Gen. Steven Nordhaus took command of the National Guard Bureau during a ceremony at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall in Virginia, replacing Gen. Daniel Hokanson, who retired in August.
Before assuming his new responsibility, Nordhaus received his fourth star, earning the general a seat at the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the U.S. Air Force said Wednesday.
Navy Adm. Christopher Grady, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a 2022 Wash100 winner, presided over the turnover ceremony.
In his Tuesday acceptance speech, the new NGB chief vowed to focus on people, readiness, partnerships and modernization to ensure that the service remains postured for global competition and responsive in times of domestic crisis.
“Everything I do in this role will be in the service of our people so we can ensure mission success,” Nordhaus stressed.
Nordhaus most recently served as commander of the Continental U.S. North American Aerospace Defense Command Region and the 1st Air Force. He was responsible for planning and conducting air defense and air sovereignty operations in the continental United States, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
He also served as NGB’s director of operations and commander of the Air National Guard Readiness Center at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. Earlier, the Air Force general was an executive assistant to Army Gen. Frank Grass, the 27th NGB chief.
Nordhaus is a command pilot with over 3,000 flight hours in various aircraft. He has flown combat missions in various operations, including Southern Watch, Vigilant Warrior, Northern Watch, Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom.
The new NGB head will lead around 46,000 guardsmen spread across the U.S. and abroad to support homeland and international defense deployments.
According to the notice issued on Sam.gov Tuesday, the SpRCO is seeking feedback from industry experts on a potential time and material contract. This contract will cover services including analyses, acquisition studies, assessments, cost analyses, trade studies, documentation preparation and review, comparative logistics and cost trade-offs that address particular issues or critical areas.
The RFI also focuses on services related to acquisition, engineering, financial management support, logistics and test-related activities. The potential contracted company is required to have a valid security facility clearance and authorized Safeguarding level. It’s also necessary for their employees to be eligible for classified access.
The updated edition will serve as a detailed guide for creating software bills of materials, or SBOMs, the agency added. It defines an SBOM as “a formal, machine-readable inventory of software components and dependencies, information about those components and their relationships.”
The new guidebook clarifies the expectations for each SBOM baseline attribute. It also adds two baseline attributes—license and copyright holder—and includes risk management in the SBOM consumption process.
CISA developed the 39-page guidance through its community-driven working group and software community input.
In April 2023, the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology directorate selected seven start-ups to build SBOM-based products to help CISA create a multi-format SBOM translator and a software component identifier translator as foundational open-source software libraries.
Join the Potomac Officers Club’s 2024 Homeland Security Summit on Nov. 13, to learn more about the major threats against the United States and the efforts underway to address them. Register now!
The Department of Labor has published guidance to ensure that artificial intelligence development and deployment in the workplace preserve job quality and support worker well-being. The AI Best Practices serves as a comprehensive roadmap designed for technology developers and employers, the department said Wednesday.
The document is in line with the department’s AI and Worker Well-being: Principles for Developers and Employers, released in May. Both guidelines are developed in compliance with President Joe Biden’s Oct. 30 Executive Order on the Safe, Secure and Trustworthy Development and Use of AI.
AI Best Practices for the Workplace
The newly published document identifies strategies that enable businesses to benefit from AI without violating worker rights. Some of the strategies outlined are providing AI training, being transparent on the technology’s employment in the workplace, maintaining human oversight on important employment decisions and securing worker data.
“These Best Practices provide a roadmap for responsible AI in the workplace, helping businesses harness these technologies while proactively supporting and valuing their workers,” commented Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su. “As we embrace the opportunities that AI can offer, we must ensure workers are lifted up, not left behind.”
The document follows the AI and Inclusive Hiring Framework developed by the Office of Disability Employment Policy and the Partnership on Employment & Accessible Technology to prevent employment discrimination in the hiring process.
The U.S. Department of Commerce and Wolfspeed, a silicone carbide wafers and devices manufacturer, have signed a non-binding preliminary memorandum of terms to invest up to $750 million to boost silicone carbide wafer production.
The DOC said Tuesday the proposed investment, under the CHIPS and Science Act, is intended for the construction of the John Palmour Manufacturing Center, a new 200mm silicone carbide wafer manufacturing facility in Siler City, North Carolina. The new facility is expected to boost the supply of semiconductors and create more than 5,000 manufacturing and construction jobs.
Measuring around two million square feet, the new facility will be the largest of its kind in the United States. It will also be the first high-volume 200mm silicon carbide wafer manufacturing facility in the world.
The proposed CHIPS funding will also be used for Wolfspeed’s $6 billion expansion plan, starting with the company’s Marcy, New York facility. This has the potential to increase the facility’s production by 30 percent.
With the new facility and expansion of the one in New York, Wolfspeed expects a five-fold increase in silicon carbide device production and a ten-fold increase in 200mm materials production.
The current administration, through its Investing in America initiative, has been working on revitalizing the country’s semiconductor supply chain while creating more well-paying job opportunities and investing in future energy and artificial intelligence innovations.
U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo stressed the significance of the investment in advancing technologies such as AI, electric vehicles and clean energy.
“Thanks to proposed investments in companies like Wolfspeed, the Biden-Harris Administration is taking a meaningful step towards reigniting U.S. manufacturing of the chips that underpin these important technologies,” Raimondo expressed.
The NSA said Wednesday that since 2023, Iranian cyber actors have been using brute force and other techniques to break into systems used by energy, government, healthcare and other CI organizations. MITRE ATT&CK defines brute force as the attempt by an attacker to systematically guess the target system’s password via “a repetitive or iterative mechanism.”
Once the Iranian attackers gain access, they work to enable persistent access by modifying multifactor authentication registrations. They also steal more credentials to sell on criminal forums.
Purpose of the Advisory
The joint cybersecurity advisory seeks to provide readers with recommendations on how to detect brute force activity on their systems. The document also offers recommendations on how to mitigate such activities.
“We explain the tactics, techniques, and procedures used by the Iranian actors, as well as indicators of compromise,” NSA Cybersecurity Director Dave Luber explained.
“Our agencies are sharing detailed insight into this malicious cyber activity and what organizations can do to shore up their defenses,” Luber added.
Over a third of the government’s use cases for artificial intelligence are under the purview of the Department of Health and Human Services, according to Micky Tripathi, acting chief AI officer for the agency. In order to govern and organize this enormous AI push, HHS will publish a strategic plan to guide its AI activities in January, FedScoop reports.
AI is broadly applicable throughout HHS, with functionality across the “entire breadth of what the department covers,” said Tripathi at an NVIDIA event last week. But the strategic plan will give serious consideration to “guardrails” as well.
At the Potomac Officers Club’s 2024 Healthcare Summit, healthcare data and IT leaders like Veterans Affairs’ Lisa Rosenmerkel, HHS Center for IT’s Xavier Soosai and Deputy CIO Jennifer Wendel will offer exclusive insights about how HHS and the government healthcare system are integrating AI and many more innovative technologies. Don’t miss out on this fascinating event, set for Dec. 11; it’ll close out the year for POC in style.
Goals of the HHS AI Strategic Plan
Per Tripathy, the forthcoming AI strategic plan “looks across the department as we think about the healthcare sector generally, so it’s both externally focused as well as internal saying: Where do we see from just a general public policy perspective the needs of the industry and all of those domains across that entire value chain … what role does the federal government play in each of those areas? What potential roles does AI play in each of those areas?”
Tripathy said the guide both attempts to break down obstacles to innovation as well as erect boundaries and limitations that ultimately serve to encourage technological advancements rather than stymie them.
Those who will be impacted by the strategy should look for it to address areas such as medical research and discovery, healthcare delivery, medical product safety management, preclinical practice and much more.
Federal workers’ views of their employer in general slightly improved or held steady compared to last year, according to data released on Thursday by the Office of Personnel Management from the 2024 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey.
OPM officials, in particular, touted the employee engagement index score (73 out of 100), which is a record high and a one percentage point increase from 2023. Such index encompasses perceptions of leadership and supervisors and the overall employee experience.
Those employee engagement increases mostly translated across large, medium and small agencies, with very large and small-sized agencies each gaining two percentage points from 2023 to move to 73% and 77%, respectively. Very small agencies, however, were down one point from last year to land at 76%, a five-point slide from 2020.
87% of overall respondents said their supervisor treats them with respect.
78% reported that they have trust and confidence in their supervisor.
79% said their supervisor supports employee development.
“Leaders across the Biden-Harris Administration — and managers and supervisors across government — have prioritized rebuilding their workforces and engaging them on the issues most important to them,” acting OPM Director Rob Shriver said in a statement. “And now we are seeing the results, with the highest ever score on the Employee Engagement Index, and strong results across the board.”
FEVS is conducted annually and includes employees of departments and large agencies as well as of small and independent ones who agree to participate. The response rate this year increased to 41% from 39% in 2023.
Other notable results include:
The index score to measure how employees feel about diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility in the workplace increased to 72 out of 100. Such score was 71 in 2023 and has improved every year since it was introduced in 2022.
The index for employee satisfaction (e.g. job, organization, pay) increased by one percentage point (from 64 to 65), which is still lower than the 2020 score of 69.
The measure of how employees perceive their work unit’s effectiveness remained the same at 84 out of 100, as it has been since 2021.
The employee experience index, which covers how much employees are engaged by their work and organization, increased from 73 out of 100 in 2023 to 74 this year.
When asked what happens to poor performers in respondents’ units, 40% said they stay in the unit and continue to underperform, a one-point decline from 2023.
OPM will release agency-level data from the 2024 FEVS later this year.
NASA has relaunched a framework that seeks to modernize acquisition processes and advance innovation across the space agency.
The agency said Wednesday the NASA Acquisition Innovation Launchpad framework, or NAIL, was introduced in February 2023 as a pilot program to solicit ideas from acquisition stakeholders to drive innovation and manage risk-taking.
The NAIL program’s accomplishments over the past year reportedly include enhancing the procurement process, advancing automation and building an industry feedback forum.
NASA’s Office of Procurement expects the relaunched NAIL framework to address several priorities in fiscal year 2025, including providing additional engagement opportunities for the agency’s innovators, fostering procurement success stories and investing in technology and talent.
The agency also announced that NAIL Program Director Brittney Chappell will oversee new framework improvements and engagement moving forward.
“I am thrilled to step into this role and lead the program, using everything our team has learned from the last year,” said Chappell. “Together with internal and external stakeholders, we will turn bold ideas into impactful solutions that drive real change.”
The threat of political violence will likely hang over the nation’s capital in the weeks following Election Day, security experts say, despite intensive preparations by law enforcement officials determined to avoid another Jan. 6 insurrection.
The 2,000-plus officers who make up the U.S. Capitol Police, as well as other federal law enforcement agencies like the Secret Service, have responded to a surge in threats against elected officials during the last few years, including two assassination attempts against Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump just this year.
But the threats, attacks and shooting have led to questions about whether the two agencies are truly prepared for the presidential transition, especially after a report released this week said the Secret Service “requires fundamental reform to carry out its mission.”
The agency is tasked with planning and coordinating security for Congress’ certification of the Electoral College on Jan. 6 —the first time it’s been designated a National Special Security Event — and Inauguration Day on Jan. 20.
Experts interviewed by States Newsroom said there is a very real chance of political violence in the weeks and months ahead, though they said law enforcement agencies have learned from recent events. The unrest could build after what is expected to be a very close presidential election, with results possibly delayed for days or longer or even litigated in the courts.
“Unfortunately, you can never have 100% security,” said Javed Ali, associate professor of practice at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan.
“It’s nice to think that would exist. But, if you’re trying to consider all the different kinds of variables that you have to plan for, there’s always going to be a gap or vulnerability — now what you try to do is kind of minimize the big one and hope that the small ones don’t get exploited.”
Darrell M. West, the Douglas Dillon Chair in Governmental Studies at the Brookings Institution, said the risk of political violence could increase following Election Day if one or more political leaders object to the outcome.
“For months, we’ve been hearing extreme and sometimes violent rhetoric,” West said. “And rhetoric has consequences — it can encourage some people to take action.”
Trump has refused to accept the 2020 election results, and his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, declined to say Trump lost the election. Vance on Oct. 12 said there was a “peaceful transfer of power” in January 2021.
Trump has repeatedly recycled false claims he made following his loss that the system is rigged — a talking point he’s likely to use to rile up supporters should he lose this year’s election. Trump has been charged by special counsel Jack Smith with four felony counts in connection with 2020 election interference, in a complex case that will continue after the election.
Threats against lawmakers
Members of Congress are more vulnerable than presidential candidates, in part because most lawmakers live in normal houses and don’t have security details anywhere close to the kind the Secret Service provides for high-ranking officials.
And unlike the presidency, which has a long line of succession to avoid gaps in authority following a death or a crisis, Congress has been criticized for not having better plans in place to address continuity of government following a mass casualty or similar event.
U.S. Capitol Police Chief J. Thomas Manger testified in April the agency was looking for ways to bolster protection for lawmakers in the line of presidential succession, like the speaker of the House and Senate president pro tempore.
Manger told the panel that security for those two officials was substandard to that provided for the Secretary of State, who sits below them in the line of succession.
“We can’t just go back to the days when we said, ‘Well, we’ll just follow them around and we’ll make sure they’re well protected wherever they are,’ because their homes, their families are at risk,” he testified.
Members of Congress who haven’t risen to the ranks of leadership don’t get security details unless there are specific threats to their safety. And those aren’t permanent.
That could present challenges for lawmakers who have higher profiles or who regularly receive threats, especially if people respond violently to the election results and encourage their supporters to take matters into their own hands.
Trump assassination attempts
Making the situation more complicated, this year has shown that substantial levels of security aren’t a guarantee of safety.
Trump has some of the highest levels of protection in the country, if not the world, but that did not stop a man from shooting at the former president during a rally in Pennsylvania this summer. A separate would-be gunman was spotted and apprehended just off Trump’s Florida golf course with a semi-automatic weapon in September.
Both instances raised questions about the Secret Service’s ability to protect Trump as well as others, though agency leaders maintain they’re up to the task.
Trump’s experiences, as the subject of political violence, haven’t deterred him from spreading disinformation about Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris as well as other lawmakers who disagree with him on policy issues.
Trump’s comments about immigrants have also led to threats against everyday people, including Haitian immigrants in Ohio, who are in the country legally.
During an interview with Maria Bartiromo on “Sunday Morning Futures” on Fox News earlier this month, Trump said he may use the National Guard or the military against his political opponents should he win reelection, calling them “the enemy from within.”
“We have some very bad people,” Trump said. “We have some sick people. Radical left lunatics. And it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary by the military, because they can’t let that happen.”
The military and National Guard have significantly different training programs and missions than local, state, or federal law enforcement, making Trump’s comments somewhat darker than previous claims he’d try to put his political opponents in prison if reelected.
Trump hasn’t committed to respecting the results of the election or supporting a peaceful transition in power should he lose his bid for the White House.
Trump’s comments could indicate that violence is likely following the election, if he loses, or after he regains the powers of the presidency, if he wins.
Delayed election results predicted
West from the Brookings Institution said violence isn’t likely to take place in the days immediately following the end of voting on Nov. 5, since it’s unlikely anyone learns the results of the presidential election for a few days.
Mail-in ballots, which Democrats tend to submit in larger numbers than Republicans, could lead to confusion in swing states, especially if people don’t understand they tend to boost numbers for Democratic candidates over GOP politicians as they’re counted, he said.
“We could end up in a situation where on election night, Trump is ahead, because we know Republicans tend to vote in person on Election Day, and Democrats often vote via mail ballots,” West said. “And then as the mail ballots get counted on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, the numbers may shift from Trump to Harris.
“And I think that’s a very bad combination, because it will look to some individuals like voter fraud, even though there’s a perfectly logical explanation for the change. But that’s a scenario that could lead to violence, because it’ll look like the election is being stolen from Trump.”
While the presidential candidates will play a significant role in stirring up or calming down their supporters, members of Congress, many of whom sought to legitimize misinformation and disinformation four years ago, have responsibilities as well.
“We need leaders who act responsibly, but unfortunately, in the last few months, we have not seen that,” West said. “We’ve seen members of Congress who have promoted misinformation. There’s been a lot of it surrounding the hurricane, and so the fear is that there will be blatant lies that then will incite people to take action.”
Learning from 2020
Ali, from the University of Michigan, said he expects federal law enforcement will be better prepared for post-election violence than they were four years ago, though there are still chances for violent people to slip through the cracks.
The most likely scenario, Ali said, is a single actor or “lone wolf” attack and not a mob marching to the Capitol, the way Trump supporters did on Jan. 6.
“I still think it’s relatively low,” Ali said of the likelihood of violence. “But as we’ve seen, all it takes is one person to really shake up the perception of security. And if they’re aiming at President Trump or Vice President Harris, well then, you know the stakes are even higher.”
Ali said he’s confident that the Secret Service, U.S. Capitol Police and other law enforcement agencies in the Washington, D.C., area are preparing for various scenarios, though he’s less sure about what would happen if there’s violence at state capitals.
“There might be a little more vulnerability there,” Ali said. “But I still think, at least when we’re getting to the Electoral College (certification) day, that January 6th-type insurrection will be almost impossible to pull off.”
When it comes to spreading disinformation, Ali said, he expects there will be a combination of foreign adversaries, including Iran and Russia, as well as domestic actors.
“You’ll probably see a lot of disinformation, especially if Vice President Harris wins, sort of casting doubt on the integrity of the voting, the credibility of the process, maybe going after specific individuals and key swing states, or even counties,” Ali said.
“All those things that were happening in 2020. But there were also costs to doing that, as we’ve seen too, with the civil charges and some of the potential criminal ones as well,” he added. “So I think that’s also an area domestically, where people will have to tread very cautiously. That doesn’t mean that you won’t see it, but again, there might be a line that gets crossed where people will be held accountable for that.”
‘More prepared than ever before’
U.S. Capitol Police Inspector General David T. Harper said USCP leadership has implemented the 100-plus recommendations put forward by his predecessor following the Jan. 6 attack, closing gaps that existed that day.
“I think they’ve made a lot of improvements, and I think that they’re more prepared than ever before,” Harper said, though he later added he couldn’t “say for certain that they are prepared to handle anything that can come up” due to the unpredictable nature of domestic terrorism and political violence.
The OIG is also “prepared to be all hands on deck” in the event of another attack on the Capitol or lawmakers takes place, to analyze what went wrong and make recommendations for USCP to implement, he said.
Harper, whose tenure as inspector general began earlier this year, noted during the interview that much of what he can publicly discuss is restricted by national security concerns.
The U.S. Capitol Police declined an interview request from States Newsroom, but provided written information about changes that it’s implemented during the last few years.
Among those is a law approved by Congress that allows the USCP chief to request the National Guard without the approval of the three-member Capitol Police board.
USCP has also overhauled its intelligence-gathering activities and established partnerships with other law enforcement agencies to bolster its ranks ahead of major events.
Secret Service planning for Jan. 6
The Secret Service is one of those partners and it will take the lead this year planning security for major events during the presidential transition, even those undertaken by Congress inside the Capitol.
While Inauguration Day has traditionally been categorized as a National Special Security Event, the Department of Homeland Security has extended that classification for the first time for Congress certifying the winner of the presidential race on Jan. 6.
Nate Herring, spokesperson for the United States Secret Service, said part of the process includes planning with other law enforcement agencies for “various scenarios” that could take place, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Metropolitan Police Department.
“We work very closely with our partners throughout the whole planning process,” Herring said. “And D.C. is especially unique because National Special Security Events occur fairly frequently.”
But the Secret Service’s leadership and structure have come under scrutiny during the last few months.
The four-member panel tasked with investigating the Pennsylvania assassination attempt against Trump wrote in the 52-page report released in mid-October that the Secret Service “has become bureaucratic, complacent, and static even though risks have multiplied and technology has evolved.”
“This is a zero-fail mission, for any failure endangers not only the life of the protectee, but also the fundamentals of our government itself,” they wrote.
Without substantial changes to the Secret Service, the independent review panel wrote, it believes the type of deadly attack that took place in Butler, Pennsylvania, “can and will happen again.”
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas released a written statement after the report’s release, saying the department had begun “taking the actions needed to advance the Secret Service’s protection mission,” including addressing the “systemic and foundational issues” described by the review panel.
D.C. planning
District of Columbia Assistant City Administrator Chris Rodriguez said that city officials will be watching for any indications people intent on violence begin traveling or gathering inside the city following Election Day.
“We are obviously attuned to what happened last time. I mean, I don’t think we can ignore that, and we’re not,” Rodriguez said, referring to the Jan. 6 attack. “But we also are in a place where we have great relationships among our agencies within the region, with the federal government in terms of coordination, and we will be prepared to adapt our operational posture in any way that we need to.”
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser originally requested the NSSE designation for Jan. 6, which Rodriguez said has increased planning and coordination, in hopes of avoiding any violence.
Rodriguez also stressed D.C. officials and the city’s police department are used to planning for the large crowds and protests that tend to take place whenever there’s a presidential transition.
“We are a city that prides itself, as the nation’s capital, to ensuring that there is a peaceful transition of power,” he said. “And we will do our part to ensure that.”
Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com. Follow Tennessee Lookout on Facebook and X.
