations and functions.

The filing acknowledges a “cybersecurity incident” that impacted “certain information technology systems of the company that has resulted in a global disruption to the company’s Microsoft environment.”

The FBI declined to comment when asked if it was investigating the hack.

“We’re in a new phase here, as this is our first public example of Iranian cyber retaliation in the course of this conflict,” said Alex Orleans, head of threat intelligence at cybersecurity firm Sublime Security. “Before, we were seeing mostly hacktivist groups or hacktivist front personas (including Handala) making unverifiable claims. Now we have an apparently concrete incident with a known Iranian intelligence front taking credit for the operation.”

“We expected to see some groups emerging from the rubble, so to speak, following the initial stage of this conflict. The nature of this incident functions as a strong leading indicator, in that it’s unlikely to have been an isolated case,” he added. “Additional Iranian state-nexus groups likely have attempted, or will attempt, similar disruptive operations in the near-term.”

On Thursday, Polish officials said Iran may have attempted to hack into the European nation’s National Centre for Nuclear Research.

Editor's note: This article has been updated to note that the FBI declined to comment.

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IBM unveils new hybrid quantum computing architecture

Alexandra Kelley — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 09:00:00 -0400

IBM is betting on hybrid systems being the future of near-term quantum computing, introducing a new computing architecture that uses both classical and quantum-specific technology to apply the benefits of quantum-based capabilities to current problems.

Announced on Thursday, the new architecture combines quantum hardware with leading classical processing and graphics processing units — along with larger infrastructure like high-speed networks and shared digital storage — to leverage the promised benefits of quantum advantage to modern problems.

Images shared with Nextgov/FCW depict the new architecture as being underpinned by the combination of classical CPUs and GPUs that work alongside IBM’s quantum compute systems, such as its recent large-scale processors, Starling and Heron. It connects to a quantum management resource interface that sits below classical and quantum programming software models, which all receive information from applications and classical and quantum programming libraries.

Some entities are already making use of IBM’s new architecture, including Cleveland Clinic researchers simulating digital models of protein molecules and IBM and RIKEN scientists simulating iron-sulfur clusters.

“Today’s quantum processors are beginning to tackle the hardest parts of scientific problems — those governed by quantum mechanics in chemistry,” Jay Gambetta, director of IBM Research and an IBM fellow, said in a press release. “The future lies in quantum-centric supercomputing, where quantum processors work together with classical high-performance computing to solve problems that were previously out of reach. IBM is building the technology and systems that brings this future of computing into reality today.”

Hybrid computing architectures have emerged as a way to bring quantum-inspired computing to market, as fault-tolerant quantum computers still need to be successfully developed. IBM joins Microsoft and NVIDIA as companies launching various hardware, middleware and software solutions aimed at incorporating into a tech stack that can bring the benefits of quantum computing to existing and reliable classical infrastructures.

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Siemens joins Genesis Mission

Alexandra Kelley — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 17:55:00 -0400

Siemens announced on Wednesday that it signed a memorandum of understanding with the Department of Energy to participate in the Genesis Mission, a government initiative to leverage the U.S. high-performance computing infrastructure to spur innovation in artificial intelligence.

In a press release, Siemens said it will “provide industrial technology” to support the Genesis Mission, chiefly bringing physics-informed simulation, digital twins, automation systems and secure infrastructure into a connected industrial tech stack. Other collaboration areas will feature interoperable, secure and industrial-grade digital infrastructure to help advance AI-enabled research ecosystems.

Unlike other Genesis participants, such as OpenAI and xAI, Siemens said that it will be supporting deep domain AI workflows rather than a model or single point solution.

“Siemens has a long history of trusted partnership with the U.S. government, supporting scientific leadership and industrial competitiveness,” Siemens Corporation’s interim president and CEO, Ann Fairchild, said in a statement. “The Genesis Mission represents an immense opportunity to modernize the digital infrastructure that underpins scientific discovery and innovation. Together with DOE and partners, we can strengthen the connection between research and real-world deployment, accelerating innovation across industry and infrastructure.”

Other companies participating in Genesis include Accenture, AMD, Anthropic, Armada, Amazon Web Services, Cerebras, CoreWeave, Dell, DrivenData, Google, Groq, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, NVIDIA, OpenAI, Oracle, Periodic Labs, Palantir, Project Prometheus, Radical AI, xAI and XPRIZE.

Focus areas for the companies are 20 fields that the government has recognized as critical, including AI, quantum information sciences and biotechnology.

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CMS touts early uses of new biometric verification tools for Medicare.gov

Edward Graham — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 17:05:00 -0400

LAS VEGAS — The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services rolled out enhanced identity verification login options for Medicare.gov earlier this month, and an official said the agency is already seeing a strong response rate from users despite making little fanfare about the move.

During a Tuesday session at the HIMSS conference in Las Vegas, Amy Gleason — acting administrator of the U.S. DOGE Service and strategic advisor to CMS — told the audience “we just added modern identity credentials to Medicare.gov, so now Medicare patients can come in and use Login.gov, ID.me or CLEAR.”

She said the agency “silently” added the new login options to the site last week, and added that users creating new accounts can “authenticate using just their biometrics, just like they can in other parts of their life.”

Gleason said that within the first five to six days, “25% of the people just automatically picked one of those new modern credentials.”

She added that “60% of new accounts that have been created have all been using one of these modern credentials, and 90% of those people that created a new account already had been identity-verified somewhere else before they came.”

In a March 4 press release, CMS said “if someone chooses to create an account, Medicare is providing new and free options with enhanced security to help protect their Medicare information.” The agency noted that current Medicare account users can continue to log in using their current login credentials.

The government’s centralized, single sign-on identity proofing service — Login.gov — is used by the public to access a range of federal and state platforms and includes facial recognition verification. ID.me is another, private sector digital identity proofing platform that also leverages facial recognition technology to verify users to federal platforms, including the IRS and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

CLEAR announced in December that it reached an agreement with CMS to provide enhanced identity verification services for Medicare.gov. The company said at the time that the platform “will integrate CLEAR1 — CLEAR’s secure identity platform — for account creation, account recovery, and access to healthcare information.”

Gleason had been serving as acting administrator of the Department of Government Efficiency after tech billionaire Elon Musk departed the cost-cutting unit last year. DOGE and its allies have said that increased use of identity verification tools like Login.gov is necessary for advancing the Trump administration’s anti-fraud efforts.

Nextgov/FCW Senior Correspondent Natalie Alms contributed to this report.

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NASA seeks extension of SEWP V to Sept. 30

Nick Wakeman — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 16:25:22 -0400

Faced with several bid protests and an extremely large number of proposals, NASA is asking for authorization to extend SEWP V for a few more months until the end of the fiscal year.

SEWP V is currently slated to expire on April 30, but NASA has not completed evaluating proposals for SEWP VI.

The agency therefore wants to extend the current contract to Sept. 30. SEWP is one of the market’s largest IT product and services contracts. The next version will have a $60 billion ceiling.

“Additional time is needed to make selection and award,” NASA posted on the SEWP website.

NASA does not mention the protests in its announcement, but there are nine active challenges at the Government Accountability Office from companies whose proposals were rejected during phase one of the evaluation process.

GAO's deadlines to rule on the protests fall in late May and early June, well past the April 30 end date for SEWP V. NASA said it wants SEWP VI to begin the day after SEWP V ends, so there is no disruption in the program.

By extending the end of SEWP V to Sept. 30, the agency should have enough time to get through the remaining evaluations as well as resolve the protests.

That will also leave the agency a few weeks to plan a going-away party for Joanne Woytek, the long-time SEWP program manager. Woytek announced Tuesday that she will leave NASA on Oct. 17.

She has led the program since 1999 and is considered the chief architect of its success.

Woytek has said she is not retiring, but will take her skills and experience and apply them to a new opportunity.

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Senator eyes updating NDAA with AI use guidance

Alexandra Kelley — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 14:09:00 -0400

Lawmakers are considering updating the fiscal year 2026 National Defense Authorization Act to address how artificial intelligence systems are used in military operations following the fallout between Anthropic and the Department of Defense, one elected official said this week.

Speaking on Wednesday morning during a conversation at the Brookings Institution, Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., said he and fellow elected officials have been examining how effectively current legal operating frameworks are governing advanced AI technologies and how AI should be safely used alongside warfighters. The results of this analysis could potentially update governance provisions in this year’s National Defense Authorization Act.

“For this next NDAA, I've been working with some of my colleagues already on this and how do we address this issue within Anthropic,” Kelly said. “Obviously, rules of engagement is something every military has, they change over time.”

Kelly’s office further confirmed to Nextgov/FCW that he is working on solutions to address AI usage in military operations in this year’s defense bill. His office declined to comment further.

Kelly acknowledged that combat demands flexibility and speed, and said, “We're going to have to make exceptions” to having a human in the loop for autonomous offensive systems. He also said contractors and agencies looking to use advanced sensitive technologies should be having discussions “up front” on how both parties intend to use the technology.

“I think it is a reasonable thing to expect from any contractor that there are things we should and shouldn't be doing within the U.S. military,” Kelly said. “We’re not Russia, we're not China or North Korea. We have to have a certain level of standard. And I think those standards actually help us. It helps us with our allies, and at the end of the day, I do really think it makes us stronger and more effective as a military.”

Kelly’s comments come amid an ongoing dispute between Anthropic and the Pentagon following the company’s refusal to relax its safety standards for defense operations that could include surveillance of U.S. citizens and using AI in autonomous lethal weapons. The situation further escalated when President Donald Trump ordered all federal agencies to shed their contracts, resulting in Anthropic suing multiple federal agencies alleging illegal retaliation.

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Suspected pro-Iran hacker group tied to Stryker cyberattack

David DiMolfetta — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 13:17:00 -0400

A pro-Iran hacker group is believed to be behind a worldwide cyberattack affecting medical device company Stryker, wiping employees’ phones and preventing workers from accessing their computers.

The logo of Handala, a pro-Iran and pro-Palestinian hacking group, appeared on employee login pages, according to posts on social media site Reddit. Several purported employees described being locked out of company-linked phones and other devices. The hacking collective’s X account also claimed responsibility.

Stryker is based in Michigan and has business units worldwide. Many colleagues’ phones have been wiped, and employees have been instructed to remove various company management features like Microsoft Intune from personal devices, according to one person on Reddit claiming to be an employee based in Australia.

“We are currently experiencing a global network disruption affecting the Windows environment. Our teams are actively working to restore systems and operations. Stryker has business continuity measures in place, and we’re committed to serve our customers,” the company said in a statement.

Stryker is one of the largest medical technology companies in the world and specializes in creating devices and equipment for use in hospitals and surgeries.

If fully confirmed, the hack would represent, arguably, the most significant cyber incident linked to the recent Iran war so far.

In 2019, Stryker acquired Israeli medical technology company OrthoSpace. The company and some of its business units also have significant contracts with the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs, according to GovTribe, a federal market intelligence platform owned by Nextgov/FCW parent company GovExec.

Nextgov/FCW has also asked the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency for comment.

“This incident, if confirmed, is a significant escalation because it moves from theater-linked cyber noise into disruptive, potentially destructive effects against a major U.S. medical technology firm,” said Alexander Leslie, a senior advisor at cyber threat intelligence firm Recorded Future.

“The big risk now is copycat escalation and opportunistic follow-on activity, especially if the attackers pair disruption with ‘proof’ drops and narrative packaging to manufacture momentum and, therefore, enable influence operations,” he added.

The U.S.-Israel war on Iran, launched Feb. 28, is expected to test U.S. cyberdefenses. Experts for weeks have advised organizations to stay on guard for cyber retaliation from Iran-aligned groups.

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INDOPACOM was all in on Anthropic. Now it’s working to adjust

Jennifer Hlad — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 10:00:00 -0400

HONOLULU—“What happens when you concentrate on one [AI] model and all of a sudden that model isn’t available to you?” That’s the reality that U.S. Indo-Pacific Command is living right now, its resources and requirements director said here Monday.

The audience, after a beat, laughed cautiously at the realization that Bob Stephenson was likely referring to Anthropic’s Claude model.

“It happens,” Stephenson said Monday at the Pacific Operational Science & Technology conference. “You know, I actually started thinking about this last September. We were working on a plan to be more model-neutral in our workforce. Now we’re just going faster.”

More than a year ago, INDOPACOM integrated AI throughout its headquarters. Less than two weeks ago, President Trump directed federal agencies to stop using tools by Anthropic. And on Monday, the company sued the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and others, claiming illegal retaliation.

Stephenson, moderating a panel focused on advanced partnerships for multi-domain command and control, described his own “AI journey.”

“My challenge right now is: I’m trying—if you understand the seven functions of joint warfare…those things all happen simultaneously.”

“If you’re going to send a ship into position to launch a missile…you have to worry about, does it have enough fuel to get there? Is it going to have to be refueled when it gets back? What about reloading? What’s the status of the launcher? What’s the status of the weapon? And so on and so forth. And so these things all interact. So we’re trying to use AI to create agentic workflows to allow us to do this at scale.”

On the other side of the world, in Central Command, he said, “They’re executing about 1,000 fires a day. That’s a lot. That’s what we think, that’s what modern warfare looks like. They’re working really hard to try to stay up with this, and they’re using some AI tools that actually worked well for us.”

Panelist Paul Gaertner, project leader for integrated command, control, communications and computing for the Australian Department of Defense, told the audience that he is worried about both under-trusting and over-trusting AI.

Stephenson said he shares that concern. But when asked about allowing autonomous forms to manage themselves and mitigate their own risk, he said the answer is “sort of.”

“My boss tells us that in offensive weapons, there must be human agency,” Stephenson said, referring to commander Adm. Sam Paparo. But for defensive weapons, “the criteria varies. If somebody is shooting at you, there’s much more latitude” in having systems to automatically defend against the threat.

Stephenson, who retired from the Navy in 2003 after 30 years of service, noted that the U.S. has had autonomous weapons systems since he was a captain.

“There is a need for autonomy. There is a desire for autonomy at the edge, but with some of them, every weapon we have has a failsafe. We obviously don’t want to unleash a swarm that’s just going to fly around and go after the wrong thing. So there will be limits,” he said. But “we have these things called torpedoes that we have shot for, you know, a year or two, they worked out this thing called anti-circular run that kept the torpedo from zigzagging around” and coming back to “attack the thing that shot it. So think of a similar constraint for autonomous systems.”

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AI's productivity promise has a math problem

Camille Tuutti — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 09:00:00 -0400

Workers using generative AI report a 33% productivity boost, but only 3% of organizations say they're seeing real business transformation. Someone's math isn't adding up.

Atlassian's AI evangelist Sven Peters has a theory about why.

"We're investing a lot in AI — we're doing a lot, but we're stopping at individual productivity,” said Peters, who spoke to Nextgov/FCW ahead of his March 2 talk at Talent Arena, an international conference dedicated to digital talent held in Barcelona. “We're not taking the next step."

The numbers come from Atlassian's 2024 “AI Collaboration Report,” but Peters, who works with organizations across all industries, says the pattern holds everywhere he looks. Most organizations treat AI adoption as finished once employees are using it at their desks. Emails get summarized. Documents get drafted. Code gets written. Then everyone wonders why the business isn't transforming.

"You can't just screw AI on everything — it only makes you faster," he said. "It means you need to think about, ‘how are our teams collaborating? How are people collaborating?’ You probably need to change the way you work."

The harder question — where does work actually stall? — is the one most organizations aren't asking. Peters' answer: Look for the handoffs, the moments between teams where projects slow down, stop and restart without anyone owning the gap. Applying AI to the wrong phase produces nothing.

For example, if code review is the chokepoint in a software pipeline, writing more code faster just deepens the backlog on the other side. The fix, Peters says, starts with finding where work actually breaks down — and applying AI there. That's the hard work most organizations skip.

Silos make it harder. Departments operate independently, handoffs break down, work stops without explanation. It's dysfunction that predates AI by decades."

One department doesn't know what the other one does," he said. "That's where it cracks."

The answer is mapping where value actually flows and pointing AI at the friction, not layering it on top of workflows that were already broken.

The near-term upside is in agentic workflows, where AI handles multiple steps without waiting on a human at each handoff. At Atlassian, that's already showing up in code reviews, customer feedback loops and onboarding. Legal and HR are among the heaviest users.

"I want to see AI applied to real companies' workflows and helping real organizations to thrive," he said. "Not the demo that looked great on stage."

Getting there fast and getting there responsibly aren't separate conversations. Large language model developers, platform vendors and end users all share it, Peters said.

"We have a responsibility as LLM vendors to build ethical AI, but then the vendors like Atlassian that use those LLMs have the responsibility to make AI correct," he said. "But also the users of AI technology — you can misuse it. I think we share all this responsibility when it comes down to using AI in an ethical way."

The next two to three years, he argues, will be the period when organizations stop declaring victory after handing employees a new tool and start doing the harder work. That includes opening knowledge bases across departments so AI can draw connections across silos, not just within them and rebuilding workflows around human-AI collaboration.

But for all the talk about speed and transformation, Peters keeps coming back to something simpler."

We still are humans," he said. "We still need to collaborate. We still need to work together. That's not going away with AI."

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DOJ clears the way for government to hire technologists still connected to their private sector employers

Natalie Alms — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 16:01:00 -0400

The Justice Department issued an opinion last week authorizing the Trump administration’s plan to allow employees from tech companies to work for the federal government while remaining employed by their companies and keeping their not-yet-vested company stocks.

The administration will be onboarding managers from twenty-plus companies — including Anduril, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, Palantir and xAI — as part of its U.S. Tech Force program, launched last year to recruit early-career engineers after the administration pushed over 20,000 technologists out of their government posts last year.

The setup is an unusual one. Federal employees are subject to ethics rules meant to ensure that they work for the public interest.

The Office of Personnel Management now has DOJ’s blessing to allow individuals joining the Tech Force to keep their restricted stock units that haven’t yet vested — company stocks issued with a vesting plan that dictates when employees get full ownership of them — while they work for the government on a leave of absence from their private sector employer.

Ethics experts and public sector lawyers told Nextgov/FCW that they are skeptical about the arrangement.

“Why are we replacing a workforce we already had with individuals who may still be beholden to an outside employer?” asked Cynthia Brown, the senior ethics counsel at the nonprofit watchdog organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. It “raises a lot of very serious concerns.”

It’s unclear exactly how many people will join the government on a leave of absence as part of the Tech Force. It's likely that the DOJ decision will be primarily used for the 100-plus managers being recruited from tech companies partnering with the government, rather than for the class of early-career employees, an OPM spokesperson told Nextgov/FCW.

“This opinion from the Department of Justice provides much-needed clarity on the treatment of deferred compensation and strengthens the federal government’s ability to recruit top talent from the private sector to complete stints of government service,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

The statute addressed by DOJ in its opinion generally bans federal employees from receiving outside compensation for their government service.

OPM had to decide how to address this, given the ubiquity of deferred compensation packages like vested stock in the private sector. Essentially, the question was if those wanting to work for the government have to give them up, or restructure them so as to not run afoul of the law, Kevin Hennecken, a senior advisor at OPM, wrote in a recent blog about the DOJ decision.

Typically, employees forfeit their unvested, restricted stock units when they leave their employer.

OPM’s director, Scott Kupor, has described the Tech Force program as a way to show that people don’t need to spend their entire careers in either the private or public sector and to allow flexibility for people to move between them.

This outside compensation ethics law was OPM’s “most recent strike” to clear the way for that movement between the two, wrote Hennecken, previewing that OPM will be leveraging the flexibility to create other programs to bring in additional private-sector talent for terms of service.

But the Tech Force raises other conflict of interest concerns beyond the compensation statute addressed in the recent memo.

“I think it’s a dangerous path for the government to take,” Michael Fallings, managing partner at Tully Rickney law firm, told Nextgov/FCW, noting that it's hard to opine on the setup without the employees in place, at which point “ethical issues could arise that aren’t even foreseen.”

“Who is that employee more loyal to” if they’re technically still employed by a tech company and the government at the same time, he asked.

In the recent opinion, DOJ only briefly touches on the federal financial conflicts of interest statute, which prohibits government employees from participating in official matters where they have a financial interest — such as matters that have an effect on their stocks or employer.

“That’s where the danger is,” Richard Painter, a former White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, told Nextgov/FCW.

OPM asked the DOJ to “assume” that Tech Force employees will be recused from “any matter affecting their origin company,” DOJ wrote in the memo. The hypothetical from OPM assumed that the companies sending employees had diversified customer bases including but not dominated by government contracts.

It’s hard to know how easy recusal will be for employees without more specifics on what they will be doing at the Tech Force exactly, said Painter, adding that he’s still skeptical.

OPM has said that one target the new hires will work on is deploying artificial intelligence in the government.

“You're giving advice on technology and artificial intelligence, and you have artificial intelligence stock — in the Bush administration, this would have been a no-go,” said Painter on what he’d do if approached about such a program during his time in the White House. “I am not going to have an ethics lawyer have to babysit you.”

Brown noted that this comes after the federal government pushed out thousands of in-house government tech employees.

“If you were to replace your workforce because you think that you have better-suited people, then let them leave their job and come in and do the work of the American government,” she said. “But to be bringing in outside forces for temporary work that could influence the value of what they're doing outside, just raises a lot of very serious concerns.”

“Are these tech force employees deciding what's best for the American people in their capacity as government workers — or are they working to shift government decision making to benefit their private employer?” she asked.

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SEWP’s long-tenured leader is calling it a career

Nick Wakeman — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 15:24:00 -0400

Joanne Woytek, the long-time leader of arguably the most successful procurement program in history, penned a 52-word LinkedIn post to announce she is calling it a career.

But that is not a complete surprise. Woytek teased her retirement in September 2023, when she said SEWP VI will be her “last hurrah.” She pledged then that she would stick around through the early days of the popular IT contract’s launch.

Woytek did not launch the SEWP program in 1993, but has been running it as the program manager since 1999.

NASA has said it wants to award SEWP VI by the end of April when SEWP V expires, but a group of protests at the Government Accountability Office threaten to force NASA to delay awards and extend SEWP V.

Woytek appears willing to wait out the protests, saying her last day at NASA will be Oct. 17. Decisions are due from GAO in late May and early June.

That should give enough time for her team to make awards and get SEWP VI up and running. NASA would also likely get enough time to see SEWP through its transition to the General Services Administration if GSA goes through with that plan.

But do not expect Woytek to fade away.

“My goal is not to retire but to find a new opportunity which proves a new opportunity for me to use whatever talents and skills I might have,” she wrote.

While her LinkedIn announcement was brief, the reaction has not been. Scores of comments from industry executives, consultants and former federal officials are heaping praise on Woytek and the SEWP program.

“Your leadership, intelligence, vision, work ethic, and creative/technical mind and skills are the stuff "legends" are made of,” wrote Darlene Coen, a former SEWP deputy program director and most recently director of acquisition strategy at CGI Federal.

“While NASA and the Federal Government will miss your skills and expertise, there will be plenty of opportunities for you to continue your service when you're ready to do so,” said Alan Chvotkin, a partner with Protorea Law and former general counsel for the Professional Services Council.

“What SEWP has done for government procurement is nothing short of miraculous,” said Dave Dimlich, president of SD3IT LLC.

Many of the comments spoke about Woytek as a role model, mentor and leader who showed many people the ropes of federal procurement.

“Your expertise, creativity, professionalism, and vision are truly unparalleled, and your impact will continue to resonate for years to come. I am deeply grateful to have had the opportunity to learn from you,” said Lauren Gray, senior director of the GWAC/IDIQ program office at Akima.

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State offloads Claude as underpinning model in flagship StateChat

Alexandra Kelley and David DiMolfetta — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 15:22:00 -0400

The State Department has shifted the model underpinning its internal chatbot, StateChat, from Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 4.5 to OpenAI’s GPT-4.1, following President Donald Trump’s Feb. 27 directive that all government agencies take steps to shed Anthropic tools from their systems.

An internal document obtained by Nextgov/FCW confirms that Anthropic’s software is no longer powering StateChat and that the change to a new LLM contractor has also impacted the data on the internal chatbot, as it has now been set back to data available as of May 2024.

The earlier version of StateChat, when powered by Claude, was trained on more recent data from June 2025, a source familiar with the situation told Nextgov/FCW. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide details about the model’s training data.

State employees using a customGPT setup running on Claude were also asked to transition to another government-approved model that isn’t created by Anthropic by March 6, the document says.

“In line with the president’s direction to cancel Anthropic contracts, Anthropic’s Claude models are no longer available on the Department’s enterprise generative AI platform,” a State Department spokesperson told Nextgov/FCW. “The department is taking all necessary steps to implement the directive and bring our programs into full compliance.”

Reuters previously reported directives in multiple agencies, including State, requiring switches from Claude to ChatGPT.

Claude was initially made available for federal agency operations as part of the General Services Administration’s OneGov deal that brokered favorable software rates for the government, many for a temporary period of time.

Following the governmentwide ban of Anthropic technology, the company filed two lawsuits Monday. One, filed in the D.C. circuit court, invokes provisions in the Federal Acquisition Supply Chain Security Act of 2018 as rationale against the government’s designation of Anthropic as a supply chain risk.

The second, filed in the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California, names dozens of federal agencies and officials as defendants in allegations of inappropriate retaliation against Anthropic and calls for an injunction.

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VA’s early uses of robots have shown mixed success, but excitement remains

Edward Graham — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 13:28:00 -0400

LAS VEGAS — It may sound like science fiction, but robots are beginning to play a role in the delivery of healthcare services across the U.S.

Within the Department of Veterans Affairs’ network of medical facilities, clinicians and providers have started to use these technologies to automate some of their daily tasks. Although the actual benefits provided by these robots have been mixed, frontline providers and others across VA’s medical system have reportedly been supportive of further adoption of these assistive tools.

During a Monday session at the HIMSS conference in Las Vegas, Beth Ripley — acting chief innovation officer in VA’s Office of Healthcare Innovation and Learning — said the conventional thinking about using robots is that they tackle “the three Ds”: jobs that are dull, dirty or dangerous. All of those areas, she noted, are present in hospital settings, with robots also providing an opportunity to address other problems, like chronic understaffing.

“So we have an administration priority — and all of you probably have the same — which is that we would love to have our staff working the top of their license, doing what they need to do, what they're trained to do, not schlepping things around,” Ripley said. “And what we realized when we started talking to people in VA is that a lot of workforce shortages were leading to people that shouldn't be doing these kind of simple tasks that we have.”

To better understand current uses of robots across its network, Ripley said VA undertook “a data call” of its medical facilities. Of the 90 facilities that responded to the request, 65 of them reported local uses of the advanced tech.

In total, Ripley said these sites reported 121 deployed uses of robots. Of those, 37 uses were delivery robots — which transport things such as medical supplies and in-patient veteran meals — while 35 were used for pharmaceutical mixing and packaging and another 31 were used for facility cleaning services.

Among the rarer applications, 14 were listed as “other,” two were for rehabilitation and care and two were for veteran medical interaction and facility navigation.

These deployed robots share more in common with the Roomba robotic vacuum than more advanced technologies, but early adoption shows that more work still needs to be done to hone their capabilities.

Follow-up visits by VA personnel to a subset of the responding facilities identified mixed benefits from using robots, although there was strong excitement from hospital staff about the potential these technologies have to offer.

In one instance, Ripley said personnel followed a robot for 96 minutes “to do something they can walk in three minutes.” In other cases, she said “they were working well,” although she also added that “a lot of the robots were sitting in closets or are kind of dead in the hall somewhere.”

Ripley cited the Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center in Houston as VA’s “most successful robot implementation across the country because [the site] was purpose-built for robots, which is fantastic,” although she said that hospitals do not have to be rebuilt to accommodate uses of the technologies.

One main takeaway from the Houston VA site, she noted, is that the facility has trained its staff “to be able to take care of the robots,” rather than having to rely on the original equipment manufacturers to come in and make any necessary mechanical repairs.

But issues identified at VA medical facilities — like hospital staff having to spend time chasing down wayward robots, or the tools not transporting medications where they are supposed to go — have highlighted the drawbacks of a broader reliance on these technologies at this time. Ripley said the department is aware of these challenges and is working to smooth out problems.

“So, our ideal state is that robots automate routine tasks, minimize error and allow staff to focus on patient interactions,” she said. “Our current state, as I said, is not quite there. There are serious gaps that we need to overcome, but we can get to those now.”

Despite some of these robots not being ready for primetime, Ripley said feedback from clinicians about using the technologies “was overwhelmingly positive.”

She said the department found that “people want to do robots,” with one effusive respondent telling VA personnel that “nurses need to do direct care; everything else should be robots.”

Ripley added that “a lot of them are saying: ‘Make it easier for us, figure out how to do it better.’”

Other surveys and multi-step interviews VA conducted with veterans, caregivers and hospital staff also found widespread interest in adopting robots for targeted uses moving forward. All three surveyed groups identified daily living and needs assistance-focused robots as their top use case for the tools.

Streamlined adoption of robots across VA’s network of more than 170 medical facilities, however, is still a ways off. Ripley noted that none of the sites that responded to the department’s data call had developed local policies or practices, procurement frameworks or working groups for the use of robots.

In response to an audience question from Nextgov/FCW about implementing a policy framework and requirements for broader adoption of robots across VA’s medical network, Ripley noted that the department is already working to bring experts and the broader VA community together to find safe ways of harnessing uses of advanced capabilities, such as through the creation of the proving ground and innovation incubator X_Labs at the VA Puget Sound Health Care System.

“The next thing that we started to do is build out playbooks and some — not to policy yet — but guidance for the field and what that looks like,” she added. “Another thing that we're working on right now is starting to think about larger contracting mechanisms, so that we're not leaving each VA alone to try to figure out what would work and what [would] not.”

Ripley said VA is also working to address questions around the deployment of robots and is also looking to industry for guidance. Some of the department’s criteria for prioritization of these tools includes whether the robots will restore or preserve veterans’ independence, if they relieve pain points for clinicians and caregivers and if there is a clinical validation or pathway to using the tech.

“Robots are a little in the future, but if we don't think about it now and start to set the policies, I think we will regret it,” Ripley said.

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Senate confirms Josh Rudd to lead NSA and Cyber Command

David DiMolfetta — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 13:13:00 -0400

The Senate on Tuesday confirmed President Donald Trump’s pick to lead Cyber Command and the National Security Agency in a dual-hatted capacity, giving the signals intelligence and hacking titans their first permanent leader in almost a year.

Gen. Joshua Rudd was confirmed in a 71-29 vote some three months after he was nominated to the position. NSA and Cyber Command have been without a permanent leader since far-right activist Laura Loomer pushed for the firing of the post’s previous occupant, Gen. Timothy Haugh, last April. Since then, Lt. Gen. William Hartman has led the agency in an acting capacity.

On Monday, the first procedural hurdle to Rudd’s confirmation cleared in a 68-28 vote. The nominee to lead Cyber Command and the NSA usually moves through the Senate without such a vote, but Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., bypassed a hold from Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., to confirm Rudd after Wyden pledged to block the nominee over concerns about his experience.

“The country needs an NSA director with experience in U.S. signals intelligence activities around the world. General Rudd does not have that experience,” Wyden’s written floor remarks said.

Rudd comes from a less traditional background than past military leaders who have led the two organizations. Up until now, he served as the number two leader of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, and has spent his career largely in special operations and joint command roles. Some former officials and China analysts view Rudd’s Indo-Pacific background as relevant to U.S. cyber operations involving Beijing.

In his nomination hearings, he told senators that his experience consuming and acting on cyber intelligence qualifies him to serve in the position.

“I’m confident that the incredible talent at Cyber Com-NSA will provide great advice,” Rudd told the Senate Armed Services Committee in January. “I’m confident that, if confirmed, I can continue to lead and enable those two organizations to provide the best support to our combat commanders in the joint force, writ large.”

As director, he’ll be the face of some of the nation’s most secretive electronic spying activities. In April, a powerful foreign spying tool used often by NSA, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, will expire unless renewed by lawmakers.

“What I’ve experienced in my career is that this provides the warfighter, the decision-maker, [with] the ability to have critical insight into threats that enables decision making,” Rudd told members of the Senate Intelligence Committee in a separate January hearing when asked about 702. He said he knows the law has “saved lives here in the homeland.”

The upcoming midterm elections are also top-of-mind for observers of the intelligence agency and digital combatant command. Both units have played a major role in protecting the nation from foreign interference attempts on election outcomes.

But over the last year, the Trump administration has closed or scaled down many agencies and offices that track election threats, including the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s Foreign Malign Influence Center and the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force. Trump has long been a skeptic of the intelligence community, especially due to its prior assessments that concluded Russia sought to help him win the 2016 election.

“The electoral process is fundamental to our democratic values, and Americans writ large, and I’ve committed throughout my career to serve to defend and uphold those values,” Rudd told the Senate intelligence panel. “Any foreign threat to the electoral process should be viewed as a national security concern.”

He will also have to contend with declining morale inside NSA, as well as significant workforce cuts that were influenced by Trump 2.0 efforts to shed government bloat and spending waste.

“General Rudd is a war hero with a lifetime of service to our nation. He is the right choice to lead the protection of our nation from cyberattacks by Iran, Russia, and China,” Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement after Rudd was confirmed.

Editor's note: This article has been updated to note that it is the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s Foreign Malign Influence Center.

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Russia-linked hackers appear on Iran war’s cyber front, but their impact is murky

David DiMolfetta — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 12:21:00 -0400

Apparent Russia-linked hacking collectives backing Iran have been observed joining the cyber activity unfolding alongside the U.S.-Israel war against Iran, though analysts have mixed views on whether their involvement represents a meaningful escalation or little more than online noise.

The outlook on such “hacktivist” groups — hackers who attempt to penetrate systems and steal information for political activism — comes days after The Washington Post reported that Russia is supplying Iran with intelligence to help target U.S. forces in the Middle East and adds another dimension to the already complex cyber and information environment surrounding the war.

One well-known pro-Russia group dubbed “NoName057(16)” recently claimed massive distributed denial-of-service attacks against Israeli defense contractors and also claimed to have gained full access to the human-machine interfaces of Israeli water management systems, said Kathryn Raines, a cyber threat intelligence team lead at cybersecurity firm Flashpoint. But company analysts have not verified these claims, she said.

Distributed denial-of-service hacks, known colloquially as “DDoS” attacks, overwhelm websites with large amounts of artificial internet traffic to stop legitimate users from accessing them.

CrowdStrike has similarly observed a surge in pro-Iran hacktivists with ties to Russia. In the first few days after the war broke out on Feb. 28, one Russia-aligned hacktivist group the company dubs “Z-Pentest” claimed responsibility for compromising several U.S.-based entities, said Adam Meyers, the company’s head of counter adversary operations.

Those claims are also unverified, though “Western organizations should continue to remain on high alert for potential cyber response as the conflict continues and activity may move beyond hacktivism and into destructive operations,” he said.

The United States has long supplied Ukraine with intelligence and equipment to strike Russian targets within its borders. Now, as the war unfolds in Iran, Moscow could be seizing its own opportunity for retaliation by aiding Tehran.

“Russia is comfortable providing some proxy support to Iran, or at least taking advantage of an unstable situation,” Cynthia Kaiser, a former deputy director at the FBI’s Cyber Division, said in a LinkedIn post this weekend. “Expect exaggeration, but don't dismiss the underlying access. These groups regularly inflate the impact of their attacks for media attention. But they have caused real physical damage to critical infrastructure. Calling their bluff shouldn't mean ignoring the threat.”

“Russia has a variety of partner engagements with Iran that could prompt Moscow to get involved in the conflict, particularly if Russia perceives that U.S. military operations dragging out would further pull the White House’s focus from Ukraine,” said Justin Sherman, founder and CEO of Global Cyber Strategies, a Washington, D.C.-based research and advisory firm.

The Kremlin’s vast and complex cyber ecosystem allows it to leverage state elements, hired or coerced cybercriminals and patriotic hackers encouraged by propaganda to pursue its goals, Sherman said, explaining that “one of the benefits of Russia’s cyber web for the state is how the Kremlin can pick and choose its actors and capability sets as it pleases, depending on its needs.”

In a recent case, Russian state-backed groups initiated a massive global campaign targeting the Signal and WhatsApp accounts of officials, military personnel and civil servants, Dutch intelligence said Monday.

But Sherman said that attributing Russian-origin cyber operations is complex, and that analysts should try to examine which parts of Vladimir Putin’s government may have authorized an operation to better understand how Moscow would be aiding Iran in cyberspace.

Some are skeptical that Russia sharing targeting intelligence would translate directly into cyber support for Tehran.

“Russia providing intelligence assistance to the Iranian government to support kinetic strikes, and the idea of Russian cyber actors as implied by the conventional use of the phrase — i.e., those with a nexus to the Russian state — ‘joining the cyber aspect of this conflict’ are two very different things,” said Alex Orleans, a former National Security Council contractor and head of threat intelligence at Sublime Security.

“I have not encountered Russian APTs inserting themselves into a conflict to support a third-party and I’d be surprised if they did now,” he said, referring to “advanced persistent threat” groups that are typically well-resourced, highly skilled and backed by a nation-state.

Other analysts have not publicly attributed any hacktivist activity to a particular nation.

“While we have observed some initial hacktivist groups supporting the Iranian regime, these activities are in the very early stages. There is currently no clear indication that this is being directed by a state actor like Russia or Iran, and it remains difficult to verify,” said John Fokker, vice president of threat intelligence at Trellix. “That said, in any geopolitical conflict, it is common practice for involved countries to provide aid in various forms.”

Iran’s cyber capabilities have likely diminished in recent days, said Dave DeWalt, CEO of NightDragon, a venture capital firm that manages a portfolio of cybersecurity companies.

“We’ve been monitoring almost every actor and every indicator of compromise that we possibly can, and we've seen next to zero activity … and that’s largely because we believe that most of their cyber operations have been dismantled physically,” he said in an interview.

Israel said last week it destroyed Iran’s cyberwarfare headquarters, though it’s not immediately clear how much effect that’s had on its cyber operations.

“We’ve seen little activity from [Iran] globally, that doesn’t mean that it’s completely dismantled,” DeWalt said. “I don’t have full confirmation, but I would tell you it certainly looks like no other case I've seen in 20 years, where we’ve seen such silence in the digital world from [Iran].”

Asked about whether China and Russia are sharing capabilities with Iran at this point, he said those nations may be keeping their distance, but there’s possible sharing of satellite, electronic warfare and radar-jamming services. “I would not be surprised at all,” he said.

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