When a pair of high-profile internet outages took down large chunks of the internet last month, the events briefly brought hundreds of organizations to a near-halt and prevented millions of users from accessing core services for everyday business needs. From Starbucks to crypto exchanges to the messaging app Signal, the outages rippled across nearly every sector, shining a spotlight onto the country’s — and even the government’s — reliance on a mere handful of cloud service providers. In the wake of those incidents, watchdog groups are calling on federal regulators to scrutinize the role that massive cloud companies like Amazon and Microsoft play in owning and maintaining much of our collective backend IT infrastructure. Meanwhile, technology and cybersecurity experts point out that, because of financial and business realities, there are very few alternatives to the large companies that now dominate the market. The Amazon Web Services outage began Oct. 19 and lasted into Oct. 20. According to Amazon’s post-mortem, a single software bug in DynamoDB — the system that manages website addresses, along with efforts to repair it — caused all services in the Northern Virginia region that relied on the tool to go down for 15 hours. Just over a week later, Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform experienced an outage impacting several of its services. According to Microsoft, an “inadvertent tenant configuration change” occurred in Azure Front Door, the company’s content delivery network. The outages exposed just how fragile the country’s digital infrastructure is and showed the risks of letting a few companies hold so much power. As a result, some groups are urging federal regulators to address the issue. Federal agencies would be required to report artificial intelligence-related layoffs to the Department of Labor under a new bill from a bipartisan pair of senators. The AI-Related Job Impacts Clarity Act from Sens. Mark Warner, D-Va., and Josh Hawley, R-Mo., calls on agencies and major companies to deliver quarterly reports to DOL on the impact AI has on their workforces, detailing job cuts and displacements. Hawley said in a press release“Artificial intelligence is already replacing American workers, and experts project AI could drive unemployment up to 10-20% in the next five years. The American people need to have an accurate understanding of how AI is affecting our workforce, so we can ensure that AI works for the people, not the other way around.” The bill would also require agencies and companies to report hirings that can be “substantially” credited to AI, as well as the number of individuals they are retraining because of AI. There’s also a callout to keep track of open positions an agency or company decided not to fill because of automation. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

As the Office of Personnel Management makes progress toward a long-pursued goal to move the government’s paper-based retirement system into the 21st century, its director said a “fully automated” process is about six months away. OPM Director Scott Kupor said in an interview with FedScoop: “That’s not going to happen overnight.” But, Kupor said he believes the agency can get there within six months “for sure.” The human capital agency hit a milestone in May with the launch of its Online Retirement Application, operationalizing a yearslong development effort and marking the end of paper file submissions. Yet behind the scenes at OPM, there’s still much work to do to bring about a truly automated process. Though the application submissions are now online, humans still currently check the information coming in to make sure they’ve been completed properly and manually key in information into a calculator in “a significant number of cases,” Kupor said. That introduces “a huge amount of delay in the system” and is something the agency is working to fix. The aim is to ultimately have a system where the retiree, human resources, and the payroll provider all submit their information online and route that package electronically — not to a person in the agency’s retirement services division, but to a Digital File System that can fill in the application and do the calculations, Kupor said. Under that future process, he said, all individuals at OPM will be doing is reviewing and spot checking. The simple target of what OPM is trying to do with retirement services, Kupor said, is to go paperless “as quickly as possible.” The Department of Energy is refreshing its investment in five research centers focused on quantum information science after five years of operation. In a Tuesday announcement, DOE said it’s putting up $625 million to keep all of the existing National Quantum Information Science Research Centers (QIS) going for up to five more years, matching the same investment that launched those centers in 2020. Darío Gil, DOE undersecretary for science, said in a written statement: “President Trump positioned America to lead the world in quantum science and technology and today, a new frontier of scientific discovery lies before us. Breakthroughs in QIS have the potential to revolutionize the ways we sense, communicate, and compute, sparking entirely new technologies and industries.” The centers were authorized by Congress and signed into law in 2018 during the first Trump administration as part of the National Quantum Initiative Act. Since the first January 2020 investment from DOE — which envisioned “two to five multidisciplinary Quantum Initiatives” — centers led by its Brookhaven, Argonne, Lawrence Berkeley, Oak Ridge, and Fermi National Laboratories have been established. According to a DOE press release, the work of each center includes supporting science that has “disruptive potential across quantum computing, simulation, networking, and sensing,” as well as establishing “community resources, workforce opportunities, and industry partnerships.” The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

The Department of Homeland Security’s non-federal government partners in communities across the U.S. can now apply for funding grants for certain counter-drone capabilities to address national security and safety threats posed by the illegal and nefarious use of unmanned aircraft systems. Officials wrote in a notice published online last week: “The funding enables state, local, tribal, and territorial governments, along with first responders and public safety entities, to acquire detection and tracking technologies designed to safeguard public spaces and critical infrastructure.” DHS estimates that $250 million will be obligated for the program in fiscal 2026 alone, and more money is expected to flow. Decisions about individual awards will happen between 30 and 60 days of the application submissions. The department expects to make 12 awards, with the financial assistance amounts to-be-decided and ranging across the winners. All projects will have a performance period of 36 months. Notably, the awardees will not be permitted to use the federal funding to purchase “Enhanced Detect, Track, Identification (DTI) systems,” including those that “capture, record, intercept, demodulate, decrypt, or decode signals” between UAS and ground control stations. Due to significant legal restrictions, privacy concerns and federal airspace regulations, SLTT entities don’t currently have official authorization to employ those types of technologies. Drone threats associated with surveillance, disruption, or attacks, have intensified across the nation in recent years. The U.S. military is significantly expanding work and investments to deploy defensive weapons, modernize electronic warfare capabilities, enhance sensor protection and other tools to protect its facilities in the United States and abroad. And with America hosting major, upcoming global events, agencies and officials have been calling for coordinated efforts to more aggressively confront the risks. Anduril’s prototype drone developed for the Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program has taken its first live flight, the service announced Friday. The company conducted the flight of the unmanned fighter jet — known as the YFQ-44A — on Friday at a test location in California, the Air Force said in a press release. Beginning live flight tests of the CCA prototype “expands the program’s knowledge base on flight performance, autonomous behaviors and mission systems integration,” the service noted. The announcement that Anduril has moved into the flight test stage comes after General Atomics conducted the first flight of its CCA offering in August. Both companies are vying for Increment 1 of the CCA program, which is part of the Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) family of systems. General Atomics and Anduril received contracts for the first CCA increment in 2024, while the Air Force is also working with Shield AI and RTX to provide the drone’s mission autonomy. With both airframe vendors now in the next stage of the program, the Air Force is one step closer to making a final production decision for Increment 1 — expected in 2026. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

Nearly two months after calling on the Office of Management and Budget to bar use of xAI’s Grok chatbot in government, a coalition of advocacy groups is pressing its case further after the General Services Administration struck a deal with Elon Musk’s AI company to deploy Grok across the federal government. In a letter sent Wednesday to OMB Director Russell Vought, the advocacy groups reiterated their concerns in the wake of the GSA OneGov deal, along with recent comments from Michael Kratsios, the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. “OMB is entrusted with ensuring that AI systems procured by the federal government meet the highest standards of truth-seeking, accuracy and neutrality,” the letter, led by Public Citizen, stated. “Grok has repeatedly demonstrated failures in these areas and Director Kratsios himself has confirmed that such behavior is the precise type that Executive Order 14319 was designed to prevent.” The letter refers to an executive order signed by President Donald Trump in July that seeks to prevent “woke AI,” or ideological biases in models that are used by the federal government. The groups argued in their August letter to Vought that the use of Grok contradicts this order, given its past controversies with spewing antisemitic and pro-Hitler content. Weeks after the letter was sent, GSA inked a deal with xAI to offer Grok models to the government for a nominal cost. Under the deal, federal agencies can buy Grok 4 and Grok 4 Fast for 42 cents until March 2027. The White House appears to be moving forward with plans to redesign federal government websites, registering a new government domain — techforce.gov — this week. The new URL, which was first discovered Thursday by a bot tracking new government domains, leads to a sign-in page that states “National Design Studio” and “Tech Force” at the top. It includes a form for users to submit their email and receive a code to access the website. Records maintained by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency show the domain was registered Oct. 24 and last changed Wednesday. The domain registration comes more than two months after President Donald Trump signed an executive order launching an “America by Design” initiative focused on both digital and physical spaces. A new National Design Studio and chief design officer will lead the initiative and coordinate agency actions. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

The Army’s top acquisition official told DefenseScoop that he expects to see further growth in resources for the service’s FUZE initiative. FUZE, which was announced last month by Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, combines elements of multiple technology innovation programs — including the xTech, Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer (SBIR/STTR), ManTech, and Technology Maturation Initiative efforts — under a more integrated framework to accelerate the delivery of new capabilities to soldiers, according to the service. Driscoll has described it as the Army’s “new cradle-to-grave capital funding model.” Driscoll said at the recent AUSA event that the Army’s goal with FUZE is to contract with startups that have never, ever worked with the United States Army before in just 60 to 70 days. And for companies that the Army has worked with that have prototypes, the intent is to contract in 10 and start “soldier iterations in 30 to 45 days,” he said, adding, “We train like we fight. Acquisition should be no different.” The Army has already aligned $750 million to this model under FUZE, according to Driscoll. Next year, it plans to raise that slightly to $765 million. Brent Ingraham, the new assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology, said he anticipates that funding levels for those efforts will be higher in subsequent years. The federal judiciary has distributed interim guidance on artificial intelligence that allows for use of the technology, while also addressing procurement and security of the tools, according to a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee leadership that was made public Thursday. In correspondence to Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts Director Judge Robert J. Conrad said an AI task force formed earlier this year developed the guidance and it was distributed to federal courts across the country July 31. Although the policy is a temporary measure while the courts work on more permanent guidance, courts can explore the budding technology in the meantime. Disclosure of the guidance came as part of a response to Grassley’s inquiry about the use of AI in error-ridden orders from two federal judges. In addition to letters from the two judges admitting to clerks’ use of generative AI tools and assurances that they’d implemented measures to prevent future issues, Conrad provided detail on the broader efforts to address the technology within the third branch and the balance between use and risk management. A spokesperson for the judiciary declined to share a copy of the guidance with FedScoop. Conrad, however, provided a description of its scope to Grassley. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

Edward Forst told lawmakers Thursday that he wasn’t privy to the decision-making behind the General Services Administration’s deal with xAI’s Grok — but if confirmed to lead the agency, he signaled openness to examining the process that led to the procurement of the generative AI chatbot known for having an antisemitic meltdown. During a Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee hearing, ranking member Gary Peters, D-Mich., asked the GSA administrator nominee if he shared his concerns about Grok, pointing to the day the tool “produced racist and antisemitic content widely across [Elon] Musk’s social media platform.” Forst, a former private equity and financial services executive, told Peters that he had “not been a part of the decision” by the GSA to contract for the chatbot from the Musk-owned AI firm. With some additional pressing by Peters, Forst acknowledged that procuring a tool with a history of racist and antisemitic posting is “not, I think, the signal we would necessarily want to send to the country.” Peters attempted to get Forst to commit to pausing use of Grok until the committee received “documentation about the details of the procurement, including whether the GSA actually performed a comprehensive risk assessment.” Forst wouldn’t go that far on Grok, which once referred to itself as “MechaHitler.” But he did says his commitment to the lawmakers is that he will “meet with the team, and I’ll understand the process used in selecting them, and I’ll make sure that we have all the facts and if there was incompleteness to the process, that we’ll rectify it.” A pair of federal judges said staff use of generative artificial intelligence tools and premature docket entry were behind error-ridden orders they issued, according to letters made public by Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley on Thursday. Judges Henry T. Wingate and Julien Xavier Neals, who sit on the U.S. District Courts for the Southern District of Mississippi and District of New Jersey, respectively, both stated in letters that their law clerks had used AI tools to draft orders that were then entered into the dockets before they had been reviewed. Both judges also described measures to prevent repeat issues. The letters come after the orders from both judges were ridden with errors — including misquotes and references to parties not in the current cases — and later withdrawn. Speculation swirled as to whether those judges used AI, which is known to hallucinate, in their orders. Earlier this month, Grassley, R-Iowa, sent letters to both jurists asking for an explanation. The communications published Thursday are responsive to those inquiries. In his response, Neals indicated that previous reporting by Reuters that a “temporary assistant” had used ChatGPT was correct. “In doing so, the intern acted without authorization, without disclosure, and contrary to not only chambers policy but also the relevant law school policy.” Neals said he prohibits generative AI use in legal research and drafting of opinions and orders. While that policy was verbal in the past, he said it is now a “written unequivocal policy that applies to all law clerks and interns, pending definitive guidance from the AO through adoption of formal, universal policies and procedures for appropriate AI usage. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

An open letter released Wednesday has called for a ban on the development of artificial intelligence systems considered to be “superintelligent” until there is broad scientific consensus that such technologies can be created both safely and in a manner the public supports. The statement, issued by the nonprofit Future of Life Institute, has been signed by more than 700 individuals, including Nobel laureates, technology industry veterans, policymakers, artists, and public figures such as Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. The letter reflects deep and accelerating concerns over projects undertaken by technology giants like Google, OpenAI, and Meta Platforms that are seeking to build artificial intelligence capable of outperforming humans on virtually every cognitive task. According to the letter, such ambitions have raised fears about unemployment due to automation, loss of human control and dignity, national security risks, and the possibility of far-reaching social or existential harms. “We call for a prohibition on the development of superintelligence, not lifted before there is broad scientific consensus that it will be done safely and controllably, and strong public buy-in,” the statement reads. Signatories include AI pioneers Yoshua Bengio and Geoffrey Hinton, both recipients of the Turing Award, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, businessman Richard Branson, and actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Pentagon personnel could soon be told to participate in new training programs designed to prepare them for anticipated advancements in biotechnology and its convergence with other critical and emerging technologies, like quantum computing and AI. House lawmakers recently passed an amendment en bloc in their version of the fiscal 2026 National Defense Authorization Act that would mandate the secretary of defense to set up such trainings, no later than one year after the legislation’s enactment. Biotechnology refers to a multidisciplinary field that involves the application of biological systems or the use of living organisms, like yeast and bacteria, to produce products or solve complex problems. These technologies are expected to revolutionize defense, energy, manufacturing and other sectors globally in the not-so-distant future — particularly as they are increasingly paired with and powered by AI. And while the U.S. historically has demonstrated many underlying strengths in the field, recent research suggests the government may be falling behind China, where biotechnology research efforts and investments have surged since the early 2000s. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

The Trump administration should reverse cyber personnel and budget cuts, strengthen the Office of the National Cyber Director and expand federal workforce initiatives, the successor organization to the Cyberspace Solarium Commission recommended in a report published Wednesday. The annual implementation report from CSC 2.0 is the first of five iterations to actually determine that the nation has gone backward on enacting the agenda of the landmark bipartisan commission, whose suggestions led to the creation of major new federal organizations and policies, including the national cyber director’s office. In grading the degree to which its 2020 report had been enacted — whether they’re “implemented,” “nearing implementation,” “on track,” “progress limited” or facing “significant barriers” — the percentages dropped in every category, after years of rising or staying steady. President Donald Trump nominated Lt. Gen. Christopher LaNeve on Monday to serve as the next vice chief of staff of the Army and recommended his appointment to the grade of general. An official hearing date has not been made public, but if confirmed by the Senate, LaNeve will replace Gen. James Mingus, the long-time innovator who was sworn in as the Army’s No. 2 general officer and principal deputy to Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George in January 2024 under the Biden administration. The announcement follows an unusual gathering of hundreds of top U.S. military officials at Marine Corps Base Quantico last month, where Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stated that he had already removed several high-ranking service members and suggested that more people would be pushed out if they did not conform to his vision for a “less woke” military that’s “fit not fat.” There’s not a fixed term or limit to the position of vice chief of staff, and former officials’ tenures in the capacity vary. A Pentagon spokesperson did not immediately answer questions from DefenseScoop about the timing for or reasoning behind this nomination, but confirmed LaNeve was selected by the president to serve in the post. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services appears to be quietly considering Palantir to support its yearslong efforts to build a national provider directory for health care providers and patients across the country. Federal spending records show Palantir to be one of four recipients to receive awards from the Department of Health and Human Services and CMS containing the phrase “national provider directory” and “proof of concept.” The four separate contracts, made public Sept. 30, award $1 to each company and are set to expire Nov. 13. Two sources familiar with the efforts told FedScoop these contracts are for a prototype product with CMS. One source confirmed the prototype is for the agency’s national provider directory, an effort the agency has been exploring for years. CMS has suggested the directory could serve as a centralized data hub for health care provider and facility information nationwide. The move marks the latest sign of civilian agencies’ growing interest in Palantir, which offers extensive data integration and analytics capabilities. The Department of Energy is requesting proposals for the buildout and maintenance of AI data centers and energy generation infrastructure in and around Oak Ridge National Laboratory. In an RFP published last week, the national lab’s site and environmental management offices said they are seeking proposals from entities interested in entering into long-term leases in Oak Ridge, Tenn. The work on those DOE sites would include “designing, financing, permitting, developing, constructing, installing, owning, maintaining, operating, and decommissioning AI data center and/or energy generation infrastructure,” per the posting. For those sites, Oak Ridge is specifically seeking construction of data center facilities with specialized computing equipment, cooling facilities, infrastructure for energy supply, transmission and storage, and other related equipment and facilities. The DOE said entities responding to the RFP could be private-sector companies with experience in the development and operation of AI data centers, advanced computing facilities or energy storage. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

Federal cyber authorities issued an emergency directive last week requiring federal agencies to identify and apply security updates to F5 devices after the cybersecurity vendor said a nation-state attacker had long-term, persistent access to its systems. The order, which mandates federal civilian executive branch agencies take action by Wednesday, Oct. 22, marked the second emergency directive issued by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in three weeks. CISA issued both of the emergency directives months after impacted vendors were first made aware of attacks on their internal systems or products. F5 said it first learned of unauthorized access to its systems Aug. 9, resulting in data theft including segments of BIG-IP source code and details on vulnerabilities the company was addressing internally at the time. CISA declined to say when F5 first alerted the agency to the intrusion. CISA officials said they’re not currently aware of any federal agencies that have been compromised, but similar to the emergency directive issued following an attack spree involving zero-day vulnerabilities affecting Cisco firewalls, they expect the response and mitigation efforts to provide a better understanding of the scope of any potential compromise in federal networks. Many federal agencies and private organizations could be impacted. CISA said there are thousands of F5 product types in use across executive branch agencies. Sens. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and Ted Cruz, R-Texas, moved to mandate comprehensive new safety reviews for all aircraft operations near DCA and at all major and mid-size U.S. airports, in a new bipartisan agreement that would also require fleets across the nation to be equipped with more precise situational awareness technology. Their proposal aims to resolve safety issues identified by the federal investigation into the tragic crash in January, where an Army UH-60M Black Hawk helicopter fatally collided with an American Airlines passenger plane over the Potomac River near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. All 67 people aboard both aircraft were killed in the collision. In a statement on Thursday, Tim and Sheri Lilley — whose son was the first officer onboard that AA Flight 5342 — called on Congress “to continue moving quickly and decisively to pass and fully implement these reforms, because every person who boards an aircraft depends on it.” The 42-page Cantwell-Cruz Bipartisan Aviation Safety Agreement combines elements of legislation the lawmakers previously put forward separately in the months after the fatal collision. It includes language that directs every military service with an aviation component to sign a memorandum of understanding with the Federal Aviation Administration to share appropriate safety information and expand coordination to prevent future accidents. Another safety failure that came to light in the wake of the crash was associated with the Army Black Hawk helicopter not transmitting via Automatic Dependent Surveillance–Broadcast (ADS-B) technology, which essentially enables aircraft to receive data and information about other systems, weather and traffic — delivered directly in the cockpit. The senators’ proposal would set a clear 2031 deadline for aircraft operators to equip their fleets with the full package of ADS-B capabilities. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

A new report from the password management company NordPass is challenging the idea that federal institutions are more secure than local governments against cybersecurity threats. The study, conducted by NordPass and threat exposure management platform NordStellar, found a total of 53,070 passwords belonging to U.S. civil servants were exposed in public sources since the beginning of 2024. Of the impacted institutions, NordPass found the Department of Defense had 1,897 total exposed passwords, 222 of which were unique. The State Department had 15,272 total exposed passwords, 190 of which were unique, while the U.S. Army had 1,706 exposed passwords, 167 of them unique. The Department of Veterans Affairs also ranked among the top five most-affected institutions, with 1,331 total password exposures, 53 of which were unique. Seven passwords of White House employees were also compromised, according to the study. A State Department spokesperson told FedScoop the agency is “committed to cybersecurity across the department.” They said the agency has instituted multi-factor authentication and regularly rotates credentials. A Biden-era director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy slammed the Trump administration’s cuts to research and development funding Wednesday, warning of adverse effects to areas such as artificial intelligence. Arati Prabhakar said during a panel held by Harvard’s Kennedy School: “Today what we are in the middle of is an assault on the public investment in research unlike anything we have seen in our country’s history.” Prabhakar specifically pointed to the Trump administration’s moves to withdraw support from certain projects, its removal of federal workers at research agencies, its attacks on universities, reversal of immigration policies that bring talent to the U.S., and the administration’s budget proposal that sought to cut federal R&D spending by roughly $44 billion. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

Starting next year, the Army will be able to domestically mass-produce upwards of 10,000 small unmanned aerial systems each month, according to the service. Army Materiel Command is leading a new pilot program dubbed “SkyFoundry” that will allow the service to rapidly develop, test and produce small drones using innovative manufacturing methods. Officials are currently identifying multiple facilities where the platforms will be designed and produced. The department expects it can manufacture at least 10,000 UAS per month once the first site is up and running, Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. James Mingus said Tuesday. He said during a fireside chat at the annual AUSA conference: “We’ll be at 10,000 a month by this time next year, if not more.” The effort comes as the Pentagon looks to ramp up production of small drones across the services following Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s “Unleashing U.S. Military Drone Dominance” directive, issued in July. The memo requires low-cost, attritable drones to be fielded to every Army squad by the end of 2026 and calls on the military to partner closely with domestic industry to scale up manufacturing. Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., sent a letter Tuesday to acting CISA Director Madhu Gottumukkala raising concerns about staffing levels and the direction of the nation’s primary cybersecurity agency, writing that the “Trump Administration has undertaken multiple efforts to decimate CISA’s workforce, undermining our nation’s cybersecurity.” Swalwell, the ranking member on the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection, called out the agency for its reported shift of cybersecurity personnel to the Department of Homeland Security’s deportation efforts, on top of the approximately 760 people that have been let go from the agency since January. Swallwell wrote: “Amid reports that the Department of Homeland Security is now forcibly transferring CISA’s cybersecurity employees to other DHS components, it has become apparent that the Department’s exclusive focus on its mass deportation campaign is coming at the expense of our national security,” calling it “further evidence of the Administration’s failure to prioritize cybersecurity” how CISA is engaging in Reductions in Force that could threaten its capacity to prevent and respond to cybersecurity threats. In the letter, he demanded that DHS cease all efforts to cut CISA’s workforce, reinstate employees who were transferred or dismissed, and provide details on the impacts of the agency’s workforce reductions. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

The Trump administration pushed forward Friday with plans to fire federal employees amid the government shutdown, directing reductions-in-force at the Departments of Health and Human Services, Education, and Housing and Urban Development, among other agencies. Prior to and during the current shutdown, the White House repeatedly threatened to lay off additional federal workers in a bid to further its efforts to shrink the size of the government. The Trump administration maintains Democrats are to blame for the shutdown, though Democrats contend that a spending bill from Republicans — who control all levers of power — wouldn’t adequately fund health care. Russ Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, posted on X early Friday afternoon that the “RIFs have begun,” without offering additional details. An OMB spokesperson told FedScoop the RIFs began and are “substantial.” In a preview of his discussions with Vought last week, President Donald Trump said in a post to his social media platform that they would target “Democrat Agencies,” calling them “a political SCAM.” According to a court filing from the Trump administration late Friday, at least 4,100 federal workers across eight federal agencies may have been sent RIF notices, with the bulk of the staff reductions at HHS, with 1,100 to 1,200 workers impacted, and the Department of Treasury, with 1,446 workers impacted. Deploying artificial intelligence requires taking on the right amount of risk to achieve a desired end result, a National Institute of Standards and Technology official who worked on its risk management framework for the technology said on a panel last week. While federal agencies, and particularly IT functions, are generally risk averse, risks can’t entirely be avoided with AI, Martin Stanley, an AI and cybersecurity researcher at the Commerce Department standards agency, said during a FedInsider panel on “Intelligent Government” last week. Stanley said: “You have to manage risks, number one,” adding that the benefits from the technology are compelling enough that “you have to go looking to achieve those.” Stanley’s comments came in response to a question about how the federal government compares to other sectors that have been doing risk management for longer, such as financial services. On that point specifically, he said the NIST AI Risk Management Framework “shares a lot of DNA” with Federal Reserve guidance on algorithmic models in financial services. He said NIST attempted to leverage those approaches and the same plain, simple language. “We talk about risks, we talk about likelihoods, and we talk about impacts, both positive and negative, so that you can build this trade space where you are taking on the right amount of risk to achieve a benefit,” Stanley said. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

Federal agencies’ latest status updates on how they’re using artificial intelligence reveal persistent barriers and variability on where agencies stand with ”high-impact” use cases. The release of the 2025 AI compliance plans offers one of the first in-depth glimpses at how federal agencies are addressing issues of AI risk management, technical capacity and workforce readiness under the second Trump administration. Those documents, which were required under the Trump administration’s AI governance memo to agencies, were supposed to be released publicly by Sept. 30. As of publication time, FedScoop located roughly 20 plans and 14 strategies across 22 agencies. For nine of the roughly two dozen Chief Financial Officers Act agencies, FedScoop was unable to find either a plan or a strategy. The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, meanwhile, produced only strategies. FedScoop and DefenseScoop attempted to contact the CFO Act agencies that didn’t produce both documents, but the agencies either didn’t respond or didn’t provide the documents. Two of those agencies, NASA and the Justice Department, noted the government shutdown in their responses, and both the DOJ and Department of Defense indicated they were working to post at a later date. Agencies were also required to submit AI strategies for the first time this year. Those documents contain some of the same information as the compliance documents, including plans to train the workforce, examples of use cases, and systems for governance. The compliance plans, meanwhile, which are in their second year, have changed only slightly from their previous iterations, with some agencies showing progress on their implementation of the technology and risk management practices. A top Senate Democrat introduced legislation Thursday to extend and rename an expired information-sharing law, and make it retroactive to cover the lapse that began Oct. 1. Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, the ranking member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, introduced the Protecting America from Cyber Threats (PACT) Act, to replace the expired Cybersecurity and Information Sharing Act of 2015 (CISA 2015) that has provided liability protections for organizations that share cyber threat data with each other and the federal government. Industry groups and cyber professionals have called those protections vital, sometimes describing the 2015 law as the most successful cyber legislation ever passed. The 2015 law shares an acronym with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which some Republicans — including the chairman of Peters’ panel, Rand Paul of Kentucky — have accused of engaging in social media censorship. As CISA 2015 has lapsed and Peters has tried to renew it, “some people think that’s a reauthorization of the agency,” Peters told reporters Thursday in explaining the new bill name. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s pledge to “get out of the way” on chemical reviews to accelerate the buildout of artificial intelligence data centers doesn’t mean those reviews would be any less “robust,” a top EPA nominee told lawmakers Wednesday. Appearing before the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee, Douglas Troutman — President Donald Trump’s pick for assistant administrator for toxic substances — was pressed by Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., about comments made by EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin last month following a White House roundtable with AI and data center leaders. In a Sept. 18 press release, Zeldin announced that the EPA would begin prioritizing the review of new chemicals — under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) — that would be used in data center projects. Markey asked Troutman, a former chemical industry lobbyist, what provisions in federal toxic safety laws indicate the EPA can “get out of the way of reviewing chemicals for safety.” Troutman responded that “nothing will change with regard to the robust review based on the risk-based statute enacted under Section Five of TSCA.” Markey appeared unconvinced, telling Troutman that if he’s confirmed, he will “be under orders from Administrator Zeldin to get out of the way.” The Massachusetts Democrat made the case that “big tech bosses” with ties to the administration could lean on the agency to bypass regular review protocols. Voting rights groups are asking a court to block an ongoing Trump administration effort to merge disparate federal and state voter data into a massive citizenship and voter fraud database. Last week, the League of Women Voters, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and five individuals sued the federal government in D.C. District Court, saying it was ignoring decades of federal privacy law to create enormous “national data banks” of personal information on Americans. On Tuesday, the coalition, represented by Democracy Forward Foundation, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), and Fair Elections Center, asked the court for an emergency injunction to halt the Trump administration’s efforts to transform the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements into an immense technological tool to track potential noncitizens registered to vote. Until this year, SAVE was an incomplete and limited federal database meant to track immigrants seeking federal benefits. In an Oct. 7 court filing, the groups said an immediate injunction was needed to prevent permanent privacy harms due to the “illegal and secretive consolidation of millions of Americans’ sensitive personal data across government agencies into centralized data systems” through SAVE. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

A federal workers’ union is suing the Education Department after agency employees on furlough or administrative leave discovered that their automatic email replies had been changed to a message blaming Democratic lawmakers for the ongoing government shutdown. The complaint, filed by the American Federation of Government Employees, asks a court to prohibit the Education Department’s alleged efforts to “put political speech in federal employees’ mouths.” “Forcing civil servants to speak on behalf of the political leadership’s partisan agenda is a blatant violation of federal employees’ First Amendment rights,” the suit stated, adding that “employees are now forced to involuntarily parrot the Trump Administration’s talking points with emails sent out in their names.” The suit came one day after some furloughed workers discovered that their automatic out-of-office email replies were changed without their knowledge, from neutral language to partisan messaging that blamed Democrats for the shutdown, which began last Wednesday. Three House Democrats questioned the Department of Homeland Security on Monday over a reported Immigration and Customs Enforcement contract with a spyware provider that they warn potentially “threatens Americans’ freedom of movement and freedom of speech.” Their letter follows publication of a notice that ICE had lifted a stop-work order on a $2 million deal with Israeli spyware company Paragon Solutions, a contract that the Biden administration had frozen one year ago pending a review of its compliance with a spyware executive order. Paragon is the maker of Graphite, and advertises it as having more safeguards than competitors that have received more public and legal scrutiny, such as NSO Group’s Pegasus, a claim researchers have challenged. A report earlier this year found suspected deployments of Graphite in countries across the globe, with targets including journalists and activists. \ The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a new edict last week to reduce the time personnel spend on cybersecurity training, among other reforms. The directive came in a Sept. 30 memo to senior Pentagon leadership and DOD agency and field activity directors, ordering the military departments, in coordination with the Pentagon’s chief information officer, to “Relax the mandatory frequency for Cybersecurity training.” Hegseth also called for narrowly tailoring records management training to service member roles and allowing flexibility in training delivery, as well as automating information management systems to eliminate training requirements. Additionally, Hegseth directed the military departments and other Pentagon leaders to “relax” the mandatory frequency for controlled unclassified information (CUI) training; remove Privacy Act Training from the Common Military Training (CMT) list; eliminate the mandatory frequency for “Combating Trafficking in Persons” refresher training after appropriate legislation is enacted; consolidate mandatory training topics, “as appropriate”; and develop an integrated CMT program plan. The changes are to be “implemented expeditiously,” per Hegseth’s directive. Federal courts are upgrading their cybersecurity on a number of fronts, but multifactor authentication for the system that gives the public access to court data poses “unique challenges,” the Administrative Office of the United States Courts told Sen. Ron Wyden in a letter last week. Wyden, D-Ore., wrote a scathing August letter to the Supreme Court in response to the latest major breach of the federal judiciary’s electronic case filing system. The director of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts responded on behalf of the Supreme Court. It is “simply not the case” that the courts have, in the words of Wyden, “ignored” advice from experts on securing the Case Management/Electronic Case Files (CM/ECF) system, wrote Robert Conrad Jr., director of the office. Conrad wrote in the Sept. 30 letter: “Substantial planning for the modernization effort began in 2022, and we are now approaching the development and implementation phase of the project. We expect implementation will begin in the next two years in a modular and iterative manner.” In recent years, the office has been testing technical components on its modernization effort, and is centralizing the operation of data standards to enable security, Conrad said. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

Former State Department employees whose roles were eliminated as part of a reduction-in-force still received information about whether they would be needed during the government shutdown — including some workers who were told their positions were “excepted.” While the full extent of the issue wasn’t immediately clear, three such employees shared those notifications with FedScoop on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. Others were also aware of the problem even if they didn’t receive the messages themselves. In response to a FedScoop request for comment, a State spokesperson indicated the department was aware of the issue and had taken steps to address it, confirming there were “minor” discrepancies with data, saying that the department immediately worked to resolve any outstanding issues. Of the three State Department notices reviewed by FedScoop, one informed the RIF’d employee that their position was “excepted” and explained that those roles are defined as those needed for emergencies that threaten life and property or are essential for national security. It then ordered that worker to “report to work on your next regularly scheduled workday.” The other two already RIF’d employees were told that they would be furloughed during the shutdown but that it was “in no way a value judgement on the work you do for the Department.” Those employees were also instructed to review their department emails for updates despite not being able to access that information. Of the three RIF’d employees, only one — a foreign service officer — is still on the department’s payroll. As employees at the Education Department prepared for a looming government shutdown this week, several set an automatic email reply to inform others of their furloughed status. But by Thursday morning, some furloughed workers discovered that their automatic email replies had been altered, without their knowledge, to include a message blaming Democratic senators for the ongoing government shutdown. According to two furloughed Education Department employees, the agency sent workers suggested language to use for their out-of-office messages earlier this week, but the language was “neutral” regarding the shutdown. One of the employees, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told FedScoop they and other furloughed staff mostly cut and paste from the suggested language with little to no changes when setting their automatic replies. But when they checked their automatic email replies Thursday morning, the message changed and included partisan language mentioning Democrats, the employee said. The other furloughed worker said they set the generic text for their OOO email Wednesday morning and the message was changed by Wednesday night. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

It’s day two of the federal shutdown, and with the Senate on leave, there won’t be any sort of appropriations deal until Friday at the earliest — though many have doubts about that possibility. As federal agencies adjust to the new normal with hundreds of thousands of federal employees furloughed and the White House threatening more layoffs targeting those who’ve been sent home, FedScoop took the time to compile a near-complete look at how agency IT organizations are affected. An analysis of the nearly two dozen civilian Chief Financial Officer Act agencies found that some agencies explicitly outlined plans to scale back IT operations amid the shutdown, while others deemed several IT staff members essential for managing technology and cybersecurity infrastructure. For instance, at the Department of Commerce’s Office of the CIO, just one individual is tasked with taking responsibility for shutdown tasks and assurance that the office will continue to work on critical IT functions. If the lapse in funding continues for an extended period, there is also the potential for staff to be recalled on an intermittent or full-time basis for cybersecurity and maintenance work, and limited staff may be called for administrative functions. While at the Labor Department, the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Administration and Management has selected “a minimal IT staff” within the OCIO to oversee tech operations. Those employees are now tasked with managing Labor’s technology services, applications and website, in addition to having other IT security responsibilities that support the agency’s excepted and exempt staff. A nonprofit legal group is suing a handful of federal agencies, calling on the federal bodies to release documents related to the use of artificial intelligence to carry out the Trump administration’s “deregulation agenda.” The lawsuit, filed by Democracy Forward on Wednesday, asks a court to require the General Services Administration, Office of Personnel Management, Office of Management and Budget and the Department of Housing and Urban Development to comply with public records laws amid concerns over how AI is being used to “weaken” existing federal regulations. Democracy Forward said it reviewed both public records and documents obtained through FOIA requests and found GSA plays a “central role” in the White House’s efforts to overhaul regulations. The nonprofit cited an apparent email trail, in which a GSA-affiliated email informs other agencies of “significant progress” in reviewing its internal and external policies to ensure consistency with President Donald Trump’s directives. The suit further pointed to reports of an AI tool called SweetREX developed by an affiliate of the Department of Government Efficiency. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

It’s Oct. 1 and Congress has failed to pass appropriations for fiscal year 2026. And you know what that means: the federal government has shut down. For the first time since 2019, also during a Trump administration, federal appropriations have lapsed, resulting in furloughs for hundreds of thousands of federal employees and contractors and the halting of many agency operations. Only “excepted employees” and federal workers who are “exempt” from furlough may perform work until the current lapse in appropriations is over. Though Washington has experienced a number of shutdowns and shutdown threats in recent memory, the politically combative climate surrounding this one is much more amplified. The Trump administration has already threatened to use the shutdown to permanently cut jobs that aren’t aligned with the president’s agenda. And so far, neither party seems willing to budge, with many pundits speculating the lapse could drag on long-term without an agreement between Republicans — who control both houses in Congress and the White House — and Democrats. But one thing is clear: Until that agreement is reached, many of the federal government’s most important missions will operate at less than full capacity, including in areas like cybersecurity. FedScoop will keep you informed as the battle around the shutdown continues. The Trump administration’s sweeping U.S. military shakeup is expected to gain momentum in the months to come — with more leadership changes, major acquisition updates and possible personnel cuts in the Pentagon’s pipeline, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth suggested during an unusual gathering of military brass Tuesday. At the “key leaders all-call” meeting with hundreds of top generals and admirals summoned from around the world at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Hegseth and President Donald Trump unveiled a broad docket of new and forthcoming directives meant to reflect their overarching vision for “woke”-ending reforms. Trump said: “We will not be politically correct when it comes to defending American freedom. We will be a fighting and winning machine. We want to fight, we want to win, and we want to fight as little as possible.” Theories swirled about the intent behind this mass gathering after Hegseth hastily ordered it last week. In the portion that was publicly livestreamed, Hegseth outlined his plans for policy shifts — via 10 directives — around physical fitness and grooming standards, mandatory training, oversight processes, records retention rules and more. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.