healthcarereimagined

By Amanda Saunders

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Tags: CloudXR, featured, Metropolis, technical walkthrough

Many organizations have started their journey towards edge computing to take advantage of data produced at the edge. The definition of edge computing is quite broad. Simply stated, it is moving compute power physically closer to where data is generated, usually an edge device or IoT sensor.

This encompasses far edge scenarios like mobile devices and smart sensors, as well as more near edge use cases like micro-data centers and remote office computing. In fact, this definition is so broad that it is often talked about as anything outside of the cloud or main data center. 

With such a wide variety of use cases, it is important to understand the different types of edge computing and how they are being used by organizations today. 

Provider edge

The provider edge is a network of computing resources accessed by the Internet. It is mainly used for delivering services from telcos, service providers, media companies, or other content delivery network (CDN) operators. Examples of use cases include content delivery, online gaming​, and AI as a service (AIaaS). 

One key example of the provider edge that is expected to grow rapidly is augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR). Service providers want to find ways to deliver these use cases, commonly known as eXtended Reality (XR), from the cloud to end user edge systems. 

In late 2021, Google partnered with NVIDIA to deliver high-quality XR streaming from Google Cloud NVIDIA RTX powered servers, to lightweight mobile XR displays. By using NVIDIA CloudXR to stream from the provider edge, users can securely access data from the cloud at any time and easily share high-fidelity, full graphics immersive XR experiences with other teams or customers.

Enterprise edge

The enterprise edge is an extension of the enterprise data center, consisting of things like data centers at remote office sites, micro-data centers, or even racks of servers sitting in a compute closet on a factory floor. This environment is generally owned and operated by IT as they would a traditional centralized data center, though there may be space or power limitations at the enterprise edge that change the design of these environments.

Figure 1. Enterprises across all industries use edge AI to drive more intelligent use cases on site.

Looking at examples of the enterprise edge, you can see workloads like intelligent warehouses and fulfillment centers. Improved efficiency and automation of these environments requires robust information, data, and operational technologies to enable AI solutions like real-time product recognition.

Kinetic Vision helps customers build AI for these enterprise edge environments using a digital twin, or photorealistic virtual version, of a fulfillment or distribution center to train and optimize a classification model that is then deployed in the real world. This powers faster, more agile product inspections, and order fulfillments.

Industrial edge

The industrial edge, sometimes called the far edge, generally has smaller compute instances that can be one or two small, ruggedized servers or even embedded systems deployed outside of any sort of data center environment.

Industrial edge use cases include robotics, autonomous checkout, smart city capabilities like traffic control, and intelligent devices. These use cases run entirely outside of the normal data center structure, which means there are a number of unique challenges for space, cooling, security, and management.

BMW is leading the way with industrial edge by adopting robotics to redefine their factory logistics. Using different robots for parts of the process, these robots take boxes of raw parts on the line and transport them to shelves to await production. They are then taken to manufacturing, and finally returned back to the supply area when empty.

Robotics use cases require compute power both in the autonomous machine itself, as well as compute systems that sit on the factory floor. To optimize the efficiency and accelerate deployment of these solutions, NVIDIA introduced the NVIDIA Isaac Autonomous Mobile Robot (AMR) platform.

Accelerating edge computing

Each of these edge computing scenarios has different requirements, benefits, and deployment challenges. To understand if your use case would benefit from edge computing, download the Considerations for Deploying AI at the Edge whitepaper

Article link: https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/different-types-of-edge-computing/?

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About the Authors

About Amanda Saunders 
Amanda Saunders leads product marketing for Edge AI in edge and enterprise computing solutions group at NVIDIA. She brings to life edge computing solutions that bring intelligence to hospitals, stores, warehouses, factories, and more. In addition to working on edge solutions, Amanda has held sales and marketing roles at NVIDIA working with AI, data science, virtual GPU, and many different industries.

View all posts by Amanda Saunders

Yash Prakash Chief Strategy Officer, Saviynt

April 12, 2022

Like zero trust, the cybersecurity mesh re-envisions the perimeter at the identity layer and centers upon unifying disparate security tools into a single, interoperable ecosystem.

The past two years’ events have taught us all just how important it is to stay agile and flexible. We’ve experienced a more challenging threat landscape as well as expanding attack surfaces. These challenges have come with accelerated cloud transformation and the dissolution of traditional corporate network perimeters and distributed workforces. As a result, there’s growing interest in security strategies emphasizing security controls that span widely distributed assets — including multicloud ecosystems.

One such strategy that’s currently generating quite a bit of buzz is cybersecurity mesh architecture (CSMA).

The term “cybersecurity mesh” was coined by analyst firm Gartner, which called CSMA one of the top strategic technology trends of 2022. Gartner defines cybersecurity mesh architecture as a “common, broad and unified approach … [that] extend[s] security beyond enterprise perimeters.” In Gartner’s view, CSMA focuses on composability, scalability, and interoperability to create a collaborative ecosystem of security tools. Somewhat optimistically, Gartner predicts that “organizations adopting a cybersecurity mesh architecture to integrate security tools to work as a cooperative ecosystem will reduce the financial impact of individual security incidents by an average of 90% by 2024.”

Like zero trust, the cybersecurity mesh model is well suited for today’s cloud applications and workloads since it re-envisions the perimeter at the identity layer and centers upon unifying disparate security tools into a holistic, interoperable ecosystem.

The emphasis on composability, scalability, and interoperability means that CSMA can move security teams from managing fragmented, individually configured services to deploying best-of-breed solutions that work together to mature the organization’s security posture. To achieve this end, though, multiple vendors will need to adopt open, standards-based approaches to interoperability.

As the concept of CSMA becomes more and more popular, however, questions remain. Will organizations invest in zero trust and CSMA side by side as they advance along the path to modernization? Both approaches are, after all, complementary, and building a resilient CSMA will enable an organization to achieve zero trust objectives. And do enough best-of-breed solutions exist that can integrate successfully to deliver the outcomes enterprises want from CSMA in the real world?

The idea of the cybersecurity mesh relies on assumptions about how widely available truly composable security services really are. These solutions feature an architecture designed to scale in a more agile fashion through an API-first approach — enabling flexibility and multicloud ecosystem management. CSMA also calls for common frameworks for everything from analytics to threat intelligence and security controls that can communicate via APIs.

An effective mesh architecture will also demand stronger, centralized policy management and governance. It’ll be essential to orchestrate better least-privilege access policies, which organizations can achieve by using a centralized policy management engine in conjunction with distributed enforcement. Security leaders must apply artificial intelligence/machine learning-based policies at the identity layer and extend these policies across the entirety of the access path — from device or endpoint to workload or application — to create integrated security out of an array of individual components.

Although CSMA remains more of a concept than an architecture at this point, there are three ways that security leaders can begin thinking about how to start deriving value.

Look to Deploy Composable Cybersecurity Technologies
On average, every large organization runs 47 different cybersecurity toolswithin its environment, leaving security teams to spend unsustainable amounts of time and effort managing complex, unwieldy integrations. By taking an API-first and standards-based approach, organizations can make everything a service. This way, security tools can talk to one another, sharing context and risk intelligence.

While open standards have seen increased adoption in many other areas of IT, the cybersecurity industry has lagged behind. Stakeholders across the industry need to work together to ensure that risk, identity context, usage, and other telemetries are effortlessly consumable across different solutions. This way, for instance, the secure email gateway can “talk” to the network firewall, and both can inform authentication decisions.

Centralize Policy Management Across All Your Security Tools
This isn’t simple. It will take a concerted effort to consolidate all security policies, including identity and access policies, in your environment and additional work to streamline this across multiple security tools. You’ll need to incorporate a central policy engine that can decide whether to grant, deny, or revoke access to resources for entities across the organization. And you’ll need to ensure that your organization administers and enforces these policies across every device and resource in the environment, no matter how widely distributed they may be.

Establish KPIs and Track Them
This is the only way to ensure that your CSMA genuinely works well together and delivers the intended results. Your organization should identify which metrics are essential to track and report, while keeping in mind that there may be multiple levels of KPIs to address. For example, a CISO may wish to report specific KPIs at the board level to show the CSMA strategy is impacting business outcomes — while individual teams will need to measure separate KPIs to assess security posture and overall cyber resiliency. 

Current trends like the large-scale adoption of remote work and increasing reliance on hybrid and multicloud infrastructures won’t reverse themselves anytime soon. To meet the modern enterprise’s ever-growing requirements for agility, security leaders must carefully examine their existing security infrastructure to find opportunities to bring previously siloed solutions together. Whether this will become known as CSMA or simply “enhanced interoperability and efficiency” in the months and years to come remains to be seen, but the need is pressing.

Article link: https://www.darkreading.com/operations/building-a-cybersecurity-mesh-architecture-in-the-real-world

Lorraine and Joyce, of Every Child Counts, Inc., delivered 152.3 lbs. of non-perishable food items to Janet, our Food Services Community Engagement Manager. The generous donation is in keeping with the organization’s mission, “To improve the lives of children from birth to 18 years old.” #everychildcounts #fooddonations #foodinsecurity #chestereastside

By Theresa Hitchens on October 13, 2021 at 3:17 PM

AUSA: The Army is looking to create a unified cloud environment as a key piece of its new Army Digital Transformation Strategy (ADTS) aimed at centralizing its vast numbers of computer systems, data standards, cloud capabilities and cybersecurity procedures. And to that end, the service also is seeking to expand its use of non-traditional acquisition authorities, top officials explained today.

The strategy represents “a shift in terms of us starting to do things more at an enterprise, centralized level,” Raj Iyer, the Army’s chief information officer (CIO), told reporters in the margin of the annual Association of the United States Army (AUSA) trade show. “The Army in the past has always executed traditional IT in a very decentralized way — we let every command do their own thing. And that’s all led to a lot of silos of excellence over the years. Now, if you look at the requirements for multi-domain operations, that model doesn’t work anymore.”

RELATED: ‘Global By Nature’: Generals Say Unified Network Is ‘Operational Imperative’

The CIO office’s press to unify its “enterprise and tactical clouds” — and accelerate migration of data to that new cloud architecture in a standardized way — thus is a major focus of the ADTS.

“For cloud migration, it’s key that the office of CIO establishes the standards to do that migration,” stressed Brig. Gen. Matt Easley during the press roundtable. “We can’t allow every program office to go out and move to a cloud environment of their own their own design. We have to tell them the data standards we want them to use, the architecture standards, the cybersecurity standards on how we want them connected, and how to fuse that data to make that data usable and visible to the rest of the force.”

The service sees its multi-pronged $15 billion digital modernization effort as a top priority, the officials said, because it underpins the Army’s ability to plug and play into DoD’s Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2) strategy. Markowitz said the service has been working closely with the Joint Staff’s J6 directorate for Command, Control, Communications, & Computers/Cyber, Lt. Gen. Dennis Crall. In particular, this involves using contingency operations, such as the Afghanistan evacuation, and exercises, including Project Convergence, designed to figure out how to share Army information and data with the Combatant Commands, he said.

RELATED: DISA Head: DoD Working To Modernize ICAM, C2, Data Use

“We’re trying to experiment in real time with ongoing operations or exercises, kind of building a data foundation for a Combatant Command level, and for the Army’s interest we really want to make sure that data structure of how information flows is common across all Combatant Commands,” he said.

Mixing ‘Colors Of Money’

Iyer said that the ADTS also represents a shift in how the service works to encourage innovation and bring in industry partners, he said, including changing its acquisition approach.

While the Army, like all the services, faces challenges due to resource constraints, with his $15 billion annual budget, Iyer said, “money is not the problem” in implementing the digital transformation. It does mean having to divest its multiple individual data centers to invest instead in creating “one cloud.” A bigger issue is figuring out how to reform how the Army approaches budgeting.

Iyer said he has been talking with congressional staffers about how the Army can have more flexibility in the Planning, Programming, Budgeting and Execution (PPBE) process, and in how it funds digitization and cybersecurity  across “colors of money” — that is, separate budget pots for research and development, procurement and operations and maintenance.

“We are absolutely in favor of some reform, especially when it comes to how we budget for digital, and then cyber quite frankly, because our cyber threats are changing and evolving all the time. The way the PPBE process works is that you plan for something five years in advance, and then you program for it, and then you wait and five years later you get the money to execute. But we know how fast technology changes, we know how fast the the threats in the cyberspace are changing. And so, it’s a question about the flexibility the process to be able to do things.”

And while Congress has given the Defense Department more ability to use non-traditional acquisition tools, such as Broad Agency Announcements and Other Transaction Authorities,the Army up to now has been a bit cautious on how it applied them to software development, digitization and cybersecurity, David Markowitz, the service’s chief data officer, said during the roundtable.

“I’m not sure we’ve used the pilot authorities to the extent folks in Congress wanted us to. We’re a little slower than the Air Force, they’re a little more aggressive on these,” he said.

That’s in part because service leaders are still struggling a bit to understand exactly what is going on internally with investments.

“We have to do the internal work. Let’s be honest, we have difficulty seeing across the large scope of the Army how money is being spent in the digital area, and particularly on cyber security,” he added.

Article link: https://breakingdefense-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/breakingdefense.com/2021/10/to-aid-digital-transformation-army-eyes-one-cloud-and-faster-acquisition/amp/

READ MORE AT BREAKING DEFENSE →

TOPICS

Army, Army Digital Transformation Strategy, AUSA 2021, cloud, cloud computing, cybersecurity, JADC2, Other Transaction Authority, Planning Programming Budgeting & Execution (PPBE), PPBE, Raj Iyer

Quantum information science applies the best understanding of the sub-atomic world—quantum theory—to generate new knowledge and technologies. Quantum will revolutionize Air and Space Force operations.

The U.S. military is leading the acceleration of quantum research and development as first adopters for this fundamental technology to move the ball forward. Quantum will lead to technologies that will transform the war-fighting domain in revolutionary and unprecedented ways.

AFRL QUANTUM LABS

AFRL conducts and sponsors research across the globe, including in our laboratories in New York and New Mexico.

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ULTRACOLD ATOMS

AFRL’s Quantum Sensing & Timing (QST) group seeks to take advantage of Nobel-Prize winning cold-atoms physics and related techniques to develop solutions for critical DoD problems in positioning, navigation and timing.

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PHOTONIC MICROCOMBS

Photonic integrated circuits (PICs) will play a key role in transitioning quantum-enabled technologies beyond the laboratory. Our team investigates novel photonic components including microcombs and PIC-compatible laser sources.

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LEVITATED OPTOMECHANICS

AFRL’s Quantum Sensing & Timing (QST) group seeks to use optically-levitated nanoparticles to develop solutions for critical problems in navigation and communication. The focus is on employing cutting-edge physics to develop sensors that are functional in a wide variety of situations.

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ATOMIC CLOCKS & TIMING

AFRL’s Quantum Sensing & Timing (QST) group looks into the development of advanced atomic clocks to further improve time measurements and investigates ways to use and distribute the precise time.

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TRAPPED IONS

AFRL’s trapped ion team investigates quantum mechanics and quantum information science with the long-term goal of constructing a quantum network made for processing and transmitting quantum information.

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QUANTUM ALGORITHMS

The AFRL Quantum Algorithms group explores the design and application of quantum algorithms across research topics such as quantum optimization, algorithms, and quantum machine learning. The team also utilizes noisy, intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) devices.

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INTEGRATED PHOTONICS AND PHOTON QUBITS

The mission of the AFRL’s Quantum Information Processing Group is to generate, manipulate/process, distribute and analyze quantum entanglement both locally and distributed over processing nodes in a quantum network consisting of photon-based and memory-based quantum bits.

READ MORE ›

SUPERCONDUCTING & HYBRID QUANTUM SYSTEMS

The superconducting and hybrid quantum systems team at Rome Labs seeks to develop novel superconducting architectures and cross-modality quantum interface hardware as building blocks for use in quantum networking nodes.

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STRATEGIC ATOMIC NAVIGATION DEVICES AND SYSTEMS (SANDS)

Archive Content | The SANDS program invested in Quantum Timing and Sensing components to improve the DoD’s Position, Navigation and Timing (PNT) warfighting capability.

READ MORE ›

Article link: https://afresearchlab.com/technology/quantum/

by 

• Shannon G. Taylor,
• Donald H. Kluemper,
• W. Matthew Bowler,
• Jonathon R. B. Halbesleben

July 10, 2019

Summary.   People who experience workplace rudeness report lower engagement, suffer more mental and physical health problems, and are more likely to burn out and quit their jobs. But while some research has indicated leaders take reports of bad behavior seriously, get the facts, and punish offenders, a new series of studies paints a much bleaker picture. First, researchers show that victims of rudeness were largely perceived by their manager as perpetrators of rude behavior. And the employees who were reported as being rude to others weren’t seen that way by their manager under two conditions: when they had a tight relationship with the boss or were high performers. Second, victims of rudeness were perceived as performing considerably worse by research participants than employees who hadn’t been mistreated, regardless of the employees’ actual performance. To address this, leaders must become more aware of their biases and how to prevent them from affecting their decision making.close

Bad behavior at work can have very real consequences. People who experience workplace rudeness, for example, report lower engagement, suffer more mental and physical healthproblems, and are more likely to burn out and quit their jobs. And nearly all of us are affected by rudeness and other types of workplace misbehavior, like interrupting and exclusion: Estimates suggest 98% of employees are on the receiving end over the course of a year.

Given bad behavior’s prevalence and impact, surely leaders take reports of it seriously, get the facts, and punish offenders, right? Some scholars have noted that, when information about misbehavior surfaces, savvy leaders know better than to blame the messenger. Unfortunately, our research paints a picture that is much bleaker.

We set out to investigate how people in positions of power view victims and perpetrators of workplace misbehavior. We first studied an organization that operates a chain of casual dining restaurants. We gave each employee a list of the names of every other employee who worked in their restaurant, and asked them to report who they were rude to and who was rude to them. We then asked managers to evaluate the behavior of each employee. Across the five restaurants we studied, 149 of the 169 employees (88%) and 13 of the 14 managers (93%) participated. Notably, those employees who reported being victims of rudeness were largely perceived by their managers as perpetrators of rude behavior. And the employees who were reported as being rude to others weren’t seen that way by their managers under two conditions: they had a tight relationship with the boss or were high performers.

To determine whether our findings applied outside of this organization, we enlisted the help of our undergraduate students. We asked them to recruit working adults from among their friends and family so that we could survey employees and managers from a wide variety of industries, organizations, and jobs. Employees reported in an online survey how frequently they experienced and engaged in rude behavior at work, and they provided the name and email address of their manager, who then rated the employee’s behavior in a separate online survey. We anonymized and tracked 372 leader-follower pairs from an assortment of professions, including office workers, mechanics, dental hygienists, plumbers, nurses, and many others. Sure enough, we found the same results. It seems leaders in all sorts of work settings fall prey to this bias when evaluating their employees’ behavior.

These two studies were telling, but they had an important limitation: Because employees who experience rudeness may also be rude themselves, as our earlier research has shown, bosses who blame victims might actually be evaluating these employees accurately. That is, these victims might also be perpetrators. If so, leaders’ evaluations might not be biased after all.

To rule out this possibility, we conducted two experiments to separate employees’ experiences of rudeness from their acts of rudeness. We recruited working professionals from our MBA courses and from online forums like LinkedIn. We instructed participants to imagine that they had been promoted into a management position and had been asked by their supervisor to assess their subordinates after observing them on the job over the past few weeks. We then presented participants with 10 fictitious employee profiles and asked them to conduct their assessments carefully. Some of the employees to be rated had experienced rudeness and had also behaved rudely. One such profile looked like this:

Chris has been with the organization almost 2 years and has a little more than 5 years of work experience. Chris appears to be a poor performer: sometimes late to work, doesn’t always work hard, not very knowledgeable on the job. Chris uses sarcasm that offends others, stares at others disapprovingly, and is cranky and short with coworkers. Coworkers sometimes avoid consulting with Chris when they would normally be expected to, make offensive jokes about Chris, and treat Chris as unimportant.

Other employees had been mistreated but had never mistreated others, like this one:

Alex has been with the company for about 2 years and has 6 years of work experience. Alex appears to be a very good performer at work: never tardy, puts forth a lot of effort, knowledgeable of core job tasks. You have not observed Alex making inappropriate comments toward coworkers, and Alex seems to be polite and courteous toward others when you’re around. However, coworkers sometimes intentionally “speak over” Alex, one was found reading Alex’s personal email, and others often roll their eyes at Alex.

We also included some profiles where the employee hadn’t been mistreated:

Taylor has 6 years of work experience and joined the company about 2 years ago. Taylor seems like an exceptional performer: arrives on schedule, works diligently, knowledgeable on the job. Taylor appears to address others in a professional manner at all times and does not give others hostile looks, stares, or sneers. Coworkers appear to be polite toward Taylor and treat Taylor with dignity and respect.

When we crunched the numbers, we found that participants perceived victims as having engaged in misbehavior. And by presenting participants with clear information that some employees did not behave rudely (like Alex), we were able to demonstrate that victims are blamed for their mistreatment even when they’ve done nothing wrong.

It gets worse: We also wanted to see if leaders’ bias toward victims extended to their assessments of the victims’ job performance, even when we provided concrete information about whether the employee was a high performer (like Alex) or a low performer (like Chris). It does: Victims of rudeness were perceived as performing considerably worse on the job than employees who hadn’t been mistreated, regardless of the employees’ actual performance. As performance ratings often have a substantial impact on compensation and promotion decisions, our results show that victims of workplace mistreatment can be adversely impacted in several other important ways, adding insult to injury.

So, how can leaders combat bias when evaluating employees? We recommend leaders receive training similar to that undergone by judges and arbitrators, who are taught to distinguish between relevant and irrelevant information. Homing in on job-relevant behaviors, whether during interviews or performance appraisals, can effectively reduce subjectivity and enhance decision accuracy. But because unrelated contextual and personal factors can influence the outcome — even among highly skilled judicial decision makers — training should also increase leaders’ awareness of the forces that may be influencing their decisions. Organizations might take a page from the Federal Judicial Center, which runs a program — as part of what is affectionately referred to as “baby judge school” — that does just that: It trains new judicial appointees to become more aware of their biases and prevent those biases from affecting their decision making.

Given the central role leaders play as decision makers in the workplace, it’s critical that they assess employee behavior fairly and accurately. To our dismay, our study discovered a tendency on the part of managers to blame employees for the mistreatment they experience. For those leaders responsible for evaluating others at work, we hope our research reminds you to be more judicious.

Article link: https://hbr.org/2019/07/why-people-get-away-with-being-rude-at-work?

• Shannon G. Taylor is an associate professor of management at the University of Central Florida. His research focuses on leadership and workplace mistreatment.
• DKDonald H. Kluemper is an associate professor in the department of managerial studies and co-director of the Institute for Leadership Excellence and Development at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He conducts research on personality, leadership, and workplace mistreatment.
• WBW. Matthew Bowler is an associate professor in the Spears School of Business at Oklahoma State University. His research interests include leadership, social networks, and employee performance.
• JHJonathon R. B. Halbesleben is the HealthSouth Chair of Health Care Management and Senior Associate Dean of the Culverhouse College of Commerce at the University of Alabama. His research focuses on employee stress and health

Tuesday, 12 April 2022, 1:00 PM EST

These webinars cover the topic of Market Research for VA Supply Chain Modernization. They are designed to create a dialogue between Industry and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The last in this webinar series:

Register Here

Stay involved • Engage in the dialogue. Make a difference!

Description:

The VA Market Research is designed to provide an overview of key areas that were assessed during the VA Supply Chain Management Assessment (SCMA). The objective of SCMA phase I was to assess and document the current state of VA SC. This does not mean SC has been properly defined, just notionally what VA has been referring to as the VA SC. The VA is working with outcomes for SCMA Phase I to identify and document the as-is state, summarize observations for improvements, and they are in the process of reviewing various documents included in the VA SCMA repository.

A high level overview of SCMA Phase I will be provided by key VA staff (Administrations and VA Central Offices) in each of these sessions. The information in the VA SCMA repository can be shared as part of the VA Market Research, Phase II (some exceptions may apply). 

Industry support is required to assure VA is conducting quality marketresearch to collect information from the industry partners with expertise in SC Management and to collect proven best practices, lessons learned, and various programmatic methodologies that can be applied to inform the VA Comprehensive SCM Strategy (quality data based business practices and targeted recommendations based on VA mission areas) along with path forward to assess the information received from industry.

Background – and updated information:

(for all official VA postings and documentation visit sam.gov)

The VA received numerous requests to clarify next steps and have extended the response dates for Industry Submissions. This is a follow up webinar to communicate next steps.

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) completed 5 Market Research (MR) sessions providing industry an overview of various areas that are being analyzed as part of the VA Supply Chain Management (SCM) Assessment. These MR sessions were very successful with over 250 potential industry partners attending each session. These sessions began on March 4^th and continued through March 31^st. Recordings of these sessions can be found on sam.gov: https://sam.gov/opp/2aff4a971b704ba28bf572221b143c25/view

Now that the MR sessions are completed, The VA is requesting feedback from potential Industry Partners related to modernizing and transforming the Supply Chain. As described in sam.gov, Industry’s feedback should address various aspects of the current marketplace conditions and provide areas that should be considered by VA as notional SCM solutions and approaches that will inform the development of a VA SCM Strategy which can be sustained over many years. As described in sam.gov, the VA has requested that industry inputs be in the form of (1) Targeted SCM Capabilities Presentations and/or (2) SCM White Paper(s). The VA is offering two options for participation to maximize industry input. See SAM.GOV for details.

The response due dates have been extended to the 18th of April, 2022. However, please check Sam.gov for all official VA information and documentation. This update is for informational purposes only for those receiving this email. The purpose of this webinar is for the VA to additionally communicate next steps. 

When: Apr 12, 2022 01:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

The goals of this discussion will be to allow leadership from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to share their strategy and vision for Supply Chain Modernization. Industry will have a chance to listen and pose recorded questions to Acquisition, Supply Chain and Program Offices. 

• The landscape of “Supply Chain Modernization” and the potential planned scope of the initiative; the problem to be solved and the complex opportunity that the VA is asking industry to address. This includes a review of all options in support of the VA mission and requirements.

• The VA leadership will discuss their acquisition approach and invite industry input and questions. The VA is considering a Statement of Objectives (SOO) vs. a Statement of Work (SOW).

• The VA desires to work with industry to provide for the best solutions and approaches to modernization. What does industry need to be able to offer their services?

• Topics for this Close Out Session will be covering how Industry will engage, set up follow on meetings and how the VA is moving forward on this modernization endeavor.

Moderated by: Joe Grace, Captain, USN (Retired), CEO, Grace and Associates

Opening Speakers Include: Michael D. Parrish, Dr. Angela Billups, Phil Christy, Greg McLean,

Webinar Speakers

Michael Parrish

Principal Executive Director for the Office of Acquisition, Logistics, and Construction (OALC). Head of Contracts.@Department of Veterans Affairs

Mr. Parrish has over 35 years of senior leadership experience in military, government, corporate, and non-profit organizations. After graduating in 1985 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering from the U.S. Military Academy, Mr. Parrish served for 14 years on active duty and 21 years in the in the U.S. Army Reserves where he held various leadership positions of increasing responsibility as an Army Aviator, serving as an Air Operations Officer during Desert Storm and culminating as a member of the Army Acquisition Corps. Mr. Parrish has been Chairman & CEO of several publicly traded companies and was founder and CEO for several start-ups. Mr. Parrish holds a Master’s Degree in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering from Stanford University and an MBA with honors from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Phillip Christy

Deputy Executive Director, Office of Acquisition, Logistics, and Construction (OALC) @Department of Veterans Affairs

Mr. Christy serves as an advisor to OALCs Principal Executive Director on acquisition, logistics, and construction issues. His responsibilities include the day to day operational management of OALCs three major organizational elements: the Office of Acquisition and Logistics, the Office of Procurement, Acquisition and Logistics and the Office of Construction and Facilities Management. Mr. Christy is a retired U.S. Army Medical Service Corps Officer, and he served in multiple senior acquisition, construction and logistics positions during his 20-year career. Mr. Christy is a native of Renton, Washington. He holds an Executive Juris Doctorate in Health Law from the Concord University of Law, a Master of Science in Health Care Administration from Central Michigan University, and a Bachelor of Arts in Spanish and Business from Washington State University.

Dr. Angela Billups

Executive Director, Office of Acquisition and Logistics@Department of Veterans Affairs

Dr. Angela Billups was appointed as the Executive Director, Office of Acquisition and Logistics at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) on November 26, 2018. As the Executive Director of one of the largest acquisition and logistics programs in the Federal government, Dr. Billups manages and oversees the development and implementation of policies and procedures for department-wide acquisition and logistics programs supporting all VA facilities and the VA Acquisition Academy in Frederick, Maryland. She is the primary advisor to the Chief Acquisition Officer and to the Secretary of Veterans Affairs for matters related to enterprise business strategies and acquisition management. Dr. Billups also serves as the VA Senior Procurement Executive and VA Suspension and Debarment Official. Dr. Billups is a seasoned acquisition professional with years of experience advising and assisting senior officials, government and industry, with the goal of helping them realize the acquisition life cycle.

Joe Grace, Captain USN (Retired)

President and CEO – Moderator for this series on Supply Chain Modernization @Grace and Associates, LLC.

Joe Grace, Captain, USN (Retired), is the President and CEO of Grace & Associates. Mr. Grace is a graduate of the United States Naval Academy, a former nuclear submarine officer, and earned his MBA from the University of New Orleans. During his active and reserve military career, he worked a variety of military assignments, including his final tour as the Chief Information Officer for Navy Medicine. Mr. Grace has worked for multiple companies and held many positions in industry. He is a serial entrepreneur, venture construction leader and long time business owner. He now works as a connector between industry and government, with an emphasis on Military Health and the Department of Veterans Affairs. His many roles include Moderator, Facilitator, a key trusted advisor to leadership and a mentor to industry and government. As an entrepreneur, Mr. Grace has started many technology-based companies and taken three public. Grace & Associates holds no government contracts

Gregory McLean

Special Projects eManager @Department of Veterans Affairs

Gregory “Greg” McLean Special Project Manager Reported to APS (on detail) in May 2020. Gregory McLean is Vice-Chancellor of the VA Acquisition Academy (VAAA) Program Management (PM) School, where he oversees the training of VA program managers. The Program Management curriculum is intended to ensure that VA has the most qualified program managers and includes competency assessment, classroom and online learning, coaching and mentoring, on-the-job qualification development, assignment-specific courses, training toward Federal Acquisition Certification in Program/Project Management (FAC-P/PM), and continuing education. Mr. McLean previously served as Director of Program Management Policy in the Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Policy and Planning. Mr. McLean has more than 22 years of industry and Government experience, including developing and implementing national training and certification programs for major and critical acquisition initiatives.

Please join us for this important discussion

12 April 2022, 1:00 PM EST.

Check SAM.GOV for information.

Apr 4, 2022,01:15pm EDT

The cybersecurity landscape constantly evolves. Hackers are always upping their game, so it’s essential for businesses—and especially tech leaders— to constantly monitor cybersecurity news and update their data protection systems. Knowing about the “next big thing” in cybersecurity—even if it’s only a potential threat—helps organizations prepare and protect their and their customers’ data.

Full cybersecurity awareness must cover both offense and defense. It’s essential for stakeholders to have an understanding of both new and emerging threats and the latest developments in defensive tools and strategies. Here, 15 industry experts from Forbes Technology Council discuss recent developments in industrial and business cybersecurity every organization’s leadership team should be aware of, and why they’re so important.

1. Encryption Key Management

Encryption key management is a persistent challenge. With the rapid rise of API key authentication, developers need to be diligent in taking care when it comes to where and how they store these keys. Attackers are continuously scouring code repositories, HTML source code, and mobile and desktop apps to uncover the API credentials needed to compromise applications and their data. – Chris Wysopal, Veracode

2. Blockchain Vulnerabilities

I think cryptocurrency and nonfungible token marketplaces are prime targets for cyber threats right now. Where the money goes, so will the bad actors. There is a misconception that blockchain-based technologies are inherently secure. They are not. Use the highest version of transport layer security, be careful what third parties you rely on, and hire security experts to help your business. – Caroline McCaffery, ClearOPS

3. Increased Vulnerability From Systems Integration

Security is critical in two respects: guarding internal secrets and safeguarding sensitive, personal customer data. As more of our systems become integrated with and reliant upon partners, the links between systems become weak points in our security chain. – Yona Shtern, Hapbee

4. Insider Threats

A good insider threat program can protect your company from hackers. Malicious insiders are most often motivated by financial gain. Those who steal trade secrets and intellectual property might be selling it to a foreign government or a competitor or moonlighting by using it to sell their own services on the side for some extra income. A disgruntled employee might attempt sabotage. – Ben Allen, Allen Forensics, Inc.

5. Data Localization And Data Sovereignty

Keeping up with the changing cybersecurity landscape is a never-ending struggle. One major issue that has not been addressed quite as strongly is data localization and data sovereignty. Businesses and leaders will need to be able to ensure that their data is not decrypted outside of specific, well-defined policy domains. Security features will need to be augmented with better data controls around where and when data is decrypted. – Ali Shaikh,Graphiant

6. Quantum Cryptography

Encryption is a cybersecurity measure that protects data through unique codes. Quantum cryptography, which applies quantum mechanics principles to data encryption and transmission, is the “next big thing” in cybersecurity. It prevents hackers from accessing and stealing sensitive data that’s been encrypted using current algorithms. Businesses and tech leaders should embrace quantum cryptography to protect their data, applications and more. – Vivian Lyon, Plaza Dynamics

7. Alternatives To Data Encryption

Encryption has been the “duct tape” for data and cybersecurity for a long time, making it the default answer. But encryption for data at rest is not a viable solution any longer. The more data-driven business becomes, the more encrypted data needs to be decrypted and accessed. This leaves data vulnerable. Look at other options, such as hashing and tokenization—especially for the cloud. – James Beecham, ALTR

8. Embedded Security And Risk Management Teams

Security and risk management teams should be working as embedded partners within product and engineering organizations, not simply reviewing and acting as gatekeepers after something has been built. Involving your security teams in product development and engineering processes will yield much better results with regard to the security posture of your products. – Travis Heinstrom, Goldman Sachs

9. Privacy By Design

Companies react to changes in privacy and security, but they should anticipate these changes as much as possible. Integrating privacy by design principles at the beginning of product development, rather than as a reaction to a breach lawsuit or new law, will put companies in a better place to minimize breach effects and attract customers. –Elena Elkina, Aleada Consulting

10. Mobile Device Management And Remote Team Training

With the remote work revolution in full swing, your team needs to be better prepared than ever before to detect and properly handle an array of phishing and ransomware attacks. Effective mobile device management protocols, secure remote internet access and strong awareness training will go a long way toward protecting against data breaches, which most commonly occur as a result of human error. – Rashad Nasir,ThinkCode

11. Vulnerabilities From Reliance On Open-Source Software

Whether directly or indirectly, your business relies on open-source software, and the supply chain for these dependencies is critically vulnerable. In the wake of global security events (such as the recent Log4j vulnerability), businesses everywhere are realizing their tool chains for software supply chain observability and security are lacking. This is an urgent and still rapidly growing problem. – Avi Press,Scarf

12. SaaS Security Risks

Software as a service security risks abound in many organizations. At best, companies have single sign-on and multifactor authentication in place, but the secure configuration of SaaS applications has been a blind spot for many security teams even though sensitive data is stored in these applications. The responsibility to configure them falls on the organizations that use them, not the SaaS providers, and I expect this to become a more prominent message in the near future. – Jerich Beason, Epiq

13. A Shift Away From On-Premises Security Solutions

Don’t bring an on-premises solution to a cloud fight! Attackers are agile and adaptive, and on-premises point solutions cannot keep up with the pace. Threat actors are taking advantage of simple things: unpatched and vulnerable systems, open ports and services, easy-to-guess passwords, and so on. The next big thing is not a new security feature; it’s how security services and products are delivered. –Etay Maor, Cato Networks

14. ‘Shadow Data’ Systems

Traditional data security solutions have focused on encryption and tokenization, but with the broad adoption of multicloud infrastructures, data protection has become more complicated. For example, lifting and shifting apps into the cloud results in “shadow data’’ systems that evade typical data scanning and controls. New approaches are needed to provide discovery and protection of cloud assets. – Rehan Jalil, Securiti.ai

15. Automated Data Protection

Successful cyberattacks are inevitable, so we must look beyond encryption to scalable automated data protection platforms that not only encrypt data but automatically fragment and scatter it across multiple separate storage locations. This way, the data can be automatically reassembled or “reconstituted” by authorized users and applications but is valueless to cybercriminals. – Greg Salvato,TouchPoint One

Article link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2022/04/04/15-tech-leaders-on-the-next-big-thing-in-cybersecurity/amp/

Jared Serbu

When the Defense Department created the new position of Chief Software Officer early last year, it was DoD’s first attempt to get a single official to ride herd over a vast enterprise that ranges from mainframes still running COBOL to DevSecOps pipelines to classified weapons systems, and everything in between.

For Jason Weiss, DoD’s first-ever CSO, there are at least a couple of big takeaways from having accepted that challenge: One is that there are a lot of pockets of the department where world-class software engineering is happening. Another is that what’s holding DoD back isn’t a lack of skill or dedication within its workforce, but rather, a lot of bureaucratic structures and habits that just aren’t compatible with modern software development.

Weiss, who will step down from his DoD job on Apr. 15 in order to return to the private sector, said he’s concluded there are two main factors that lead to successful software projects inside the department. Both have to do with leadership.

In cases where the military services have managed to implement modern software design practices, they’ve involved senior-ranking leaders who both “speak software,” and have the organizational savvy to maintain political support for what they’re up to.

“They understand the nuances of software and things like containerization and orchestration of containers, and they can bridge the gap between the engineer who’s actually doing the work as an individual contributor and the various oversight communities,” Weiss said in an interview for Federal News Network’s On DoD. “The second part is how suave that particular leader might be understanding that they need to create a groundswell of support, and fundamentally recognize when it’s time to compromise on something and add a little bit of overhead that might slow the process down in the name of moving things forward.”

But there are far too many programs that never even approach the point of compromising over small changes that lead to small delays.

Instead, they’re locked into acquisition mindsets that were originally designed for large hardware procurements: a list of requirements that must be met, and different colors of money for each phase of a system’s development.

Both of those concepts are terrible for software, which, unlike physical products, can be changed and updated in days or weeks.

“We have trouble reducing things into bite-sized tasks,” Weiss said. “We want to look at a set of requirements and say that all of these requirements need to be met, and as an organization, we’re not capable of effectively prioritizing them and recognizing that just because something has been deprioritized doesn’t mean that it’s not still a valid requirement. It just means that the warfighter has said, ‘Hey, I need this first and foremost, and I need this other thing second.’”

Congress has given DoD some room to experiment with using a single color of money for software development efforts. But lawmakers have only approved eight programs for what’s called the Software and Digital Technology Pilot Program; they declined DoD’s request to add several more in the 2022 appropriations bill.

Across the rest of the department, budgeteers, program managers and program executive officers still need to find ways to wedge software development into a funding system that was meant for carriers and tanks, with separate accounts for R&D, procurement and sustainment phases.

“When we look at the historical scaffolding that was put in place around the way the DoD procures systems, it was by and large hardware-centric, because you only want to create a keel on a ship once,” Weiss said. “But with software, it’s more like, ‘Oh gosh, that algorithm isn’t exactly what I need, I need to pivot that.’ That can be done in a two-week sprint. And I think that is fundamental to eliminating the color of money issue around software. And that conclusion was further codified with the ‘software is never done’ study from the Defense Innovation Board. Software is never done, so it never actually goes into sustainment.”

One of Weiss’s main tasks during his tenure as DoD CSO was to help develop what was originally supposed to be an update to the department’s cloud strategy, but was eventually renamed with a new moniker: the DoD Software Modernization Strategy.

Officials have said the new name reflects a realization that it needs to use cloud as a means to an end, rather than migrating systems just for the sake of migrating systems.

The new strategy makes a big deal out of the software factories that have started to permeate DoD, now 30 and counting, and aims to eventually reduce the policy barriers that are preventing the agile methodologies they’re using from just being the norm across the department.

Weiss said the quality of work he’s seen from those factories is top-notch.

“The ones I communicate with on a regular basis put out some amazing code — it’s state of the art, and it’ll rival anybody out there,” he said. “But I think it’s also important to recognize that in all of those cases, the industrial base plays a key role. This isn’t just government coders writing government code.”

In most cases, with the software factories — at least so far — contributions have tended to come from a lot of small businesses, with traditional Defense contractors playing a only supporting or coordinating role. Weiss said DoD will need to be careful about tailoring its relationships with vendors in ways that acknowledge that’s likely to continue to be the case, while also keeping the large prime contractors involved.

“With Platform One, there is no obvious prime contractor supporting it — it’s a large number of smaller vendors. And when they are onboarded, they’re actually paired with programmers from other organizations so that there is redundancy around that ecosystem,” Weiss said. “What’s important is understanding that we’re still going to need the hardware and the investments the large primes have made in highly-specialized labs, which justify their rates that they submit to the government. We still need that capability. So it’s going to be important for DoD and the industrial base to come together to find that correct balance between them, because we need both. It has to be a both-and conversation, not an either-or conversation.”

Weiss said another conclusion from his tenure is that his successors are going to need to have more authority in DoD’s organizational structure if they hope to make modern software practices more widespread.

He said Congress should seriously consider making the position a Senate-confirmed job, considering the amount of work that needs to be done to reform DoD’s practices.

“When you look at the amount of coordination that has to occur for something like a directive-type memorandum — and the time spent on that for something that’s relatively trivial — having an ‘honorable’ title to be able to go straight to a different organization and agree at that level is going to be vital,” he said. “I had very little influence in organizations outside of the DoD CIO, which is where my billet sat. That’s important, because the CIO can only give software a fractional bit of attention. They’re responsible for spectrum, they’re responsible for desktop services, they’re responsible for budget certification. That’s just the nature of the job.”

Article link: https://federalnewsnetwork-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/federalnewsnetwork.com/on-dod/2022/04/departing-dod-software-boss-says-success-or-failure-boils-down-to-leadership/?

SHANDS PICKETT APRIL 7, 2022

The venture capital model of investment is predicated on a high failure rate, justified by massive returns on a small number of successes. Yet prestigious, venture-capital-backed defense tech startups are failing more than even this model can tolerate. The overwhelming majority of defense tech startups are terminally stuck in the Valley of Death, and venture capital bets on defense tech startups aren’t paying off. Soon, the best venture capital firms will stop investing in the federal market, and the newly rebuilt bridges between Silicon Valley and DC will collapse.

There has been only one major initial public offering (IPO) in the defense market’s recent past — Palantir in 2020 — and that’s a hugely negative signal to venture capital firms about the value of the market. As the head of federal deployments at Scale, I’ve witnessed this dynamic from a front-row seat. Scale is an artificial intelligence startup with both market-leading commercial technologies and production-level federal government contracts. Unfortunately for the startup industry and the U.S. Department of Defense, that makes Scale the exception, not the rule.

While we can’t predict the future, asymmetric technology capabilities (especially those using machine learning) will certainly challenge our traditional defense advantages across domains. The defense community must treat innovation seriously to build the most contingency-ready defense industrial base possible. Katherine Boyle from Andreessen Horowitz neatly summarized the key issues in a tweet storm. She’s right — venture capital firms aren’t seeing the returns on investment to justify bets even on dual-use technologies in the public sector, let alone pure defense tech startups, and time is running out.

Because they are pre-IPO, defense tech startups don’t report their financials publicly. This makes it impossible to holistically assess the health of the defense tech startup ecosystem. But I speak with defense tech stakeholders every day — from founders and CEOs to business development managers and engineers. Though these are limited and anecdotal data points, I see that companies have four primary paths: become a Palantir, exit by acquisition, leave the public sector market, or languish as a zombie company. Let’s review each of these:

So far, there is only one Palantir, and Palantir’s success as a pathfinder launched a thousand defense tech ships. None of those newer entrants have gone public, although SpaceX and Dataminr are close. Palantir’s path to IPO was famously protracted, even for a company that promised to help the U.S. government mitigate intelligence failures in an exploding post-9/11 defense market. Despite those strong tailwinds, Palantir had to fight their own customers for years (including suing the Army) to win key public sector market segments and finally IPO.

What about an exit by acquisition? This can work for defense tech startups with a product that fills a specific gap in the portfolio of a much larger business. Successful exit by acquisition (usually dual-use, not pure defense tech companies) examples include Wickr (now AWS), Expanse (now Palo Alto Networks), and the public sector side of Hivemapper (now Palantir). While sometimes acceptable to venture capital firms depending on the deal terms, acquisitions are usually not an optimal outcome.

Relatedly, a company can leave the public sector market quietly to double down on commercial work. If you ask the CEOs of these businesses, they’ll say they’re still in the public sector — though they’ve dramatically reduced or even eliminated their federal teams. Many tech startups interested in the defense market win Small Business Innovation Research work via defense innovation framework entities like the Defense Innovation Unit, SOFWERX, or AFWERX and then issue excited press releases about entering the defense market. AFWERX alone awarded 1,436 pilot contracts in FY20. Pilot wins feel real to startups, and so they invest in building defense-specific teams and technologies. As their pilots move to conclusion, the reality sets in that pilots rarely transition to production-level contracts, and boards and investors apply pressure on the company’s executive team to cut their losses and focus on commercial work.

Then there is death by zombification. A company can simply just hang around until someone stops paying the web hosting fees. I don’t know exactly how many companies on the Dcode website are zombies, but I would bet the number is substantial. These are defense tech startups that are out of investment runway (i.e., they’re broke). I could name a few confirmed zombies here, but that would damage any chance they have of ever coming back to life. This is where most defense tech startups are headed, and that would be acceptable to venture capital firms if there were only more successes.

I concur with Josh Wolfe of Lux Capital that the problem is grave, but I disagree that we need “to get the big ‘primes’ — as the country’s leading defense contractors are known — out of the way.” America needs Lockheed Martin’s aircraft factories, Huntington Ingalls’ shipyards, and the other primes because national security requires many forms of resilience. As an example, Raytheon produces the Javelin used to great effect in Ukraine today. It’s also unlikely that venture capital firms will back a startup to produce critical but controversial technologies such as intercontinental ballistic missiles. However, large primes have trouble attracting the best talent. Few software engineers who graduate from top-tier computer science programs want to work for the large primes. Software engineers prefer startups, where they have access to the latest technology, can build or grow their own teams, and are able to gain valuable equity in the business.

Partnerships between the traditional primes and tech startups are vital and are the first of four key ways to reboot the Department of Defense’s approach to innovation. This is not a comprehensive set of recommendations, which would fill many pages, but it is a summary of the most important.

The four approaches needed to successfully reboot:

1. Incentivize and enforce the commercial item preference for software at the subcontract level.

Robust, high technology readiness-level commercial capabilities exist for nearly the full range of the Department of Defense’s technology requirements, from damage assessments to autonomy. These commercial technologies are not reaching the Department of Defense, since large defense primes traditionally operate those programs. Large primes should be rewarded for effectively integrating commercial technologies — and taking on the associated compliance challenges — in the contract award decision evaluation factors (per the Federal Acquisition Regulations part 15.304).

2. Protect contracting officers and program managers and reward them for taking smart risks.

We don’t need to wait for the findings of the Commission on Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution Reform to begin fixing this problem — we must introduce incentives and protections for contracting officials who are warranted with the stewardship of taxpayer dollars now. This is non-controversial, and Heidi Shyu, the undersecretary for research and engineering at the Defense Department, has publicly and repeatedly made this same point. Contracting officers and program managers are rarely rewarded for creative thinking in fostering a robust defense technology ecosystem — but they are certainly punished in the form of limited career trajectories if even a smart bet doesn’t pan out.

3. Streamline the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency facility clearance process. 

The Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency’s mission is vital to the nation. They are charged with overseeing the National Industrial Security Program to ensure that the defense industry properly safeguards the classified information in their possession while working for the U.S. government. Yet, the process to obtain a facility clearance — basically a security clearance for a company — to perform classified work undermines that mission: it makes our country less safe because the facility clearance process acts as a moat keeping out the companies who can bring best-in-class technologies to bear for defense. The facility clearance process can take years to complete depending on a startup’s organizational structure and investors, and it imposes onerous compliance and reporting burdens on very lean teams. The Department of Defense needs American innovation inside its classified networks and should find ways to bring non-traditional defense contractors into that ecosystem.

4. Pick defense tech startup production contract winners on a regular basis.

Through both the Federal Acquisition Regulations and mechanisms like Other Transaction Authorities, the U.S. government has the ability to award large production contracts to tech startups. Anduril recently won a $1 billion-ceiling counter-unmanned aerial systems contract with the U.S. Special Operations Command. This is an example of what right looks like — but a healthy defense tech startup ecosystem requires ten or more of these types of awards per fiscal year. Consistent, predictable, annually recurring revenue from the U.S. government helps give companies the solid financials they need to IPO.

Critical voices on the Hill, like Rep. Ken Calvert, understand that the defense tech ecosystem is failing. Rep. Calvert’s $100 million warfighter innovation fund is a critical step in rebooting that innovation ecosystem. Still, the Department of Defense needs to do more, and Congress should be a strategic investor and partner with the defense innovation sector.

Competition with China is not the only risk to U.S. national security. Unforeseeable threats will emerge as global dynamics evolve, and new technologies erode the gap between commercial solutions and national technical means. The Department of Defense needs America’s leading technologists on its side. It’s not a luxury or theater, but a necessity to maintain defense agility. Warfighters, analysts, and decision-makers require fielded, cutting-edge capabilities now. They don’t need one Palantir, they need 30 Palantirs working in partnership with them to shape the future of U.S. national security.

Article link: https://warontherocks.com/2022/04/reboot-the-defense-innovation-ecosystem/

Shands Pickett leads federal deployments for Scale AI, Inc. (a late-stage AI company and a top 3 global data startup worth $7.4 billion). Previously, he created and led the national security business development team for another startup, Premise Data Corp. He served on two theater deployments to Afghanistan as part of the U.S. Army Human Terrain System.

Image: DepositPhotos