The Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency released guidance to help federal government civilian agencies reduce their cybersecurity risks.
The Federal Civilian Executive Branch Operational Cybersecurity Alignment plan out Monday asks agencies to develop their cyber capabilities with a focus on asset management, vulnerability management, defensible architecture, supply chain resilience and incident detection and response.
“The ultimate destination on this shared journey is more synchronized and robust cyber defenses, greater communication, and increased agility and resilience across the federal enterprise, resulting in a more cohesive government enterprise capable of defending itself against evolving cyber threats,” the document says.
The release is one of several papers the cyber agency has advanced in the wake of cyberattacks targeting the federal government in the 2020s.
Government agencies are target-rich environments for cybercriminals because of the troves of information that are stored inside their internal databases. Agency staff are frequent targets of phishing emails that aim to siphon their login credentials, potentially granting hackers access to sensitive or even classified information.
Agencies across the federal ecosystem are accelerating improvements to their internal security posture as part of a maturity deadline in which they will have to implement zero trust architecture in their systems by Sept. 30. A tranche of major agencies have nearly met that deadline requiring them to build out and adopt the framework on their networks, federal CIO Clare Martorana said earlier this month.
The competition aims to advance semiconductor technology, strengthen the chips industry in the U.S. and support the objectives of the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, which include ensuring U.S. leadership in microelectronics, the NSF said Monday. The competition was launched in September last year, providing $45.6 million in total funding for 24 projects.
This year’s beneficiary projects cover three overarching topics, namely collaborative research in domain-specific computing; advanced function and high performance by heterogenous integration; and new materials for energy-efficient, enhanced-performance and sustainable semiconductor-based systems.
The various projects are being overseen by a total of 20 institutions, including Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Purdue University, Texas A&M University and Stanford University.
Commenting on the awards, NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan said, “These investments are not only supporting the future of semiconductors as a driver of our economy but also our national security.”
Two Democratic senators are asking leadership in the Biden administration to do more to mitigate risks of artificial intelligence algorithms making biased decisions.
Sens. Edward Markey, D-Mass., and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., told Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young in a Monday letter that federal agencies need to establish more safeguards to prevent algorithmic discrimination.
“Without new protections, today’s supercharged, AI-powered algorithms risk reinforcing and magnifying the discrimination that marginalized communities already experience due to poorly-trained and -tested algorithms,” the letter reads. “The stakes — and harms — are especially high where entities use algorithms to make ‘consequential decisions,’ such as an individual’s application for a job, their treatment at a hospital, their admission to an educational institution, or their qualification for a mortgage.”
The senators want federal agencies utilizing AI technologies in their operations to be required to develop safeguards and build capacity around civil rights protections around AI. Algorithmic discrimination has caught federal attention before, notably when the Department of Housing and Urban Development issued a warning in may of this year to bring attention to how AI-assisted application software could erroneously discriminate against applicants.
Markey and Schumer note that the Biden administration has also taken “significant steps” to reduce the room for algorithmic discrimination, mainly through guidance mandated by President Joe Biden’s AI executive order.
They noted that OMB in particular has spearheaded much of these mandates, and the agency’s latest AI policies and guidance, specifically around “rights-impacting AI.”
The senators recommend that OMB provide agency chief AI officers with adequate resources and expertise to mitigate AI algorithms’ threats to civil liberties, and to establish and fund civil rights offices at agencies that are using AI in decision making where such offices don’t currently exist.
“These new offices — along with existing civil rights offices — should be staffed with technologists and experts in algorithmic discrimination whose job responsibilities include mitigating algorithmic bias and discrimination and facilitating proactive and ongoing outreach to civil rights stakeholders and affected populations,” the lawmakers wrote.
In addition to increased guidance and workforce to focus on mitigating algorithmic-based harm, the senators ask OMB to provide evidence that customers of federal government services can opt out of utilizing AI-powered algorithms, a choice seen with AI-powered algorithms in biometrics technologies.
As of Monday morning, 55 large active wildfires were blazing throughout the West, burning more than 2 million acres and displacing tens of thousands of people. Wildfires have ravaged more than 7 million acres so far this summer—the largest acreage to have burned through early September since 2018, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Now, to get a handle on the growing problem, some governments are turning to AI.
In California, where half a million acres are currently burning, the state is hoping it can use artificial intelligence to prevent fires from burning out of control in the first place. Last year, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire, began using ALERTCalifornia’s AI-equipped network of about 1,200 cameras to scan for smoke. ALERTCalifornia, which is managed by the University of California, San Diego, is a public safety program working to understand wildfires and other natural hazards and determine short- and long-term impacts on people and the environment.
When AI spots a potential fire on ALERTCalifornia’s network of cameras, it draws a red bounding box around the affected area and provides a percentage of how certain it is that it found smoke. Trained personnel monitoring the footage vet and confirm the alerts and initiate the appropriate action. Time magazine recognized the collaborative effort as one of the top innovations of 2023.
Early results indicate the technology is working. Used in all 21 Cal Fire dispatch centers statewide for the past year, AI has alerted emergency managers to fires before 911 calls did more than 30% of the time, said Caitlin Scully, ALERTCalifornia’s communications program manager.
Between Sept. 1 and Dec. 31 of last year, responders were dispatched to wildland fires 278 times, with ALERTCalifornia noting 190 of them before or at the same time a 911 call was received, wrote Isaac Sanchez, deputy chief of communications at Cal Fire, in an email to Route Fifty. For at least six fires, no 911 call was ever received and, because of the early detection, all of the fires were kept to less than 1 acre.
“The faster [emergency managers] can get out there to either start immediately fighting the fire or get trucks out there or get personnel or drop people out of a helicopter or get planes on it,” Scully said, “the more likely they are able to reach their goal of keeping those fires [to] within 10 acres before they explode into anything out of control.”
The artificial intelligence was trained on datasets that ALERTCalifornia has collected since it started implementing sensor-equipped cameras more than 20 years ago to monitor for wildfires in San Diego’s Laguna Mountains.
“It’s really twofold—the camera network and then also this great data collection that we have,” Scully said. “It has everything we need in order to learn how to spot smoke or other incidents. We also have a longstanding relationship with Cal Fire, and so by working collaboratively between the UC San Diego scientists and then the Cal Fire experts, we were able to come together and develop this AI tool that is really, really useful to them because they were part of it from the very inception.”
California also is using the program Wildfire Analyst, AI and machine learning algorithms to evaluate fire behavior and risk.
“By leveraging the Wildfire Analyst solution, we can enhance our ability to forecast fire spread, intensity and impact, ultimately improving response strategies and minimizing damage,” said Cal Fire’s Sanchez. “The AI and machine learning algorithms can process and integrate diverse datasets, including weather conditions, topography, fuel characteristics and satellite imagery. These algorithms can identify patterns and correlations that may not be apparent through conventional analysis. For instance, machine learning models can be trained to recognize the influence of specific variables on fire behavior, such as the effect of wind speed on fire spread or the impact of humidity levels on fuel moisture.”
In June at the Fire Weather Testbed in Boulder, Colorado, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service tested its next generation fire system, which can spot fires as small as 1 acre—much like ALERTCalifornia—using AI that analyzes imagery from geostationary satellites in orbit 22,000 miles above Earth.
The alerts are posted to a web dashboard, where a human can confirm the blaze and decide if any action is required.
“It’s really combining the automated satellite detection with data layers that allow decision-makers to sort those detections in ways that are meaningful to the job they have to do, what region they’re working in, what fire weather conditions they’re concerned about, those types of things,” said Mike Pavolonis, manager of the Wildland Fire Program at NOAA. “It will track that fire over time … [to] tell you its intensity, how it’s evolving, a little bit of information about how it’s spreading. The whole idea here is to enable more efficient and effective decision-making.”
The system is still in testing, but the agency plans to make it fully operational in one to two years. The Integrated Warning Team paradigm, which was also part of the testbed, will be the best way to reach state and local partners, Pavolonis added.
The paradigm speeds the exchange of information among National Weather Service meteorologists, state and local land managers and emergency managers, enabling them to issue fire warnings using the same dissemination channels the agency uses to issue tornado warnings. Tests showed that it can take 60 minutes to get a fire warning out without the protocol and an average of nine minutes with it, he said.
Overall, AI is a force-multiplier for wildfire detection and management, Pavolonis said.
“The number of different sources and the volume and environmental data and information that decision-makers are confronted with constantly is enormous, and it’s growing, and humans can’t examine every bit of data as it comes in,” he said. “They need some automation to help them extract the most relevant pieces of data at the right time to make decisions they have to make. That’s really where AI comes in.”
The newly created Integrated Capabilities Command within the U.S. Air Force will begin leading key modernization efforts following its activation.
The ICC, which operates in a provisional status, is expected to reach final operational capability as a new institutional command in 2025, the Air Force said Monday.
It will be responsible for testing competitive operational concepts and aligning capability development efforts to prioritize system-of-systems mission outcomes over functional solutions; developing alternative force structures with variable trade-offs and risks to support funding decisions; generating requirements to outpace threats and integrate across missions; and providing a unified demand signal for science, technology, experimentation and industry.
The ICC will establish detachments co-located with current Air Force operational centers of excellence and employ modernization and sustainment subject matter experts focused on mission integration and operational concept definition, integrated capability development, and force analysis and planning.
“Given the dynamic and challenging threat environment we face today, we know our current processes are not competitive enough,” said Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall, a 2024 Wash100 recipient. “This organization is a key part of the competitive ecosystem we are creating to reoptimize for Great Power Competition. With other DAF organizations, ICC will ensure the Air Force keeps pace with our pacing challenge, China, and acute threat, Russia.”
Former federal executives and good government groups on Tuesday warned lawmakers that the reimplementation of Schedule F and subsequent conversion of tens of thousands of federal employees into at-will political appointees could harm the nation’s security posture.
The ex-officials’ testimony came as part of a hearing on Schedule F, the abortive 2020 effort to remove the civil service protections of employees in “policy-related” jobs throughout the federal government that former President Trump has vowed to revive if elected this fall, hosted by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. No Republican spoke at the hearing; James Sherk, an architect of the initiative and an advisor to Trump during his first term, was initially scheduled to appear but ultimately was not listed in a press release announcing the hearing Monday.
“The prior administration sought to replace 50,000 nonpartisan career civil servants with appointees who followed the former president’s politics,” said Committee Chairman Gary Peters, D-Mich. “This change would not just hinder government efficiency, it would also be disastrous for the American people, draining the federal government of institutional knowledge, expertise and continuity. It would slow down services, make us less prepared for when disaster strikes, and erode public trust in government.”
Former leaders at the Defense and Homeland Security departments said that arguments by proponents in favor of Schedule F—that it is too hard to fire poor-performing federal workers and that presidents are stymied by entrenched bureaucrats resistant to their policies—fundamentally misunderstand the role of nonpartisan civil servants.
“There are two essential roles for civil servants, and one is to inform policy,” said Elaine Duke, who served as deputy Homeland secretary and undersecretary for management at the Homeland Security Department under presidents of both parties. “With years of experience, it’s important for civil servants to understand the policy objective and help inform it so that it can be tailored to be most effective. The second role that civil servants have is executing the policy, and that’s tied to the first role, because we learn a lot through execution of the policy like what works and doesn’t work.”
Both Duke and Peter Levine, former deputy chief management officer and acting undersecretary for personnel and readiness at the Defense Department from 2015 through 2017, said they had never seen a career federal employee resist the policy decision of a political appointee.
“The ability of career civil servants to provide open and candid advice without losing their jobs enables political appointees like me to benefit from their knowledge and expertise,” Levine said. “The risk that political appointees will fail to listen to the informed views of career civil servants is far greater than the risk that civil servants will fail to carry out a directive from a political appointee once it has been made.”
Levine said that even if a second Trump administration implements Schedule F but is constrained in how it uses its authority, ultimately it will begin a trend toward an even more unwieldy presidential transition every four or eight years.
“The president who first imposes Schedule F would probably figure, ‘I can just replace people over time so there won’t be this great discontinuity [between administrations],’” Levine said. “The problem is that if one president replaces 2,000 or 3,000 or 5,000 or 10,000 then the next president will feel they can’t rely on those 2, 3, 5 or 10,000 people . . . If instead of replacing a few hundred political appointees and being able to rely on the career employees [during a transition], you head to replace 2,000 or 3,000 or 5,000, you wouldn’t be able to keep the lights on.”
Jenny Mattingley, vice president of governmental affairs at the Partnership for Public Service, said in addition to taking action to protect the federal workforce from attacks on the merit system, lawmakers should examine other ways to improve management to address “root causes” like difficulty in dealing with poor performers.
“One thing that we see often across federal agencies is an ad hoc—or often cut—training budgets, leadership development budgets,” she said. “These are not things that we do in terms of really developing our workforce and our leaders. So to do the things that we talk about, creating good environments, a good culture, a strong leadership culture, in the private sector, particularly at large companies, you see a lot of investment in that employee piece, and so we would encourage you to look at how to strengthen those things within the government as well.”
Ryan McCarthy, a 2020 Wash100 awardee, has been appointed as operating partner at AE Industrial Partners.
In this new role, McCarthy will look to leverage his many years of military, government and private sector experience to advance AEI’s global defense unit, the Boca Raton, Florida-based company announced Tuesday.
David Rowe, co-CEO and managing partner at AEI, said, “We are thrilled to welcome Ryan to the firm as we continue to enhance our national security team and focus on building innovative companies that are providing the technologies critical to the nation’s defense.”
Prior to joining AEI, McCarthy served as the 33rd undersecretary of the U.S. Army and was confirmed unanimously as the 24th secretary of the Army in September 2019. He also worked for Lockheed Martin Corporation in sequential vice president roles, overseeing the sustainment, customer services and system integration of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program.
McCarthy said he looks forward to working with AEI as the company seeks new national security opportunities.
“Global eventscontinue to illustrate that there is sustained need for innovative technologies to combat complex and evolving threats,” McCarthy stated. “I look forward to partnering with AEI’s portfolio companies operating within the national security space to capitalize on new opportunities and create value.”
McCarthy was also a special assistant to the former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates under Presidents Bush and Obama.
Ryan Wesley Routh appeared in federal court Monday on two firearm charges after being apprehended by local law enforcement Sunday in what the FBI is investigating as a possible assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump.
Authorities found a rifle in an area Routh was seen fleeing on Sunday, but acting Secret Service Director Ron Rowe said Monday that Routh did not fire his weapon. Trump was unharmed, his campaign confirmed shortly after Sunday’s incident.
The Secret Service agent who spotted someone holding a rifle near the treeline of Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Fla., fired toward the suspect. Trump, the GOP presidential nominee, was golfing at the time.
The incident is being investigated as the second assassination attempt against Trump in two months. He sustained an injury to his ear during a shooting in Butler, Pa., in July.
The Trump campaign Monday blamed Democrats and the media for the shooting.
“Democrats and the Fake News must immediately cease their inflammatory, violent rhetoric against President Trump — which was mimicked by yesterday’s would-be assassin,” the campaign said in a statement.
Routh, 58, appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Ryon McCabe in West Palm Beach federal court and was charged with possession of a firearm as a convicted felon and for obliterating the serial number on a firearm, according to court records. If convicted, he would face up to 20 years in prison.
A detention hearing on the federal charges is set for Sept. 23, the Justice Department said.
Initial investigation
According to an affidavit accompanying the criminal complaint, at 1:31 p.m. Eastern on Sunday, a Secret Service agent walking the perimeter of the golf course spotted a rifle poking out of the tree line. The agent fired toward the rifle.
Rowe said at a Monday press conference that Routh did not have a line of vision at the former president and he did not fire his weapon.
“The agent who was visually sweeping the area … saw the subject armed with what he perceived to be a rifle and immediately discharged his firearm,” Rowe said. “The subject, who did not have line of sight to the former president, fled the scene. He did not fire or get off any shots at our agents.”
Routh fled in a Nissan SUV, according to the charging documents. A witness took photos of the license plate and local law enforcement officers stopped the vehicle in Martin County, which borders Palm Beach County.
West Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said the witness was able to identify the driver as “the person that he saw running out of the bushes that jumped into the car.”
Routh was the sole person in the vehicle, according to the complaint.
According to the charging documents, agents found at the site Routh fled a digital camera, two bags, an SKS-style 7.62 x 39 rifle, which is the predecessor to the AK-47 assault rifle that law enforcement initially said they found Sunday, and a scope.
They also found a bag of food and noticed the rifle had the serial number obliterated “to the naked eye,” according to the filing documents.
The weapon also must have crossed state lines, Thomas noted.
“SKS-style 7.62 x 39 caliber rifles are not manufactured in the state of Florida,” Thomas wrote. “Therefore, I submit that there is probable cause to believe that the SKS-style rifle, which was seized from the tree line at Trump International… traveled in interstate or foreign commerce.”
The officers who stopped Routh on Interstate-95 noted that the license plate associated with the Nissan is registered to a 2012 white Ford truck that was reported stolen, according to the complaint.
Law enforcement found a July 10 Facebook post in which Routh directed his followers to contact him on WhatsApp and listed a contact number, according to the complaint.
Phone records associated with that number indicated that the phone “was located in the vicinity of the area along the tree line described from 1:59 a.m. Eastern to 1:31 p.m. Sunday,” according to the complaint.
Secret Service response
The incident follows the July 13 assassination attempt of Trump during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in which the Secret Service was heavily criticized for its response.
The leaders of that task force, Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., and Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., have requested a briefing from the Secret Service on the security response to the shooting in West Palm Beach.
Members of Congress have been more complimentary of the Secret Service’s response to the Florida incident.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana, commended the agency’s response during an interview with “Fox and Friends” on Monday.
“What I understand happened is that those agents that were with him yesterday saw that barrel of that gun between the bushes on a golf course. I mean, you know, that’s a difficult thing to spot. Thankfully, they did,” Johnson said. “But unlike in Butler, they did not pause. They immediately pulled their weapons and fired. I think that’s why this guy, the suspect, the shooter, threw the gun in the bushes and ran.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, said on the Senate floor Monday that senators are open to giving the Secret Service more funding in legislation this month needed to keep the government open past Sept. 30.
“If the Secret Service is in need of more resources, we are prepared to provide it for them,” he said. “Possibly in the upcoming funding agreement.”
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, said Sunday they’d been briefed on the matter and condemned political violence.
Prior arrests, Ukraine activism
In 2002, Routh was convicted in Greensboro, North Carolina, for possession of a weapon of mass destruction, which is a felony in the state. He was arrested after fleeing law enforcement and barricading himself for three hours in a business, according to the Greensboro News & Record.
He was also arrested in North Carolina in 2010 for possession of stolen goods.
Jeffrey Veltri, the special agent in charge of the bureau’s Miami field office, said during a Monday press conference that the FBI is conducting interviews with family and friends in Honolulu and Charlotte, North Carolina.
He added that in 2019 the FBI received a tip that Routh possessed a firearm, which was illegal because of his felony record. When FBI agents followed up, the tipster “did not verify providing the initial information,” Veltri said.
The agency referred the matter to Honolulu police, he said.
Routh was interviewed by The New York Times last year about his efforts to recruit Afghan soldiers who had fled the Taliban to fight in Ukraine’s war against Russia.
Routh, who had spent time in Ukraine and does not have any U.S. military experience, said he had planned to illegally obtain documents to move those Afghan fighters from Pakistan and Iran to Ukraine.
He wrote an ebook that he published on Amazon Kindle about his time in Ukraine, during which he became disillusioned about the country’s ability to win its war against Russia.
Kathleen Shaffer, who said Routh was her fiancé, set up a GoFundMe in 2022 to help Routh travel to Ukraine for 90 days to fight in the war.
“Any and all funds will support purchase of additional flags, tactical gear, any supplies needed for incoming volunteers, and hostel lodging,” according to the fundraiser, which raised $1,865 out of its goal of $2,500.
States Newsroom called a number associated with Shaffer, but could not reach her.
Public records show Routh currently lives in Kaaawa on the island of Oahu in Hawaii.
Utah News Dispatch is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Utah News Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor McKenzie Romero for questions: info@utahnewsdispatch.com. Follow Utah News Dispatch on Facebook and X.
The FBI is conducting market research to identify qualified sources that can provide advanced facial recognition technology for its law enforcement operations.
FRT enables the development of investigative leads and detection of relevant case information, which could prove critical to catching perpetrators and mitigating threats, the agency said Monday.
Through the request for information, the FBI wants to hear from parties with existing open-source and publicly available face image repositories and functioning FR capabilities to search the same database.
The potential vendors should also ensure they can deliver the required capabilities in a software-as-a-service package.
The FBI envisions that open-source FRT would support its mission of safeguarding national security, protecting the American people and upholding the Constitution.
The data gathered through the RFI will inform the bureau’s acquisition approach for an upcoming solicitation.
Interested businesses are invited to submit their capability statements no later than Oct. 15.
The Potomac Officers Club’s 2024 Intel Summit will bring together top intelligence community officials, government decision-makers and industry executives on Sept. 19 to discuss the challenges, opportunities, innovation initiatives and technologies shaping the future of U.S. intelligence.
U.S. intelligence agencies are working toward closer collaboration with government and industry partners. As a result, intelligence community leaders are increasingly vying for industry talent to fill capability gaps.
Join us at the Potomac Officers Club’s 2024 Intel Summit on Sept. 19 to connect with intelligence officials who spearhead efforts to transform the modern intelligence domain. Click here for additional information and register to attend the summit before it’s too late!
Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence and a 2024 Wash100 awardee, said, “We know that the private sector increasingly possesses certain unique and specialized talent, knowledge and capabilities in key fields of critical importance to national security that we don’t have access to in the government.”
Key Intelligence Community Collaboration Efforts
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has established an Office of Partnership Engagement designed to foster closer industry collaboration and provide ODNI with access to commercial insights about AI, cybersecurity and space, among other areas. The office will train professionals in declassifying information for companies, develop guidance for better acquisition processes and communicate with external industry partners.
“There is no question that certain industries now wield substantial geopolitical influence, and as the threat landscape has diversified and power has become more diffuse, so has the potential impact of the private sector’s work,” Haines said. “This makes it crucial that we better understand developments in the private sector, as well as the overall balance of competitive strength and security within key sectors.”
Other IC agencies like the National Security Agency have established information exchange programs that help the government and industry get on the same page about cyber threats. NSA’s Cybersecurity Collaboration Center authorizes the government and the private sector to share information about cyber criminals and nation-state hackers.
“The first phase of this is an expansion of the current and unclassified analytic exchange program in scale and scope, while simultaneously evaluating opportunities to conduct analytic exchanges that include classified information, which we know will take some time, but is absolutely worth it,” Haines emphasized.
ODNI has also recently issued new protocols for using the other transaction authority, which Haines said, “offers greater flexibility for IC elements to develop programs that leverage technological innovation.”
Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency stood up the Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative in 2001. The group comprises industry and government officials who encourage cyber firms to team up with the government to detect and deter hacking threats.
In August 2023, the Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative created the RMM Cyber Defense Plan. The strategy includes two key pillars — operational collaboration and cyber defense guidance — with the first pillar featuring two corresponding lines of effort that involve broadening data-sharing concerning threats and vulnerabilities.
Learn more about the recent and future intelligence community efforts at the 2024 Intel Summit!
