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Defense Business Brief: Tech Summit recap; Invoking the Defense Production Act; and INDOPACOM’s name change

Lauren C. Williams — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 03:45:14 -0400

The Defense Production Act has entered the munitions chat even as concerns persist about weapons stockpiles spent in the U.S.-Israel war on Iran.

“It's not a sudden shift, it's taken us nine months to make this work,” Michael Cadenazzi, the Pentagon’s industrial base policy chief, said during an event Tuesday at the Center for a New American Security on Tuesday. “So that was one of my first chores when I came into the Pentagon back in September was to launch something called a ‘voluntary agreement,’” under the Defense Production Act.

Cadenazzi’s comments follow the White House’s quiet invocation of the Defense Production Act. The DPA is up for reauthorization and expires Sept. 30.

The Pentagon currently has two such arrangements: the Civil Reserve Air Fleet, where the government can call on commercial airlines and aerospace manufacturers for national needs; and the Voluntary Intermodal Sealift Agreement for maritime vessels, which allows U.S. merchant vessels to participate in exchange for priority access to Defense Department cargoes during peacetime.

“This tool and this designation allows us…to talk about different things like electronics, materials, ammonium perchlorate, rocket motors” and bring competing companies in to discuss needs and challenges without worrying about “antitrust rules,” Cadenazzi said.

“It's a way for us to communicate and leverage industry using a specific set of authorities. In this particular case, our interest is using voluntary agreements as a way to bring industry in—in an antitrust environment—to go ahead and have conversations with them, for us to articulate problems to them around nasty issues in the supply chain or the industrial base that allow them to communicate and work together, essentially collude, for want of a better term.”

The DPA authority could also create a steady demand signal, Cadenazzi said, noting voluntary agreements could also be used to include a myriad of defense suppliers, such as tire makers.

“We want these to be set up as an enduring capability, so expect to see more of these. I want to bring the tires people in to have conversations about tires,” he said. “It's just the gritty underbelly of the industrial base, but I think they deserve a lot more attention, and this is one of the tools we want to bring to bear.”

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My D1 Tech Summit takeaway: The Office of Naval Research is working on a strategy to bring new tech to the fleet faster. The plan, which is in its final production stages, will spell out what the service wants and highlight key areas of scientific interest, like having one human controlling a swarm of drones.

“That is a lot harder than people realize because people think, oh, you have one joystick and 100 drones are moving. Well, in practice, that looks like little kids playing soccer…And that's not good enough for our American warfighters,” Rachel Riley, head of naval research, said during Defense One’s annual Tech Summit event Tuesday.
Other challenges with drone swarming include next-generation algorithms and command and control across platforms—which can include the air, sea and subsea.
“Folks think that if you can fly a UAV, you can fly a UUV—kind of a different game,” Riley said. The Navy is also “thinking about how can we generate new sensors and effectors that are scalable, feasible at the edge with the right number of compute [that can] fit on a relatively small platform. These are all technical problems that are really gnarly and

stacking them on top of one another is not linear, it's exponential.”

Plus, the Navy is looking to nature for clues on how to control a massive number of robots.
“We're still doing some really interesting academic research that has to do with, for example, how insects swarm and how they coordinate,” Riley said, because that can inform a mathematical model that can be applied to maritime drones.

Making moves + other news

INDOPACOM changed its name back to U.S. Pacific Command.
Govini is now Air.
The Army direct-commissioned three more tech executives. Oh, and they also bought thousands of IVAS headsets they don’t plan to use…
Seaglider maker Regent’s defense division is celebrating its first anniversary as the company finishes up a 255,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in North Kingstown, Rhode Island.
The Defense Innovation Unit awarded drone maker Mach Industries a contract for its Runway Independent Maritime Expeditionary Strike, or RIMES, program.

One last Tech Summit view. We had a stacked line up, with NATO’s top digital transformation official, Maj. Gen. Dominique Luzeaux, and the head of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, Rear Adm. Michael Baker. There were also a couple of great industrial base panels led by yours truly: one that tackled startup culture and special operations with Shield AI’s co-founder Brandon Tseng, Ondas’ chairman and CEO Eric Brock, Gregory Coleman of 5Side Strategy; and another on how private capital is influencing the defense sector with Red Cell Partners’ Veronica Daigle, CSIS’s Jerry McGinn, and DIU’s Kedar Pavgi. Visit DefenseOne.com for coverage of the event.

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Anduril, General Atomics get Air Force contracts to build first drone wingmen

Thomas Novelly — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 22:36:27 -0400

Air Force leaders have given initial production contracts to Anduril and General Atomics, which will both build collaborative combat aircraft based on their respective prototypes. Northrop Grumman’s self-financed offering was not selected.

Several companies also received money to develop software that will compete to pilot the service’s future fleet of drone wingmen.

The Increment 1 CCA contracts are for three lots of the drone wingmen, Air Force Col. Timothy Helfrich, the portfolio acquisition executive for fighters and advanced aircraft, told reporters during a briefing on Wednesday. He declined to say how many CCAs would be in each lot, nor how much each would cost.

Helfrich told Defense One in March that the Air Force was beating its goal of buying each CCA for about one-third of the cost of an F-35 fighter jet. The Defense Department is seeking nearly $1 billion to buy CCAs, 2027 budget documents show.

The announcement made winners of both Anduril and General Atomics in their two-year battle to furnish the Air Force’s first CCAs.

But more competitions are underway. Three firms are vying to build the drone wingman’s autonomous software platform. As well, nine vendors are competing for Increment 2 of the CCA program.

“By moving fast from competitive selection into full-scale manufacturing, we position ourselves

to field highly credible and combat-ready semi-autonomous systems to stay ahead of the pacing challenge,” Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said in a press release. “These contracts reaffirm our confidence in the strategic path forward for the program to procure over 150 combat capable CCA by the end of the decade.”

Both Anduril and General Atomics had setbacks while prototyping their CCA variants.

In April, General Atomics’ YFQ-42A Dark Merlin crashed at the company’s California airport after an autopilot program error. The incident halted flight testing for a little more than a month.

“This is an exciting day for our company and the nation,” General Atomics President David Alexander said in a Wednesday press release. “Moving to production on FQ-42A is the result of an extraordinary partnership and many years of investments between General Atomics and the U.S. Air Force. We’ve been preparing for this order, and manufacturing is already well underway.”

Anduril’s push for semi-autonomous software led to a months-long delay in notching its first flight. The company got its YFQ-44A Fury prototype off the ground in late October.

“We have been refining, testing, and iterating on our production system, in parallel with aircraft development, for the past two years. We have already implemented our full rate production processes and tooling on prototype aircraft, identifying and addressing issues during prototyping to streamline the transition into production,” Mark Shushnar, Anduril’s vice president for autonomous airpower, said in a statement. “The Air Force’s decision marks the first time that a new company has won a fighter aircraft program since the 1970s.”

The “Y” will be dropped from Anduril and General Atomics CCAs names to show they’re no longer prototypes.

Autonomy contracts

The Air Force also awarded CCA mission-autonomy production options to six companies.

A baseline, six-year contract vehicle was extended to Anduril, General Atomics, Lockheed Martin, Shield AI, Northrop Grumman, and RTX Collins, to create a pool of vendors eligible to build the autonomy software.

Anduril, Shield AI, and RTX Collins received additional Air Force production contracts and will compete to build the CCA’s final autonomous software. After six months, the Air Force plans to review those firms' initial performance. A second selection will follow that initial review, with a final selection expected by Summer 2027.

“Mission autonomy is the cornerstone of the CCA concept, and leveraging a competitive, multi-

vendor environment ensures we capture the latest technology,” Meink said in the news release. “This approach guarantees our airmen are equipped with state-of-the-art capabilities today but keeps the door open for the breakthroughs necessary to maintain air superiority.”

The Air Force said its software contract will use a “first-of-its-kind” award that is tied directly to reviews from the troops.

“The Air Force will only pay the entire licensing fee if a vendor provides a combat capability aligned with warfighter needs and feedback,” the news release said. “The licensing approach also allows the Air Force to award software licenses to any of the six vendors within the pool at any point over the next six years.”

Earlier this year, the Air Force tested the government-owned Autonomy Government Reference Architecture, or A-GR, by placing RTX Collins software on General Atomics YFQ-42 aircraft and Shield AI’s technology on Anduril's YFQ-44 CCA. Compliance with the A-GRA is mandatory for vendors so the service can enable a mix-and-match approach to the software and hardware, the service said in the news release.

“Open systems architecture is critical in modern warfare,” Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, the Air Force chief of staff, said in the news release. “It allows us to capitalize on the most advanced autonomy solutions to ensure we incorporate the best technology in our weapon systems.”

Late last year, the Air Force announced that nine vendors would receive money to develop a second iteration of CCAs. Helfrich did not have any timeline updates on the Increment 2 competition.

“The government is always learning through both CCA Increment 2 and Increment 1 and honing in on what is needed from Increment 2,” Helfrich said.

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Want to join NGA? Bring AI skills, agency leader says

Thomas Novelly — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 13:24:24 -0400

As the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency rebuilds its workforce after last year’s DOGE cuts, job applicants need to bring some AI proficiency, the agency’s associate operations director said Tuesday.

“We're hiring now, and every single new person we hire has to prove some capability of AI and data management,” Navy Rear Adm. Michael Baker said at the Defense One Tech Summit. “Every single new hire has to go through AI and data management training.”

It’s not just the new employees, Baker said: “Every single old hire has to go through AI training and data management so that all of us are operating inside of the reality of what this ecosystem is.”

NGA leaders have grand visions for weaving AI into the agency’s operations. For example, officials are exploring its use for human resources tasks, a move Baker said would take “the burden off of the operator.” (Recently, a deputy director of human development at NGA expressed fears that employees would get so dependent on AI that their skills would atrophy.)

Baker said he uses an AI agent at work.

“And a real ideal is, in the future, that agent is also helping to train me.” Baker said. “We're working together as we go back and forth to think through a problem. That's been the power of, really, this agentic AI, generative capabilities that you can have as you're thinking through things … In the past, maybe you are using the machine to help you understand history. We're moving to the place where I'm using the machine to help me try to predict and understand the future.”

The Navy admiral said AI agents might eventually be used for high-level strategic planning, and said it could be used to navigate the “insatiable requirements that the intelligence community” demands when calculating risk.

Baker said it’s a balancing act when adopting that technology, and said he wants the agency to rapidly innovate but also wants to be mindful of security and avoid “chaos.”

“That is the complex pace that we're in,” Baker said. “That's a really hard challenge for leaders, but it's a pretty fun space to be in.”

NGA currently has about 14,500 civilian, military and contract employees, according to its website. It’s not clear how many people left in the Trump administration’s rush to reduce intelligence-community headcount by thousands of workers last year. Employment figures for the community’s largest agencies are classified, Reuters has reported.

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Peace deal unlikely to stem Iran's hackers, US officials say

David DiMolfetta — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 10:44:00 -0400

The preliminary U.S.-Iran agreement reached over the weekend likely won’t stop cyber operations launched by Tehran and Iran-aligned hacking groups at American systems, five current and two former U.S. officials told Nextgov/FCW.

Most of them were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss forward-looking perspectives of Iranian cyber activity after the agreement.

Cyber conflict is “definitely part of warfare that keeps going” and is pretty “accepted” as an “ongoing normal course of business,” one of the officials said, adding that cyber activity may decelerate, but that it “definitely won’t stop.”

There is “no chance” Iran and any affiliated parties would cease or slow down in cyberspace, a second official opined.

Hacking activity could decrease temporarily, said one of the former officials, but if pro-Iran hacking collectives don’t like any finalized resolution, they may conduct cyberattacks to express their issues, as Iran’s central government doesn’t always have the best control of these groups.

“There has always been anti-U.S. activity” from such “hacktivist” groups that align with Iran but aren’t backed by the regime directly, this former official added.

Their outlook aligns with past conclusions that cyber operations continue regardless of the status of a given conflict and that U.S. cyber teams have remained on alert for Iranian-linked activity against American networks as Washington pursues a diplomatic solution with Tehran.

Since the war broke out Feb. 28, experts expected the conflict would greatly test U.S. cyber defenses. What followed was a series of apparent Iran-linked cyber incidents, including an attack on medical technology giant Stryker, the targeting of FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal email account and various warnings from federal agencies about cyber intrusions on U.S. critical infrastructure.

On June 11, the California Water Service said it was investigating claims that Iranian hackers breached its systems. An assessment from Dataminr concluded that the group may have reached a customer billing database belonging to the utility. Nextgov/FCW also obtained a screenshot that appeared to show a customer billing account receipt accessed by the hackers.

A spokesperson said Tuesday that there are “no known operational disruptions” to water, wastewater and billing systems, and that it was working with state and federal government officials in its investigation.

The preliminary U.S.-Iran memorandum reached Sunday aims to halt nearly four months of fighting and set up a formal signing in Geneva later this week. But the agreement leaves major disputes unresolved, including regional flashpoints involving Israel and Hezbollah. It also appears to leave out mentions of cyber.

“The Iranians have targeted U.S. assets with malicious cyber activity for the last 15 years with espionage and some prepositioning for disruptive attacks,” said Meredith Burkart, the FBI’s former chief of cyber policy. “Unless there has been a material change in their cyber workforce, or a cyber specific component of the deal was reached, I would expect such targeting to continue.”

“I don’t know if these deals really ever include minimizing cyber activity,” another one of the current officials told Nextgov/FCW. Certain targets may be deemed off limits, “but we’ve always seen activity” continue in the digital space, added the official.

The deal also remains fragile, even on its central nuclear terms. CIA Director John Ratcliffe and others raised concerns about Iran’s willingness to make the nuclear concessions Washington wants in a final agreement, Axios reported Tuesday.

Tehran’s hackers have grown more organized, more coordinated and more willing to use artificial intelligence for influence operations in recent months — and have demonstrated many of those capabilities since the war with Iran began, Israel’s top cyberdefense official told Nextgov/FCW last month.

The U.S. intelligence community assessed this year that Iran and affiliated proxy groups remain a persistent cyber threat to American networks and critical infrastructure, and they intend to target the U.S. and its allies.

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ChatGPT to debut on Pentagon's GenAI.mil in ‘early July’, OpenAI says

Frank Konkel and Alexandra Kelley — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 16:02:00 -0400

OpenAI will bring ChatGPT to GenAI.mil, the Pentagon’s generative-AI platform, in "early July," a company official said Tuesday.

The AI firm is working with the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office, Mohammed Husain—the company's strategic delivery lead for cyber—said at the Defense One Tech Summit in Arlington, Virginia.

“I think we're going live extremely soon, and excited to make a broader announcement about that in early July,” Husain said.

That will make ChatGPT available to more than 3 million defense personnel and certified for controlled unclassified information and Impact Level 5. The Pentagon launched GenAI.mil in December with plans to integrate Gemini for Government; officials later announced plans to incorporate AI models from OpenAI and xAI. In late April, senior defense officials said more than 1.3 million users were regularly using the platform, having developed more than 100,000 AI agents.

Federal agencies have been using ChatGPT since at least January 2025. Last August, the company offered its model at a discount through a OneGov deal with the General Services Administration. Earlier this month, OpenAI’s latest model, ChatGPT 5.4, was made available to the federal workforce on Amazon’s Bedrock and GovCloud platforms.

Husain said he expected users would demand more tokens—converted data that can be interpreted and processed by an AI system—and models that use them more efficiently.

“These models consume a ton of tokens, and it turns out that if you want to complete the most valuable work, it's going to take more tokens,” he said. “And so one thing I think will become much more a part of the conversation…is this concept of 'token efficiency'.”

Husain said token efficiency was less about processing speed and more about cost per completed task. He said the June debut of OpenAI’s GPT-5.5, GPT-5.4, and Codex on Amazon Bedrock would enable further deployment of more intelligent, token-heavy models.

“I think deploying these models, they're going to be much more intelligent, they're going to consume more tokens,” he said. “So I think cost efficiency is going to become a really interesting part of the story.”

He said government agencies were eager for more computing power for multicloud and on-prem environments, a void companies like AWS are hurrying to fill.

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Navy preps science-and-tech strategy built for speed and focus

Bradley Peniston — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 15:44:41 -0400

A new Navy science-and-tech strategy will push technology to the fleet faster and concentrate limited research funds on problems that industry won't solve on its own, the service’s research chief said Tuesday.

The Office of Naval Research strategy, called "Feed S&T at Speed to the Fleet and Force," is in final production, Chief of Naval Research Rachel Riley said Tuesday at the Defense One Tech Summit in Arlington, Virginia.

"Speed is, of course, the word of the year in our business," she said during a panel discussion that included Jarred Conley, principal director for maritime efforts at the Defense Innovation Unit.

Riley said the document urges closer collaboration with DIU, warfighters, and other stakeholders. She said it also aims to explain "in plain English" what ONR does and what the Navy wants from industry. ONR is working to "de-layer and simplify" its bureaucracy, so that the limiting factor on technology development is "the physical science and not the processes and the policies around it," she added.

"Speed is, of course, the word of the year in our business.”

The strategy also aims to push ONR to identify the problems that only it can solve, so the office can make best use of its roughly $3 billion budget. But Riley said this isn’t as difficult as it may seem.

“I have 1,100 Ph.Ds who work for me, almost all in STEM. They're brilliant Americans who dedicated their lives to serving. And so many of them, when I showed up and asked them, you know, “How do we make sure that what we're investing in isn't duplicative with industry?” They said, “Well, it's just so hard to know what industry will and won't do.” And I said, “no, it's actually quite simple. If there is profit to be made, then it is something where industry capital will flow. Perhaps not perfectly, but eventually.”

Riley said ONR must focus on technology that’s far from ready, or that no one but the U.S. military needs.

“My favorite example, because it immediately resonates with everyone, is currently there's really no commercial need for very quiet tubes that move through the water for a very long time”—that is, submarines, she said. ONR must keep investing to keep the submarine force "the most lethal in the world."

Riley said she wants the office to do what it must so it can pass useful technology off to industry. She is pushing her program officers to serve as a “thought partner” to defense contractors—talking about, say, the Sea Hunter medium unmanned surface vessel that ONR has been experimenting with since 2017 and is now deployed with a carrier strike group.

What’s next in maritime automation

The recent rescue of two Army helicopter pilots by an uncrewed boat made it a “great week at the Defense Innovation Unit,” Conley said, referring to the recovery of Apache aircrew using a 24-foot Saronic Corsair unmanned surface vessel—a system he said went "from first splash to success in four months."

Now, Conley said, DIU’s maritime unit is working on contested logistics, including an autonomous resupply vessel effort, and clearing naval mines of the sort that Iran has used—or possibly just threatened to use—to close the Strait of Hormuz.

Conley called mine-warfare one of the Navy's most underfunded domains, despite being "a huge problem for the global economy." Neutralizing mines still requires humans, either flying aboard an MH-60 helicopter or deploying in explosive ordnance disposal teams.

But that may soon become less true. Last month, DIU launched an MCM Modernization Prize Challenge to find ways to increase the role of machines. Candidate systems are to deploy by September, he said.

Riley said another grand challenge in uncrewed systems is moving from one-to-one control by a human to one human controlling many platforms. So far, too many approaches look like "little kids playing soccer," which is "not good enough for our American warfighters," she said.

She also noted that controlling undersea robots is more difficult than aerial ones.

"Folks think that if you can fly a UAV, you can fly a UUV," but it is "a different game," she said.

ONR is funding academic research into how insects and birds swarm, she said, to model that coordination mathematically and scale it to unmanned vehicles.

"Mass matters," Conley said, adding that going from zero to one is achievable, but going from one to 100 is hard. But commanders’ willingness to accept an "80% solution," provide feedback, and help iterate quickly is growing, he said.

Conley also expressed support for a Capitol Hill proposal to create a combatant command for robots and automation.

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AI is taking some parts of background checks from 'months to hours,' clearance agency says

David DiMolfetta — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 13:56:00 -0400

The nation’s largest counterintelligence unit aims to use artificial intelligence tools to speed security clearance reviews for people and companies seeking to do sensitive work on behalf of the government.

The Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency can use AI to reduce parts of the vetting process from “months to hours,” said Mark Nehmer, an agency analytics and innovation chief who spoke Tuesday on a panel at the Defense One Tech Summit in Virginia.

DCSA is the Defense Department’s main agency for conducting background investigations and vetting personnel for access to classified information, and serves as a key determinant for whether companies are eligible to work with military and intelligence agencies.

A recent congressionally-approved acquisition overhaul, which encourages defense officials to prioritize goods and services from the commercial market, means that the counterintelligence agency will have to process some 43,000 clearance requests per year, he estimated.

“We’re trying to use AI exquisitely, use AI to make these little tiny decisions, and then bring that up to a human, so they can actually have a package of evidence to say, ‘I asked, and this is exactly the conclusion I will come to as a senior analyst that has to make those decisions day-in and day-out,’” Nehmer said.

He did not specify what AI systems would be used for the efforts.

The remarks highlight how the government is applying AI to a key national security function that determines who has access to clearances, and they add another case to a long list of examples showing how the federal enterprise is using AI to speed operations.

DCSA has led the government’s background check process since 2019, when the Office of Personnel Management handed off its National Background Investigations Bureau to the Pentagon.

DCSA’s use of AI builds on a years-long effort to automate and overhaul the federal background-check system. The agency has enrolled millions of clearance holders in continuous vetting under an initiative known as Trusted Workforce 2.0, though the broader modernization effort has faced repeated delays, cost overruns and congressional scrutiny.

Over the weekend, the U.S. invoked an export-control mechanism to essentially ban two major Anthropic frontier models, escalating debates over how Washington could exert itself over AI usage in the government. The decision has been widely criticized.

GovExec Editor-in-Chief Frank Konkel contributed to this report.

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NATO has 'changed a lot' in four years, transformation leader says

Bradley Peniston — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 13:45:13 -0400

NATO has “really changed a lot in the last three to four years,” since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine forced the alliance to rethink how it learns, experiments, and operates, a top NATO transformation official said.

Now the alliance is moving away from long, platform-centered modernization cycles and toward faster experimentation, interoperability, and “system-of-systems” approaches, said Maj. Gen. Dominique Luzeaux, NATO’s digital transformation champion and special advisor to the Supreme Allied Commander Transformation. He spoke Tuesday at the Defense One Tech Summit in Arlington, Virginia.

Luzeaux pointed to Ukraine’s ever-increasing use of unmanned ground, air, surface, and undersea systems—and how the main lesson is more than just drones are useful.

“What is important is to have an integrated, multi-domain robotic ecosystem,” Luzeaux said. “Because it’s not just one drone making the difference. It’s all the drones being together, the right number, at the right place, at the right time, making a true difference.”

Another major lesson is that war is about ever-shorter innovation cycles.

“If we look at Ukraine in the first year,” he said, they were mostly using Soviet weapons and “more or less losing the battle.” But they learned to evolve, and then Russian forces followed suit. “So after two years, the Russians also had changed their own innovation cycles, and then it was innovation cycle against innovation cycle.

“In order to not lose everything, Ukraine had to go from system-oriented innovation to a much wider innovation—not to innovate [just] on the tactical, or very strict tactical, platform level, but to have a more global [approach] and to be able to do strategic, operational, and tactical levels together.”

That’s what NATO is now trying to do, Luzeaux said.

“So we used to have very long-term programs,” he said. “And now what we do, we always have some long-term programs, of course, for major investments, but we also have much shorter-term cycles, experimentations, exercises.”

Luzeaux pointed to NATO efforts in layered counter-UAS experimentation, which he said tests different approaches every two or three months.

The shift is also architectural. He said NATO is moving “from a platform-centric to a system-of-systems world,” in which the key problem is not any single weapon, sensor, or vehicle, but how those assets are orchestrated.

“What is important is the orchestration between the different assets,” he said.

That means designing architectures that separate functions from platforms—for example, using 5G antennas not just for communications nodes, but also as sensors.

NATO’s Allied Command Transformation, Luzeaux said, is focused on helping the alliance connect national capabilities into coherent, interoperable forces. NATO must be able to make assets from different countries work together, such as pairing a U.S. drone with a German command-and-control system and a French sensor.

“This is where we put the glue between the different things,” he said. “Our role is to design all the things that help put together the various assets which are brought by all the countries in order to have something coherent.”

Asked whether alliance members are learning the lesson quickly enough, Luzeaux said yes, but added that NATO still must learn faster.

“What we need is a continuous learning and adaptation model,” he said. “Continuous experimentation, continuous learning, which is very important.”

The same pressure is changing NATO’s approach to standards. Luzeaux said the alliance has long been known for having “too many” standards and that they often took too much time to implement.

“Part of the new policy in NATO is to take standards—so international standards and standards from the civilian world, from the commercial world—and use them, adopt them, not adapt them,” he said.

Exercises also matter, he said, because they standardize procedures for forces from different countries to fight together.

Asked how quickly NATO can develop standards for threats such as Shahed drones, Luzeaux said the alliance is pursuing both short-term reactive initiatives and longer-term efforts that can be integrated into broader capability programs.

He cited a Baltic Sea effort, launched last year as an experiment and now used by several northern countries, that uses uncrewed surface vehicles to patrol and detect Russia’s shadow fleet.

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Shaped charges from coffee grounds? Pentagon science chief describes future of war

Bradley Peniston — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 11:21:19 -0400

When the Pentagon’s science and technology chief looks at Ukraine, he sees a war fought with weapons invented, produced, and fielded since the conflict erupted.

“The fact that you can bring relevant capability to the fight, as the Ukrainians and allies have done in the conflict with Russia, that essentially didn't exist at the beginning of the fight,” Joseph Jewell, assistant defense secretary for science and technology, said Tuesday at the Defense One Tech Summit in Arlington, Virginia. “That's the new thing here.”

It’s a thing the United States must learn to do, Jewell said.

Ukraine’s homegrown drone industry “to a large extent, sprung up almost overnight because of urgency. I think with our industrial resources, we certainly could do things at that scale and even in a more sophisticated way. And we need to do it,” he said.

Jewell noted that Ukraine has taken the Russian Navy out of the fight without much of a navy of its own.

“The way they were able to do that, well, there are several things. First of all, their weapon systems were small, relatively undetectable. Second of all, they had a lot of them,” he said.

There is still a need for expensive, highly capable weapons, Jewell said, “But the exquisite effect may be helped along by leveraging a hundred or a thousand drones controlled by AI. And I think that's what we're starting to see modern warfare evolve into. Now, of course, the model is a lot of people in Ukraine who are actually manually controlling these first-person drones. I think the natural evolution of that is AI-controlled or AI-enabled.”

Patent holiday

One way the Pentagon is trying to speed up innovation is by making it easier for defense companies to use government-held technological patents.

The Defense Department holds tens of thousands of patents, but only takes in about $20 million a year from them. In January, Jewell’s boss, Defense Undersecretary for Research and Engineering Emil Michael, announced a “patent holiday” under which private companies can license some of those patents—about 500, Jewell said—free of charge.

He said the first no-fee patent license was granted last month. As of mid-June, 14 patents have been “signed out” for commercial use, one has been licensed for a fee by a company that wanted exclusivity, 36 more are pending, and 145 more applications have come in, he said.

Biotech

Jewell lauded the promise of biotech combined with AI. He cited a new bioengineered thermal coating that may help drones obscure their heat signatures, developed through BioMADE, a DOD-sponsored Manufacturing Innovation Institute.

He also described an experiment in which Marines in the Pacific used 3D printers and other tools to field-produce shaped charges with local materials: plastic water bottles, crushed volcanic rock, coconut husks, and coffee grounds.

“They all detonated, actually; the volcanic rocks were most effective,” he said. “The thing that's amazing to me is this was 3D-printed. You effectively have 99% reduced the time to point-of-use, because you could make it in the field from materials that are endemic in the Indo-Pacific.”

What’s more, the Marines’ shaped charge “had 25% better focusing characteristics than conventionally manufactured high explosives,” he said. “So we envision a future where you have a containerized production facility for potentially the ingredients for that, potentially including the 3D printer to pump out the shaped charges. And then you can drop, say, a CONEX box in the field where you need, so it can produce biodiesel, it can produce jet fuel.”

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Industry and academia call on administration to free Anthropic’s AI model

Alexandra Kelley — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 08:00:00 -0400

Signatories across industry, academia and expert groups issued a public letter Monday asking the Trump administration to roll back new restrictions imposed on Anthropic’s Fable 5 model.

Featured on a new “Free Fable” website, the letter — signed by representatives from companies like Adobe, NVIDIA and Zoom, along with academics from Johns Hopkins and the University of Maryland, Baltimore College — asks Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross to reverse the suspension of Anthropic’s latest model.

The White House’s Friday decision to suspend access to Fable 5, which is a consumer-safe variation of Anthropic’s cybersecurity-focused Mythos model, initially only applied to foreign nationals both within and outside of the U.S. Given the challenges surrounding cutting off access to specific IP addresses for specific users, Anthropic announced it would disable access to Fable 5 for all users.

The decision comes as Anthropic and elements of the U.S. government are still in litigation over the Trump administration designating the company a supply chain risk following a dispute between Anthropic and the Pentagon over barring use of the company’s AI products in autonomous weaponry and surveillance operations.

In the letter released Monday, the signatories protested the government’s export controls, saying that it “has taken the best models away from defenders, created market uncertainty, and risked America’s AI leadership without any real risk to justify it.”

The signatories said the inherent protections built into Fable to prevent its use for cyber offenses and identify the ongoing race to AI dominance with adversarial nations like China were reasons to unleash Fable for use by the cyberdefense community.

“Anthropic has built multiple protections into the Fable model to prevent its use for cyber offensive uses. These protections were so aggressive as to be the source of humor in the cyber community on launch day,” the letter said. “It is essential to provide AI to coders and security teams so they can find and fix flaws in their own newly-written as well as decades of legacy code faster than our adversaries.”

The signatories recommended four approaches that the administration should take on AI policy going forward, starting with public sector regulators collaborating with industry and academia for input and using a democratic rule-making process for new AI policy.

The letter also recommended transparent enforcement with “appropriate time given to remediate” and using the “minimal extent necessary” to ensure the safety of the American public are the.

Other private sector organizations who did not sign the letter have also expressed confusion following the administration’s export controls and are trying to ensure clear communication with the White House.

“Many people are closely monitoring this situation to see whether Anthropic and the White House can overcome their differences, establish a better rapport, and quickly resolve this situation,” an industry source told Nextgov/FCW. “At the same time, there’s some general unease about the use of export controls to gain leverage over the AI companies because of some of the unintended consequences it might initiate.”

TJ Marlin, the CEO of Guardrail Technologies, an AI-powered enterprise security platform that works to detect risks in other AI systems, underscored the need for cyberdefenders to have the best tools to consistently be able to monitor, detect and patch network vulnerabilities.

“The question is not whether a given model's protections can be bypassed,” Marlin told Nextgov/FCW. “The question is who finds the weakness first, the defender or the attacker, and whether the organization is built to keep finding them on a schedule that never ends.”

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Pentagon’s use of JAGs in civilian roles would be probed under NDAA provision

Thomas Novelly — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 19:03:08 -0400

The Trump administration’s use of military lawyers for civilian roles would be probed by Congress’ watchdog agency under language added to the 2027 defense policy bill.

The provision was added to the Senate Armed Service Committee’s version of the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. It orders the Government Accountability Office to review the Pentagon’s use of judge advocate generals to support the Justice Department’s operations, “including their use as immigration judges and special prosecutors, and its impact on morale and readiness,” Warren’s office said.

“Pete Hegseth is treating our independent military lawyers like pawns in Trump’s cruel immigration agenda and it’s hurting our military readiness and morale,” Warren said in an emailed statement to Defense One. “This independent investigation is an important step to support our service members and hold this administration accountable.”

Warren’s office said the amendment ordering up the probe had "bipartisan support” and would not be cut during debate in the Senate or in conference with the House. Her statement did not say how the SASC voted on her provision, and committee spokespeople did not return a request for comment.

Earlier this month, Republicans axed a House effort to amend U.S. law to limit JAGs to military-related matters.

The Congressional interest in the morale of judge advocate generals follows Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s high-level firings, harsh criticisms, and wide-ranging reforms targeted at the military’s lawyers. During his 18 months in office, Hegseth has fired the military’s top uniformed lawyers, reduced the civilian legal staff, and overseen the assignment of JAGs to civilian work, including as immigration judges and as special U.S. attorneys in Democratic-run cities during National Guard deployments.

Warren’s provision drew praise from Steve Lepper, a former Air Force JAG and a member of a group of former JAGs who have criticized the administration’s use of military lawyers.

“I agree with Senator Warren. I agree with the rationale, and, quite frankly, anything that gets into the NDAA that requires the Pentagon to justify his use of judge advocates in those roles, I think, is a good thing,” Lepper said.

Last year, about 600 JAGs were assigned to work for the Justice Department as immigration judges. Earlier this year, Defense One reported that dozens of uniformed lawyers were sent to cities to work as special U.S. attorneys as part of National Guard surges in Minneapolis, Minnesota; Memphis, Tennessee; and Washington, D.C.

Military legal experts have told Defense One that those JAGs often lack the necessary experience to work those cases. In December, one Army lawyer working as a special U.S. attorney in Minnesota was reportedly held in contempt of court when an Immigrations and Custom Enforcement detainee was released from custody without his identification paperwork.

Lepper said he believes the move to push JAGs into those civilian roles has harmed the morale of the military’s lawyers.

“The rank-and-file judge advocates don't think this is a good idea,” he said. “Americans are on the receiving end of the cases that are being prosecuted by judge advocates and immigrants are being subjected to, I believe, the lack of due process by having military officers serving as immigration judges sitting in judgment on their immigration cases.”

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Removal of Iranian nuclear materials to be worked out as war deal nears

Jennifer Shutt, Stateline — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 22:04:17 -0400

The Trump administration still needs to determine how it will remove nuclear materials from Iran after officials from both countries sign documents to end the war, a senior official said Friday.

“This is very combustible stuff, very volatile stuff. We're not just going to, like, go down there with a backhoe and a guy with a backpack and start taking it out,” the official, who did not want to be identified by name, said on a call with reporters organized by the White House. “The technical details need to be figured out, but I think there's a commitment to do that.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi wrote in a social media post a few hours before the call that a memorandum of understanding with the United States "has never been closer."

"Pending its finalization, the media should refrain from entering speculation about its content," he added. "In line with our responsible and transparent approach, all details will be shared with the public in due course."

The officials’ comments came one day after President Donald Trump said negotiators had “just made a great settlement of the war with Iran” that would be “subject to finalization of documents” over the next few days.

Possible meeting in Europe

The U.S. official said the administration is 80% to 85% sure leaders from the two countries would gather sometime this month to sign a memorandum of understanding to end the war, possibly in Europe.

Those documents will create a framework to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, destroy enriched nuclear materials and establish inspections to ensure Iran doesn’t possess a nuclear weapon, the official said.

The MOU will also start a 60-day technical negotiation where leaders from both countries work out more specifics of what the United States wants to see Iran accomplish in order to lift economic sanctions, the official said.

The step-by-step process with verification requirements is designed to build trust and “accomplish something meaningful for both Iran and the United States of America,” the official said.

“I don't think the Iranians trust us and I don't think the United States trusts the Iranians,” the official said.

Whether or not Iran could have a civilian nuclear program for energy production will remain to be seen, though the official didn’t entirely rule it out.

“We're not bothered at all by the idea of civilian power plants in Iran,” the official said. “What we're bothered by is the type of infrastructure that would allow them to jump from civilian power generation to nuclear weapons development and that's what they've had for a very long time.”

Ashley Murray contributed to this report.

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Anthropic suspends top AI models after US export-control order

David DiMolfetta — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 12:44:00 -0400

The Trump administration has ordered Anthropic to restrict foreign-national access to two of its most advanced artificial-intelligence models, prompting the company to disable the systems for all customers and escalating a fight over how Washington should control frontier AI tools with powerful cybersecurity capabilities.

Anthropic said Friday evening that the U.S. issued an export control directive suspending access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 by any foreign national, including foreign nationals inside the United States and foreign national employees of the company. Anthropic said the order effectively forces it to abruptly disable both models for all customers while it works to comply, though the directive will not affect access to its other models.

The order marks one of the administration’s most aggressive steps yet to control access to frontier AI models, and increases tensions with Anthropic, which has become a darling in Washington policy circles for its often-public commitments to AI safety.

The move appears to stem from concerns about a possible jailbreak of Anthropic’s systems. Axios reported Friday evening that the Commerce Department acted after another company claimed it had jailbroken Mythos, alarming officials about potential national security risks. Anthropic in a blog post pushed back on the government’s rationale, saying the concern involved a narrow potential issue and did not justify pulling access to the models broadly.

“To date, the government has only given us verbal evidence of a potential narrow, non-universal jailbreak, which essentially consists of asking the model to read a specific codebase and fix any software flaws,” Anthropic wrote in a statement on the order. “Our understanding is that one potential jailbreak was shared with the government. We have reviewed a report that we believe is the basis of the government's directive and validated that the level of capability displayed there is widely available from other models (including OpenAI’s GPT-5.5), and is used every day by the defenders who keep systems safe.”

The Trump administration’s order does not make mention of GPT-5.5 Cyber, another advanced vulnerability-focused model currently available to cyber defenders.

The decision came just days after Anthropic released Fable 5 and Mythos 5, the former of which was made available to the public with restrictions on sensitive uses. Mythos 5 was offered through a more limited trusted-access program known as Project Glasswing for cyber defenders and critical infrastructure operators. The company has described Mythos as a highly capable cybersecurity model that could be leveraged for significant cyber intrusions.

That dual-use potential has placed Anthropic at the center of a broader policy fight over how the government should treat advanced AI systems that can help defenders find flaws but could also assist in offensive cyber operations.

The government’s move to set export restrictions on the tools has drawn public support from senior defense technology officials.

Kirsten Davies, the Department of Defense’s chief information officer, wrote on X that the department “fully support[s] @POTUS and @SecWar in prioritizing national security and the security of our warfighters, [Defense Industry Base] partners, critical infrastructure, international partners and allies,” she said, crediting President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

“Some things are simply more important than revenue cycles, clickbait, and pre-IPO valuation. America First. Always,” she added.

The shutdown would likely complicate any near-term plans to test or deploy Anthropic’s most capable cyber-focused systems, especially for federal agencies and critical infrastructure partners. It also raises unresolved questions about how the government plans to balance trusted access for U.S. agencies and allies with fears that adversaries or unauthorized users could misuse the same systems.

The administration passed a sweeping AI executive order earlier this month, and has been discussing giving its main civilian cyberdefense agency full access to Mythos to aid in federal cyberdefense. Meanwhile, agency tech leaders have been struggling to both access and understand how to implement Mythos, citing lack of transparency from the White House’s cyber office.

Anthropic has had a contentious relationship with the federal government in recent months, after the company refused to allow its products to be used for instances of domestic surveillance or autonomous lethal weaponry. The Pentagon subsequently designated the company as a supply chain risk, and Trump ordered that federal agencies stop all use of its products. A federal judge on March 27 issued a temporary injunction on both actions.

“AI regulation will be some of the most serious and consequential work the U.S. government does over the next generation, and it is imperative that this work be done consistently across industry, without favor, and according to a clear, rules-based process,” said Brad Carson, president of Americans for Responsible Innovation. “Based on what we know thus far, the decision to block Anthropic’s latest AI model fails that test, and as a result, risks America’s edge in AI innovation. While the federal government must have the capacity to evaluate and even block the deployment of advanced AI models in extraordinary situations, the utmost care is required to insulate these decisions from impulse and political favoritism.”

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A powerful spying ability will sunset on Friday — here’s why

David DiMolfetta — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 16:42:00 -0400

A powerful surveillance program — Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — is set to statutorily lapse Friday for the first time in its history, capping months of failed negotiations over privacy and who should lead the nation’s spy agencies.

What is Section 702?

Section 702 lets U.S. intelligence agencies gather communications of foreigners located abroad without a warrant. It’s made possible because much of the world’s digital traffic flows through U.S.-based companies and internet infrastructure.

The law, enacted in 2008, codified parts of the once-secret Stellarwind surveillance program created under the Bush administration after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist 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.

The authority is widely viewed by intelligence officials as one of the government’s most vital national security tools, used for counterterrorism, cyber defense and tracking nuclear weapons threats, among other things. But it has also drawn scrutiny from privacy advocates and lawmakers in both parties because Americans’ communications can be incidentally collected under the program and later searched by agencies, including the FBI.

Privacy and civil liberties groups have long pushed for proposals requiring a warrant before intelligence analysts can query 702 data for information about U.S. persons. Such measures don’t break neatly along party lines. Republicans and Democrats have argued that Congress should not simply approve another extension, despite wishes to do so from the Trump administration.

In 2024, under then-President Joe Biden, lawmakers reauthorized the program for two years with a number of reforms, though those didn’t include a warrant requirement.

On the other side of the debate, national security officials and other lawmakers in both parties contend that adding a warrant measure would slow or weaken intelligence work at a time of heightened threats from China, Iran and others.

March: Key court approves 702 activities

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court approved the government’s annual certifications for Section 702 a few months ago, allowing collection under the authority to continue into 2027 even if Congress failed to act before the statutory deadline. The certifications cover broad categories of national security risks. For instance, one may cover foreign hackers targeting U.S. critical infrastructure.

That court approval means a lapse in the statute doesn’t cause the intelligence community’s existing 702 collection to immediately cease. But the lack of a congressional renewal can create legal uncertainty for technology providers compelled to assist the government in collection.

Unlike more clandestine intelligence tools used by agencies like the NSA to collect data on foreign adversaries, Section 702 relies on a legal mechanism requiring U.S. companies such as AT&T and Microsoft to turn over communications like emails and text messages that are tied to qualifying targets.

April: Congress approves a 45-day extension

As an April 30 deadline to renew the authority approached, Congress still had not settled the debate and agreed to buy itself more time. Lawmakers passed a 45-day extension after senators secured a deal requiring the declassification of a secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court opinion within 15 days that privacy groups argue would help better inform discussions on the future of the program.

The vote punted the authority’s expiration to June 12. The status of that declassification is still unclear.

Over the last few months, the FISA fight has been shaped by rising unease over privacy and government power, with Democrats and advocacy groups questioning how Americans’ communications are handled and processed once collected. Those concerns have been folded into broader debates over immigration enforcement, the intelligence community’s use of commercially available data and the potential for artificial intelligence tools to expand the government’s ability to analyze sensitive personal information.

June: Intelligence leadership fight further complicates renewal

The debate grew more complicated after President Donald Trump moved to install Bill Pulte, the Federal Housing Finance Agency director, as acting director of national intelligence.

The decision soon injected a fight over intelligence leadership into the 702 talks. Democrats and some Republicans raised concerns about placing Pulte — a Trump ally with limited intelligence experience who has used his post atop the Federal Housing Finance Agency to scrutinize the president’s political foes — in charge of the intelligence community while Congress was being asked to extend one of its most powerful surveillance authorities.

The backlash helped sink another short-term extension this week. On Thursday, Trump said he would nominate Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman, to serve as director of national intelligence on a permanent basis.

The move appeared aimed, at least in part, at easing concerns over Pulte, but it did not immediately solve the 702 problem. Clayton still needs Senate confirmation, and Pulte’s interim role still remains part of the dispute as the deadline approaches.

What happens when 702 sunsets?

A lapse would be historically significant because Section 702 has never before been allowed to statutorily expire. Because the FISA court approved the government’s certifications earlier this year, existing collection activity may continue for now.

A more immediate concern involves whether agencies can add new foreign targets under already-approved court certifications, and whether companies will keep up with regulations without congressional renewal. If a company stopped complying with a 702 directive, the government could ask the FISA court to force compliance. Typically, the court has up to 30 days to rule.

Civil liberties advocates contend that collection can meaningfully continue even after a statutory lapse because of the way annual certifications are approved, and that other authorities remain available to support national security operations.

With the the House of Representatives scheduled to recess until June 23, lawmakers would not be able to approve any extension for at least a week. It’s possible Trump may sign an executive order to extend the FISA deadline, though whether he has the authority to do so remains unclear.

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Push for new Cyber Force service branch narrowly fails in the Senate

Thomas Novelly — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 11:47:50 -0400

An effort to create a new cyber-focused military service under the Army narrowly failed in the Senate, but the lawmaker who proposed it isn’t backing down.

Last month, Defense One exclusively reported that Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., was spearheading a markup amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would create a Cyber Force. The effort ultimately failed by a vote of 14-13, with four Democrats and 10 Republicans swatting the amendment down. Nine Democrats and four Republicans voted in favor.

“We remain optimistic about Cyber Force and the Senator will continue to push for its creation,” a Gillibrand spokesperson said.

While the Senate Armed Service Committee’s version of the National Defense Authorization Act sidelined the creation of a Cyber Force, it does scrutinize various Pentagon policy changes meant to strengthen U.S. Cyber Command, the current cyber-focused combatant command.

The committee’s version of the NDAA “directs an independent review of whether CYBERCOM is adequately organized and resourced to meet its expanding authorities and responsibilities” and also calls for “an independent study on the roles, responsibilities, authorities, and resourcing of the Principal Cyber Advisors of the military departments.”

The push to establish a Cyber Force under the Army, similar to how the the Space Force and Marine Corps sit under the Air Force and Navy, was in tandem with a new think tank report examining the perceived cost, time, and benefits of setting up a new cyber-focused service branch.

Joshua Stiefel, a former House Armed Services Committee staffer, co-chaired the Center For Strategic and International Studies and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Commission on Cyber Force Generation. The findings, released earlier this month, said the creation of the service “would address longstanding structural challenges and build the Cyber Force the United States needs for this critical domain of warfare.”

Stiefel told reporters earlier this month that the findings were released at a pivotal moment where it seems CYBERCOM has been given a significant amount of authority, but concerns over how the military handles its cyber-focused troops still persist.

“What's interesting is that as someone who was in the legislative process for almost seven years, we tried, I tried, my colleagues tried everything and it seems as if we've reached that breaking point where there isn't any more authority to give to address this problem that doesn't start to begin to chip away or take away from the service chiefs,” Stiefel said. “And that dilemma means we're at this precipice.”

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The Army wants to build a better data center. Can they do it?

Meghann Myers — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 17:40:24 -0400

The Army got more than 200 responses to a March open-ended call for private-industry ideas on how the service could upgrade its infrastructure with new contracting models and public-private partnerships. Among the 120 that were deemed viable were proposals to build data centers on four Army installations—and officials are now studying the idea.

Aware of the immense controversy surrounding data centers, officials are trying to get ahead of community concerns by requiring the centers to generate their own power and mitigate their water usage, while meeting with local residents to address their questions directly, an official told Defense One.

Six weeks ago, the Army’s deputy undersecretary went down to Fort Bliss, Texas, to hold a listening session with the commander of 1st Armored Division and community members, along with El Paso Water and El Paso Electric, as well as Carlisle, the company that would fund the data center the Army hopes to build on nearly 1,400 unused acres.

“So I think the difference between us, the Army, doing a data center, and say Meta or Google, is we're part of the communities that are there, and we are going to engage with them on a routine and regular basis to look for solutions that work for everyone, right?” said Col. John Oliver, executive officer for Deputy Army Under Secretary Dave Fitzgerald. “Because, yes, we understand that there's been consternation with data centers.”

It’s a solid strategy, according to Darrell M. West, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who has been researching the future of data centers. Though pushback against data centers has made headlines recently, some communities have more readily accepted them. Those tend to be places where tech companies made the effort to inform residents about the costs and benefits ahead of time.

“People want to know up-front, you know, where the energy is coming from, how much water is being used, how much the overall cost is going to be, and what the noise levels are,” West said.

They also want to know the benefits, he added, whether it’s new jobs or better internet connectivity in remote areas.

“So if the Army can be transparent about both costs and benefits, that would go a long way to soothing any possible community concern,” he said.

As far as noise, the Army has the benefit of vast real estate that is purposely out of earshot of neighborhoods. A second proposed data center site is at Dugway Proving Ground, Utah, a testing range an hour’s drive from the nearest community. The solicitation also includes Fort Hood, Texas, and Fort Bragg, N.C.

The proposals must include net-zero water usage and a power plan that does not draw on the local energy grid, Oliver said.

Power generation is a major consideration for data centers, and many communities near data centers are being squeezed by higher electricity costs as the grid struggles to keep up with demands.

“There are a few places where the tech companies have quote-unquote ‘solved this problem.’ So for example, Microsoft is building a data center next to the Three Mile Island nuclear plant, and they're going to bring that back online, so you know that's a new energy source, that's really not competing with other community needs,” West said. ”So that's kind of a success story, but that's very idiosyncratic—most communities don't have an unused nuclear power plant sitting next door.”

On the other hand, the Army has been working on ways to be more energy-resilient, with microgrids built or planned for dozens of installations already.

Another idea is to have Carlisle build a new well on Fort Bliss to feed its desalination plant, which is its main source of water, to offset the water used to cool the data center.

“We are encouraging Carlisle to do that, so actually make it net-positive,” he said. “We don't know if that's an engineering solution that we can actually get to yet, but we're actively working toward that as a part of the process.”

New construction also comes with the promise of job creation, but West cautioned being too optimistic.

“I think the jobs issue is one of the best arguments behind data centers, because in the construction phase they really need a wide variety of skilled labor,”he said, including electricians, plumbers, welders and pipefitters. “There’s a whole range of workers who are needed for this, but the problem is almost every one of those kinds of workers are in short supply.”

Longer term, Oliver said, the Army is planning something like a data-center ecosystem, with both a commercial side and a classified military data side, along with the power-generation component.

“Our data centers are not going to be just big buildings that are out in the middle of nowhere that are run by 10 people,” he said. “It becomes kind of a campus that we can work on.”

200 ideas

Beyond the data centers, the Army’s Strategic Capital Initiative is working on dozens of other projects that came out of the RFI.

They started with more than 200 responses to its request for information, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll told reporters May 28, and have since been narrowed down to about 120 that are executable, with about 20 in various stages of execution.

More than 95 percent are from vendors the Army has never worked with, Oliver said, making the SCI an opportunity for not only fresh ideas but fresh partners.

“FedEx came back, a bunch of private capital partners came back that we don't normally work with, like Apollo,” Oliver said. “We got all kinds of mineral processing, manufacturing companies that we've never ever worked with before. We also got industry organizing around themselves, too—they kind of built some consortiums of companies that we'd never thought about.”

Some of the first proposals they approved were to the organic industrial base, Oliver said. Corpus Christi Army Depot in Texas will get a turboshaft engine modernization plant; McAllister Army Ammunition Plant in Oklahoma will get an additive energetics load and assembly packing facility; Red River Army Depot in Texas is going to be a hub for servicing heavy-duty forklifts; and Pine Bluff in Arkansas will enter into some public-private partnerships to manufacture energetics and explosives.

Three weeks ago, a request for proposals on critical mineral refinement went out.

“The next thing we ought to look at is probably energy resilience and dominance, based on the RFIs we got back,” Oliver said. “Let's go after those next, because we know we're going to see increased power load across our installations as we work on this.”

The Army is planning a June 15 RFP for power-generation ideas, he said.

“We're not looking for a specific type of power,” Oliver added. “It could be geothermal, it could be small, modular nuclear. It could be gas turbines. It could be anything.”

Then there are some logistics management ideas to sift through.

“We're probably going to pick an organization or two that kind of help us modernize our supply chain in the next month or so,” Oliver said. “Where we work with them, use some of their current logistics that they already have set up, distribution to help us manage supply, and they come on post and, and help us manage our supply warehouses on post.”

“And then we'll see how it goes after the summer,” he added, referring to a hundred other ideas the service is reviewing.

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House vote puts Section 702 on brink of lapse amid fight over acting spy chief

David DiMolfetta — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 17:16:00 -0400

The House failed to approve an extension of a powerful spying authority on Thursday, putting it on course to statutorily lapse for the first time ever, even as President Donald Trump named his choice for a permanent spy chief in an apparent bid to defuse a fight with Congress.

Hours after the 218-198 vote on Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — which was fraught with bipartisan objections to Bill Pulte’s appointment as acting director of national intelligence — Trump said he would name Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, to serve in the role permanently.

Section 702 allows the NSA and FBI to collect communications of foreigners abroad without a warrant, but the calls, texts and phone calls of Americans communicating with foreign targets can also be gathered, a caveat that has long raised constitutional concerns with privacy advocates.

“Few people anywhere in the Legal Community are respected at the level of Jay,” Trump said in a Truth Social post Thursday. “I encourage the United States Senate to confirm Jay as soon as possible.”

An impasse between the White House and Democrats has persisted, with Democrats warning that Pulte’s role in mortgage-fraud reviews last year could foreshadow an abuse of intelligence tools to target the president’s political opponents. Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump praised Clayton, and said Pulte would only be in his post “for a short while.”

It’s unclear how the appointment of Clayton, who like Pulte appears to lack national-intelligence experience, would affect the outcome of a 702 extension. After Thursday, the House is scheduled to recess until June 23, making it likely that the spying power would statutorily lapse for at least a week.

In a statement, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that he has “known and respected Jay Clayton for many years” and believes “he is a capable public servant.”

But Warner said the timing of the announcement is suspicious, noting that “the president could have put forward a qualified nominee from the beginning. Instead, he waited until the House of Representatives went out of town, choosing a path that raises the risk of an entirely avoidable lapse in a critical national security tool.”

Warner added that the Senate would not take up a FISA extension unless the administration guarantees that Pulte will not serve as acting DNI.

“Either Director [Tulsi] Gabbard must remain in place or the administration must designate the Senate-confirmed Principal Deputy DNI as the acting head through any transition,” he said, referring to Aaron Lukaas, a number-two official in that office.

“I have known Jay Clayton for decades and worked with him during his time as Chairman of the Securities Exchange Commission,” Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement.

“During that time, he had the independence of mind and respect for the law that are necessary for any Director of National Intelligence,” Himes said. “I am hopeful that he will maintain that independence and provide apolitical high-quality intelligence to policymakers. The Senate should evaluate and confirm his nomination quickly. It is critical that we have a permanent DNI in place and move past the Bill Pulte disaster.”

Section 702 of FISA, 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. The program is frequently used to track myriad national security threats.

In March, the Trump administration notified Congress that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court renewed certifications for the surveillance program, letting it operate for another year even amid an expiration. The certifications can cover broad categories of national security risks, such as nuclear weapons and cyber threats.

But the split between the court’s recertification process and Capitol Hill’s role in extending the authority itself can create uncertainty for providers — such as AT&T and Microsoft — who are required to comply.

A congressional aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity to communicate private discussions, said staff on the House intelligence committee are assessing how the spying authority can still be used in the event of a lapse. One concern, said the aide, is that data collected under the 702 authority could become increasingly out-of-date, and, therefore, be less effective.

Civil liberties advocates contend that Section 702 collection can continue even after a statutory lapse because of the way annual certifications are approved, and that other authorities remain available to support national security operations.

A former intelligence official told Nextgov/FCW that, while collection activities would immediately, lawfully continue, firms may enter an “odd legal space” where providers mandated to comply with the law could argue that they don’t need to supply information. If access under 702 is curtailed, the intelligence community would likely explore ways to lean on other lawful collection authorities, the former official added.

Glenn Gerstell, former general counsel at the NSA, echoed these points.

“Companies may say they are not 100% certain the authority still applies,” he said in an interview.

Two areas — terror attacks and cyberattacks — might present a higher risk with the authority having lapsed, Gerstell added, because they are fast-moving developments that often rely on single tips that intelligence analysts must run down.

“702 is a great way to find and pursue that tip. It’s a great tool for quickly getting an answer,” he said. “If the FBI hears a ransomware attack has been made, and they believe it to be foreign-generated, they’re going to want to move with lightning speed to figure out where it’s coming from.”

“It feels like we’re playing Russian roulette with national security,” he later added.

The NSA, CIA, FBI and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence — which all have authority to access Section 702 data — did not return requests for comment.

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Senators want a new robot warfare-focused combatant command

Thomas Novelly — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 17:01:34 -0400

Senators want the Pentagon to create a new autonomous warfare-focused combatant command led by a four-star general, according to the latest version of the annual defense policy bill.

The Senate Armed Services Committee wants the Defense Department “to adopt the future of warfare by permitting the establishment of the Robotic and Autonomous Systems Combatant Command,” according to the group’s summary of the National Defense Authorization Act. A committee staffer told reporters on Thursday that senators were inspired, in part, by Ukraine’s creation of a drone-focused military service.

“It’s not a new domain. Uncrewed, unmanned, whatever you want to call them, are in every domain, sub-surface, surface, and aerial, and probably more in the future,” the staffer said. “What we ended up with was a four-star combatant command that we think will help to integrate, and go fast, and transition the force generation of unmanned systems to the services sometime in the future.”

Another staffer told reporters the command would also have “special kinds of test and evaluation authorities, and limited acquisition authorities” to experiment with emerging weapons.

It was not immediately clear how the group would operate and interact with other military efforts, such as U.S. Southern Command’s new autonomous warfare group. In April, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that the Pentagon would create a sub-unified command, similar to the Joint Special Operations Command, focused on autonomous warfare.

SASC’s version of the NDAA passed 18-9, staffers told reporters on Thursday. The full text of the committee’s markup bill has not been released yet, and spokespeople did not immediately respond to follow-up questions asking for more details.

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., told reporters on Thursday that “with deep regret” he voted against the NDAA bill for the first time in his career, and said it turned a “blind eye” to the Trump administration’s military pursuits across the globe. He said he did, however, support the amendment that would probe the creation of the new combatant command.

“I supported the amendment, but the amendment is permissive, not mandatory,” Kaine said. “It does allow the DoD to sort of work with the committee to kind of flesh out what this might look like.”

Feeding the DAWG

As part of the Trump administration’s $1.5 trillion 2027 defense budget request, the Pentagon has asked for nearly $55 billion for the Defense Autonomous Working Group, or DAWG. The vast majority of that, more than $53 billion, would come from a yet-to-be-approved reconciliation bill.

President Donald Trump called for Republicans to back a third spending package to fund the $350 billion in top defense priorities such as the DAWG, Golden Dome, and shipbuilding. Top Senate appropriators oppose the move, which sidesteps their authority and would only require a simple majority to pass.

This week, House appropriators backed the administration’s $1 billion in its baseline budget request for the DAWG, a fraction of what they’re asking for. The Senate Armed Services Committee’s NDAA also backs the administration’s $1.15 trillion discretionary funding request.

Kaine said he’s worried that repeated reconciliation funding for defense needs sets a dangerous precedent and undermines appropriators.

“I worry about a trend that says ‘well, let's just put more and more of it in a reconciliation bill that can be done by the majority without minority input and bypass the appropriations process altogether,’” Kaine said. “We started down this path last year. This takes it to a different level, and it is a trend that I think we should nip in the bud by requiring this stuff to be part of the defense appropriations bill, and not separate in a reconciliation package.”

The first SASC staffer told reporters that Sen. Roger Wicker, the committee chairman, expects a successful discretionary appropriations process, but was less definitive about other budget maneuvers.

“We expect to be sent, and debate, perhaps process, a supplemental, and then we will look to reconciliation,” the first staffer said. “The members are definitely committed to staying in very, very close coordination with the administration and the appropriations subcommittees as we all go into what will be a very uncertain six months.”

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Mystery GPS outages traced to Russian satellite

Patrick Tucker — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 17:00:00 -0400

Occasional bursts of energy from a Russian missile-detection satellite have been briefly disrupting satellite navigation across large parts of Europe, a pattern that may indicate a “qualitative escalation in GNSS [global navigation satellite system] interference.”

At least 75 times between 2019 and 2026, University of Texas researchers observed 10-second bursts of high-powered radio signals at 1558.5 MHz: the frequency used by GPS and European navigation satellites to transmit signals to Earth. The bursts disrupted GPS antennas from Romania to Greenland, the researchers write in a paper published this month in the journal Navigation.

The origin of the pulses was a mystery. The vast size of the affected area ruled out ground- and even aircraft-based jammers, so the interference was coming from space.

Solar flares can disrupt satellite-location services, but unevenly. The disruptions were far more uniform.

“Clearly, the effects of solar radio bursts manifest differently in the IGS data compared to the transient phenomenon studied here,” they write.

The researchers created a mathematical formula for pinpointing the origin based on how intensely the radio signals hit different antennas across the affected area. The equation pointed to just one likely source: Russia’s Cosmos 2546 satellite. It was launched in May 2020, months after the first disruptions were detected, but it is part of the Edinaya Kosmicheskaya Sistema, a constellation of early missile warning satellites. They fly in the Molniya orbit, whose highly elliptical path keeps them over the high north for most of the time.

The researchers conclude that the radio bursts appear to be intentional, but too short to have any real effect. They offer no specific theory about Russia’s intentions.

But officials have become increasingly concerned about Russian space activity, including the possible orbiting of a nuclear weapon that could break GPS.

“It is unclear exactly what is happening, but it does appear to be a space-based jammer,” said Victoria Samson, the chief director of space security and stability at the Secure World Foundation. “I would guess that the reason why Russia is using its early-warning constellation for this is that it is at the right position and altitude to cover the area that Russia would want to interfere with GPS. It is possible that Russia was willing to risk using its early-warning constellation for this because it was fairly confident that the interference would not be detected; as it was, this has been going on since 2019 and was only discovered in the past several years."

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Defense Business Brief: Reactors for military bases?; NDAA update; Drone-boat rescue

Lauren C. Williams — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 16:00:00 -0400

Military bases and installations are hardly immune to the problems of the U.S. power grid, which was struggling to handle the nation’s needs even before the AI boom added a huge new demand for electricity.

“You can reasonably take the provocative stance that in the AI race, energy actually doesn't matter, the problem's so bad. We have a problem with our critical infrastructure today in all three of those buckets”: power generation, transmission, and system use, Tori Shivanandan, president and chief operating officer at Radiant Nuclear, said Monday during Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech event in Aspen, Colo.

The Pentagon wants to know whether small nuclear reactors are part of the solution, and Shivanandan says her company can help.

“Radiant is about 18 months away from delivering our first reactor to a U.S. military base. The U.S. military is a bold first customer here. Importantly, because failures are really bad,” said Shivanandan. “Many have experienced the outage in Texas, unaware that our critical bases for the Air Force were down for not just hours but days, but also the grid fails, that's hospitals, that's livelihood.”

The company plans to deploy small nuclear reactors at Buckley Space Force Base in Aurora, Colo., and begin testing the reactor this summer at the Idaho National Laboratory, Axios Denver reported.

The Pentagon is the “largest institutional customer of power in the U.S…and they're down to which use case. When the grid is under attack, where do we need to make sure that power is up and consistent? These are use cases for one megawatt micro reactors. You can imagine across the US—both on military and off military bases. When it comes to planning for our worst days, which is happening a lot in Washington right now. They're being—with a scalpel, deciding which infrastructure we need to make sure has reliable base load power.”

Welcome

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Commercial companies reporting for duty? House lawmakers want the Pentagon to create a “civil reserve industrial base” of commercial companies the military can lean on during peacetime and contingency operations, according to a provision in the House Armed Services Committee’s draft defense policy bill.

If adopted, the program would sit under the Pentagon’s acquisition and sustainment shop with the goal of enhancing “the availability and responsiveness of sustainment and repair capabilities” for military operations and include “arrangements to store, maintain, and manage replenishment parts and related equipment,” according to legislative language.
The Pentagon would “identify” commercial facilities near areas of operation, including each combatant command, and facilities in allied and partner nations.
Companies would provide facilities and personnel.
Another provision pushes the Army to modernize its organic industrial base. The measure calls for an updated resourcing model that reduces Army depot production costs and that those costs are competitive with the private sector. It would also limit the Army Secretary from “decreasing workload at an Army depot by more than 10 percent” without congressional notice.

Making moves + other news

Drone boats on a rescue mission. The crew of an Apache helicopter downed near the Strait of Hormuz were rescued by a robot surface vessel built by Saronic. The 24-foot Navy drone was sent to the CENTCOM region in March and operated by Task Force 59. The boat picked up crew members and moved them to another location where they were retrieved by helicopter, Defense One’s Thomas Novelly reports.
Raytheon is planning a $100 million expansion of its Portsmouth, R.I. facility which produces and tests Patriot missile subcomponents. The move will increase production, lower tier air and missile defense sensor testing, and ultimately help speed up deliveries, Tom Laliberty, Raytheon’s land and air defense systems president said in a news release.
The Space Force awarded $437.7 million across two contracts to produce the first satellites for its Protected Tactical Satellite Communications (SATCOM) – Global (PTS-G) program. The satellites will provide anti-jamming and other counter measures to maintain connectivity in contested communications environments, according to a news release sent Tuesday.
The Pentagon released its list of banned Chinese companies on Monday. E-commerce conglomerate Alibaba is a new addition, alongside Baidu and BYD, a car manufacturer, CNBC’s Anniek Bao writes. Alibaba denounced its inclusion on the list, calling it baseless and threatening legal action: “Alibaba is not a Chinese military company nor part of any military-civil fusion strategy. We will take all available legal action against attempts to misrepresent our company,” the company said in a statement.

Counterdrone company Epirus adds to its C-suite with Mark Cuyler as chief operating officer and Mark Horton as its chief people officer. Cuyler hails from Saildrone and Horton from Magic AI.

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China used websites to target security-clearance holders, officials say

David DiMolfetta — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 16:00:00 -0400

The FBI and Justice Department seized 13 websites allegedly used by Chinese intelligence operatives to target current and former U.S. officials and military personnel with access to classified government information.

In a press release, the DOJ said the domains were designed to look like legitimate consulting firms and were used to advertise vague, well-paid consulting roles aimed at security clearance holders. The campaign, which allegedly began in November 2023, sought to entice Americans into producing research reports or sharing insider information on topics of interest to the Chinese government, according to court documents.

The seized domains included sites associated with firm names like Centrik Global Consulting, Rightinfo Consulting, Finnacle-Vesper Consulting, CYDF Consulting, Pulse Wave Global, Catalyst Global Solutions, Horizzen, GeoIndopacific, SafeSec Group and others.

The campaign relied on familiar job-market platforms and freelance sites to advertise positions such as “Senior Analyst” and “International Affairs Consultant.”

The Justice Department said the operators used aliases, fake personas, stolen identities and artificial intelligence-generated photographs to make the companies appear credible. The alleged scheme also involved encrypted messaging apps, including Telegram, overseas payments, cryptocurrency and online payment accounts registered under false names, according to an affidavit filed in support of the seizure warrants.

The takedowns mark the latest U.S. government effort to disrupt foreign intelligence schemes that blend online recruiting and financial incentives to reach Americans with access to sensitive national security information.

Waves of federal layoffs over the past year have pushed thousands of government employees and contractors into an uncertain job market. That disruption has created renewed collection opportunities for foreign intelligence services.

Nextgov/FCW reported in January that a suspected Chinese intelligence outfit contacted a former senior State Department official late last year and offered payment for an assessment of U.S. policy priorities in Venezuela. The person who contacted the former official claimed to be affiliated with a sham consulting firm that had previously surfaced in research first reported by Nextgov/FCW last September, that assessed the firm was part of a broader network of fake companies tied to China.

The U.S. has sought to further publicize targeting efforts. In a rare public disclosure, Army Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence Lt. Gen. Anthony R. Hale issued a memo in November warning that foreign adversaries are targeting soldiers, civilians and their families through fake companies and phony recruiters. The advisory was sent to more than a million personnel across the Army, and later to members of the media, marking an unusually direct acknowledgment of the threat.

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Feds want Mythos—and clear usage guidance from the White House

Alexandra Kelley and David DiMolfetta — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 11:16:00 -0400

Several senior federal technology officials responsible for agency cybersecurity and IT systems are frustrated by the lack of White House guidance on adopting Anthropic’s powerful Mythos model, several sources told Nextgov/FCW.

Agency chief information officers, or CIOs, manage swaths of digital infrastructure that supports government operations and are facing renewed pressure to better defend agency networks as officials assess how powerful AI systems could help hackers find and exploit vulnerabilities faster.

Anthropic surgically rolled out Mythos access to select organizations in early April and recently expanded this effort — dubbed Project Glasswing — to partners in industry and other nations. The model has been going through a non-public distribution process on grounds that, in the wrong hands, it can boost adversaries’ hacking capabilities.

Select parts of the U.S. government, such as the intelligence community, already have access. But many federal tech leaders have privately complained that the White House Office of the National Cyber Director hasn’t sufficiently briefed officials on plans for accessing, implementing and using the model to scan agency networks for vulnerabilities, according to five people familiar with the matter.

[Editor's note: It's been barely three months since Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered Anthropic declared a national supply-chain risk and President Trump tweeted that "EVERY Federal Agency" should stop using its products. A judge has since ruled these actions "arbitrary and capricious."]

The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid about their knowledge of issues with the White House.

The agitation varies across agencies. Some CIOs have taken issue with a lack of direction in how they would use Mythos to scan for digital flaws, while others are more concerned with why they haven’t gained access to the model altogether.

There has been “tremendous frustration” with ONCD, the first person said. The ire stems, in part, from the fact that ONCD has largely prevented government tech leaders from making decisions about AI model use, while at the same time devoting much of its energy toward engagements with industry about AI policy.

“There’s frustration watching the private sector utilize [these models]” while many agency CIOs “are arbitrarily blocked,” said the first person, adding that there’s been a “general prohibition” imposed on anyone who wants to engage with Anthropic further. They said there’s been near-complete silence from ONCD, despite many government agencies wanting to use Mythos to find unseen vulnerabilities and fix them to better defend their networks.

“Nobody briefed us on [Mythos],” the second person told Nextgov/FCW. “I think the frustration stems from there being zero communication on the topic from ONCD.”

Absent guidance from ONCD or other executive branch agencies, Anthropic held briefings for federal CIOs in early May to help them learn more about Mythos and how it would impact the broader cybersecurity landscape, Nextgov/FCW first reported.

The concerns are significant because they suggest that some of the federal government’s most target-rich agencies may lack clear direction or consistent access to a tool that could help them find and fix security flaws more quickly.

The federal enterprise is a prime target for hackers, as adversaries have for years sought access to government emails, employee records and other sensitive data.

Several top officials have made plans to leave the White House cyber office in the last few weeks, including its head of policy.

ONCD did not respond to a request for comment. Anthropic declined to comment.

The third person, who has held discussions with at least three federal CIOs, said several are asking the private sector to help them learn more about Mythos and protect their networks from AI-supported cyberattacks.

“Federal CIOs are taking a system-wide view and approach to their technology,” the third person told Nextgov/FCW. “While they are interested in frontier AI models’ capabilities to identify vulnerabilities in their networks, they know they can’t wait for access. So they’re taking steps now to coordinate with industry to accelerate their patching process, receive vulnerability disclosures as quickly as possible and operationalize a more automated remediation process.”

The fourth person cautioned that, while there are frustrations, CIOs’ concerns are not necessarily uniform across government. Pure access to powerful AI tools like Mythos is “not some magical silver bullet,” the person said, because agencies would still have to validate the vulnerabilities they flag and determine how to respond. Some CIO offices may be more eager for Mythos access than others, depending on their cybersecurity maturity and other factors, the person added.

While ONCD may be perceived as an obstacle, the office has been lobbying for broader access to frontier model capabilities in some cases, though its approach “may not be uniform,” this fourth person said.

Access dynamics could change in the coming months. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is planning a binding operational directive that would push agencies to prioritize the most urgent risks to federal networks, a shift informed in part by AI-enabled cyber threats, the agency’s acting director said Tuesday.

The administration’s approach to AI has shifted in recent months as officials confront an emerging class of cyber-focused models that can rapidly identify vulnerabilities across computer networks, becoming a major driver of discussions over how AI systems could reshape defensive and offensive cyber operations.

President Donald Trump recently signed an AI security executive order that encourages developers to submit powerful new models to a 30-day government review before public release. On Friday, he signed a memorandum aimed at speeding up government use of advanced AI across the military and intelligence community.

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‘A terrible risk’: Senate appropriators dim prospects of another defense reconciliation bill

Thomas Novelly — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 23:21:50 -0400

Congress is unlikely to approve a third multi-hundred-billion-dollar budget maneuver to pad the Trump administration's defense spending, Senate Republicans said Tuesday.

The occasion was a hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee’s defense panel, where Air and Space Force leaders were testifying on the 2027 budget proposal. The committee chair, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, noted that some of their services’ top initiatives, such as F-35 modernization, are not part of the Trump administration’s $1.15 trillion baseline budget request.

Instead, the White House is asking Congress to pass a $350 billion appropriation through reconciliation, a process for “mandatory” government spending that only requires a simple majority to pass.

“I would just suggest that it is taking a terrible risk and creates instability when you're counting on a third reconciliation bill for the bulk of the money rather than doing base funding through the defense appropriations bill,” Collins said.

Added Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky, chair of the defense subcommittee: “I think it's safe to conclude there will not be another reconciliation bill. So, it's really not an option.”

Collins agreed.

More than $150 billion in defense spending was signed into law last July 4 under the first reconciliation package, known as Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. On Tuesday, House Republicans passed “Reconciliation 2.0”, which would provide $70 billion for the administration’s immigration-enforcement agencies, but does not include defense funding.

But there are still top-priority efforts that the administration wants to fund through reconciliation including Golden Dome, shipbuilding, and munitions.

The House Armed Services Committee completed its markup of its version of the annual defense policy bill last week. That version didn’t adjust the baseline in a substantial way to cover those reconciliation priorities, but top staffers said they were confident the additional funding would be secured.

The White House budget office anticipates that baseline defense budgets will rise from $1.15 trillion to $1.36 trillion over the next decade. It has not published plans for additional reconciliation funding after 2027.

Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., added that she was also “very concerned” that the Defense Department was relying on reconciliation for top priorities.

When Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., asked whether a supplemental bill would be crucial if reconciliation isn’t passed, Air Force Secretary Meink responded that it’s “vital” that the services get their fully-funded budget request. He added the Pentagon and the White House’s Office of Management and Budget are working “on options.”

Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., said, “The Democrats have no intention of helping us pass a budget,” meaning the government could face another shutdown that would force the military to operate under a continuing resolution.

Meink said that would harm the Air and Space Force.

“That would have significant impacts on our readiness,” Meink said. “A lot of the investments we’ve just been talking about to meet the threats from the unmanned vehicles, as well as the increased readiness for weapons systems, to increase the F-35 readiness, as well as munitions procurement, all of that is substantially impacted.”

Kennedy said the Air Force and Space Force should expect another continuing resolution.

“Well, I think you should prepare for it,” the lawmaker said. “Again, I hope I'm wrong.”

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New calls for lawmakers to override Trump’s anti-union EO at the Pentagon

Erich Wagner — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 16:00:00 -0400

The nation’s largest federal employee union last week urged House lawmakers to once again bar the Defense Department from implementing President Trump’s executive order stripping two-thirds of the federal workforce of its collective bargaining rights.

In March 2025, Trump signed an executive order banning unions at most federal agencies, citing a seldom-used provision of the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act to exempt workforces from federal sector labor law under the auspices of national security. A second order, signed last August, added a half-dozen more agencies to the initial edict.

The measure—and its implementation—have been tied up in a myriad of court cases ever since. While efforts lawsuits challenging the initiative governmentwide have been thus far unsuccessful in halting its rollout, some unions have preserved feds’ collective bargaining rights at particular agencies, including for Defense Department employees represented by the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers and the Federal Education Association.

Not so for the American Federation of Government Employees, whose contracts Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered terminated in April. In a letter to the top Democrat and Republican on the House Armed Services Committee last week, Daniel Horowitz, AFGE’s legislative director, urged the committee to once again approve a proposal nullifying Trump’s executive order as it pertains to Defense Department workers.

Last year, the panel voted on a bipartisan basis to include the amendment, proposed by Rep. Donald Norcross, D-N.J., in the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act, and the bill ultimately passed the House with the measure in tact. It did not become law, as the Senate stripped the provision from its version of the bill.

In the letter, Horowitz argued that Trump’s use of the Civil Service Reform Act’s so-called national security exemption greatly exceeded congressional intent.

“The statutory exemption Congress wrote into Title 5 was deliberately narrow, reserved for agencies like the Central Intelligence Agency whose missions are uniquely incompatible with bargaining,” he wrote. “Applying it broadly across the entire Department of Defense departs significantly from that design and longstanding precedent. It is telling that President Trump never invoked [this exemption] during his first term.”

Though Trump did not cite that authority in his first term, he sought to delegate it to then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper in 2020. Esper ultimately declined to use that power.

Horowitz noted that a group of 16 House Republicans urged members of the bicameral conference committee to keep Norcross’ amendment in the NDAA last year, arguing that the edict “jeopardizes” rather than strengthens national security. And the Pentagon already has safeguards to ensure collective bargaining activity does not interfere with national security concerns.

“Restoring collective bargaining is not about expanding rights or constraining management,” he wrote. “Existing agreements already contain robust management rights provisions, emergency authorities, and national security exemptions that allow commanders and program managers to act when mission requirements demand. What collective bargaining provides is a structured channel for identifying and resolving workforce problems before they become operational ones, including improving safety, retention, productivity and accountability.”

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