The Wrap: Cybersecurity Acceleration Aims; DoD Airs Out $15B AI Contract; CHIPS Spigot Open Wide

Welcome to The Wrap for Tuesday, November 26!

From the newsroom at MeriTalk, it’s the quickest read in Federal tech news. Here’s what you need to know today:

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Cybersecurity Acceleration Aims

Big policy shifts are no doubt in store once the Trump administration takes over in January, and one of those could be a fresh effort to accelerate the Federal government’s pace on improving cybersecurity. That’s high on the list for Gary Barlet , Public Sector CTO and Principal Solutions Architect at cloud security technology provider Illumio , who sized up the coming policy landscape shifts in an exclusive interview with MeriTalk . Barlet said he expects the incoming administration to build on the broad themes of the Biden administration’s 2021 cybersecurity executive order that launched Federal agencies on their ongoing zero trust security migration and hopes that the new emphasis will be on speed of execution, and greater accountability for results. “What I am really hoping to see out of this new administration is a refocus not only on the problems, but also pushing harder for the right solutions,” Barlet said. “We’ve got to accelerate this process. We have to stop saying things like it’s going to take five years, or seven years, or ten years to get things done. There is no reason why government can’t get this stuff done faster. We’ve got to stop playing the long game, and we have to accelerate our efforts. I’m hoping that’s what we are going to see,” he said. Please do click through for the entire interview.

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DoD Airs Out $15B AI Contract

If you’re in the AI business, the United States Department of Defense (DoD) wants to pick your brain through Dec. 20 for feedback on a potential $15 billion Advancing Artificial Intelligence Multiple Award contract (AAMAC) that will support the Pentagon’s existing Advana multi-domain analytics and AI platform managed by the Pentagon’s DoD Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) (CDAO). DoD’s draft request for proposal?(RFP) published on SAM.gov on Nov. 20 broadly “aims to enhance the development of AI-based technologies.” Pentagon CDAO Radha Plumb initially?announced?the AAMAC in September, stating that the contract will help scale the department’s data backbone and bring in new digital tools to meet more varied needs from a wider population of DoD users, encourage vendor diversity and partnerships, and drive innovation and mission delivery at scale. Plumb said the evolution of the Advana initiative will cover “everything from the scope to the technical architecture to the acquisition approach to meet the needs of the future.” DoD currently plans to issue between 50 and 70 awards under the new contract.

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Commerce CHIPS Spigot Open Wide

The Department of Commerce has been shoveling money out the door this week to finalize investments under the CHIPS and Science Act before President-elect Donald Trump – who has criticized the program in recent weeks – takes office in January. The agency announced this week that it has finalized three separate awards for 英特尔 , BAE Systems Electronic Systems, and Rocket Lab under the $52 billion CHIPS program. The finalized awards come after the Commerce Department’s preliminary agreements with the three companies. Topping the list of deals over the past few days is a $7.865 billion award to Intel Corp. – a downsize from the whopping $8.5 billion preliminary agreement announced in March. BAE Systems received the inaugural preliminary agreement for up to $35 million in December 2023 and Rocket Lab inked its own agreement for up to $23.9 million in June of this year. More investments to come: Within the past week, the U.S. Department of Commerce also proposed two additional CHIPS investments – the first of which would invest up to $300 million in advanced packaging research projects in Georgia, California, and Arizona. The second proposed investment is to provide the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) Manufacturing Consortium Corporation with $285 million to establish and operate a CHIPS Manufacturing USA Institute headquartered in Durham, N.C.

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26 Million Face Drinking Water Cyber Vulnerabilities

A new report by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) 's Inspector General (IG) finds that drinking water systems serving approximately 26.6 million people have critical or high-risk cybersecurity vulnerabilities. The IG completed a cyber assessment of more than 1,000 drinking water systems that serve over 193 million people across the United States and found that 97 drinking water systems had critical or high-risk cyber vulnerabilities. “If malicious actors exploited the cybersecurity vulnerabilities we identified in our passive assessment, they could disrupt service or cause irreparable physical damage to drinking water infrastructure,” the report says. To make matters worse, while attempting to notify the EPA about the cybersecurity vulnerabilities, the IG found that the EPA does not have its own cybersecurity incident reporting system. We have previously reported that the EPA is expected to release a water sector cyber risk assessment and risk management plan in January 2025.

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Once again, let’s “call IT a day,” but we'll bring you more tomorrow. Until then please check the MeriTalk breaking news website throughout the day for the latest on government IT people, process, and policy. And finally, please hit the news tip jar [with leads, breaking news, or simply your two cents] at [email protected].