The Daily Scoop Podcast

As they continue to investigate and resolve a growing caseload of hundreds of reports from current and former government officials about encounters with unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), personnel in the Pentagon’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) are also launching new projects and resources to declassify materials, promote transparency and enhance collection capabilities. The office’s new director Jon Kosloski detailed those and other updates during an off-camera press briefing at the Pentagon on Thursday, marking his first open engagement with reporters in this capacity since he assumed the role in August. Kosloski told reporters the office has has taken meaningful steps to improve data collection and retention, bolster sensor development, effectively triage UAP reports and reduce the stigma of reporting a UAP event. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Thursday that he hopes the Trump administration would maintain the agency’s AI Safety and Security Board, which was formed in April and includes corporate and civil society leaders focused on artificial intelligence. The board’s roster currently includes OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario , leading AI researcher Fei-Fei Li, and Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Arati Prabhakar, among many others. DHS and the board on Thursday released what the department is calling a groundbreaking new framework focused on technology and critical infrastructure. 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.

OpenAI is releasing an artificial intelligence infrastructure blueprint meant to highlight its vision for American AI, which the company argues will boost productivity and jumpstart advanced technology development. The release of the blueprint, which was viewed by FedScoop and was set to be presented in Washington on Wednesday, comes as the Biden administration continues to push for government support for data centers, artificial intelligence, and semiconductors. At the same time, the government’s approach to AI is still taking shape — and companies like OpenAI are using the opportunity to advocate for policies that would make way for infrastructure and energy projects that would benefit them. On the same day outgoing President Joe Biden met with President-elect Donald Trump to discuss the transition between them, a top White House cyber official made some recommendations for early cyber priorities for the incoming administration. In its first 100 days, the Trump administration should build a framework for minimum cybersecurity standards for critical infrastructure companies, establish cybersecurity grants for those in need and deepen international partnerships, said Anne Neuberger, Biden’s deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology. Neuberger offered those suggestions at an event Wednesday hosted by the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs in what she called the bipartisan tradition of cybersecurity, having received “the baton” from the prior administrations and passing it on in a world of threats heavily dominated by China, ransomware and artificial intelligence. 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.

Ann Lewis, the director of Technology Transformation Services and deputy commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service, is leaving the General Services Administration after almost two years. Lewis will leave the agency on Nov. 22, according to a Tuesday press release. Mukunda Penugonde, who currently serves as deputy director of TTS, will step in as acting director and deputy commissioner. Lewis was tapped by the Biden administration in December 2022 to serve at GSA after a lengthy career in the private sector. President-elect Donald Trump’s selection of Kristi Noem to lead the Department of Homeland Security may bode poorly for the agency’s cybersecurity grants to state and local governments, given her opposition to the program while serving as chief executive of her state. Trump will nominate the South Dakota governor to serve as secretary of DHS, numerous news outlets reported Tuesday. Her administration in 2022 called the combined $1 billion grant program “wasteful spending” by the federal government when her state was one of only two in the nation not to seek any funding from it. In 2023, South Dakota was the lone holdout. 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.

Soon after Robin Carnahan was appointed and confirmed as administrator of the General Services Administration, she made it one of her top priorities to “make the damn websites work.” By that, she meant it was GSA’s role as the federal government’s digital center of excellence to ensure that agencies were following through on the imperative to deliver moden digital services and experiences to the American public. Carnahan’s time as GSA administrator will soon come to an end with the shiting to another Trump administration come January. And with that, it begs the question: Are the damn websites any better? The Daily Scoop recently caught up with Administrator Carnahan at ACT-IAC’s Imagine Nation ELC conference in Hershey, Pennsylvania to ask her that, how GSA plans to sustain progress ahead of an administration change, what the biggest obstacles are impeding digital transformation, and much more. As Washington prepares for a new administration — and a potentially dramatic reduction of the federal workforce — a new survey shows that the public is more satisfied now with U.S. government services than it’s been in years. The American Customer Satisfaction Index study found that citizen satisfaction with federal government services ticked up 2.2% in 2024 to a score of 69. Over the last year, the Defense Department has reduced its civilian cyber vacancy rate to 16 percent, a decrease of 4.8 percent from last year, according to an official.Those efforts are part of the execution of the DOD’s cyber workforce strategy and implementation plan. In a global fight to attract and keep cyber professionals, the Pentagon was facing a shortfall of 24 percent, and it’s been looking to take bold action to change the tide. Officials have said the efforts undertaken since the strategy was unveiled in March 2023 and the implementation plan was released in August 2023, have been working, but more effort is needed. 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.

If President-elect Donald Trump follows through on his pledge to reinstate an executive order that eases the president’s ability to fire federal workers, the government’s ability to recruit top talent for tech, IT, cyber and artificial intelligence positions will be harmed, according to a senior Biden administration official. The 2020 executive order concerning the creation of Schedule F in the excepted service was issued just 13 days before the 2020 election and was overturned by an executive order from President Joe Biden to enshrine protections for the federal workforce in 2021. The Office of Personnel Management announced a final rule this April that aimed to reinforce protections and merit system principles for career civil servants. The Biden administration official told FedScoop that if current or prospective federal employees QUOTE “believe they’ll be constrained from offering their honest, informed professional input, and that they or their colleagues could be removed following a presidential transition based on their personal beliefs and not on their performance, this will reduce their desire to work for the government.” They added that “Attracting top talent, including the best tech talent, to serve the American people means respecting and protecting their expertise and service, not undermining it.”President-elect Trump has maintained that he will immediately reissue that 2020 executive order restoring the president’s authority to remove what he calls rogue bureaucrats, adding that it would be the first point of his plan to “dismantle the deep state.” 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 on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

Retired Navy Rear Adm. Timothy Gallaudet is one of multiple witnesses set to testify at a congressional hearing next week about government transparency concerns and reports of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) that could endanger U.S. national security. Two sources familiar with the plans, who requested anonymity to discuss the hearing before it’s held, told DefenseScoop on Wednesday that it will be led by Republicans on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee on Nov. 13. Without sharing more information about who is testifying and why the hearing is being hosted now, a spokesperson from that committee separately confirmed in an email that it is scheduled for next Wednesday. Cyber Subcommittee Chairwoman Nancy Mace and National Security Subcommittee Chairman Glenn Grothman will co-chair the hearing. They said the lawmakers hope to provide more information to the public “in the coming days.” The upcoming hearing will follow several that lawmakers have convened in recent years, which came largely in response to mounting public pressure and alerts raised by former defense officials about seemingly unexplainable objects increasingly threatening America’s military assets and personnel in the modern era. One of the officials DefenseScoop spoke to suggested that some of the topics that will be raised in this next meeting will likely include transparency issues associated with the Pentagon’s and Intelligence Community’s handling of UAP reports and ongoing investigations; calls for more congressional oversight of the executive branch on UAP; and examples of how such phenomena have presented challenges to flight safety in real-world military operations. 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 on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

An organization for Justice Department employees is asking leadership to step up protections for workers facing online threats, such as doxxing, especially as the U.S. election could make those issues worse. The DOJ Gender Equality Network, a gender equity and equality organization that represents nearly 2,000 employees and contractors at the department, sent a letter on Oct. 31 asking Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco and Assistant Attorney General Jolene Lauria to strengthen action on the threats. The letter states: “We make this request at a pivotal juncture: There has been an uptick in [doxxing] against government officials since January 6, 2021, and experts believe the election could exacerbate the problem exponentially. The time to act is now.” Credentialed U.S. military and national security officials are experimenting and engaging in multiple classified environments with Defense Llama — a powerful new large language model that Scale AI configured and fine-tuned over the last year from Meta’s Llama 3 LLM — to adopt generative AI for their distinctive missions, like combat planning and intelligence operations. Dan Tadross, Scale AI’s head of federal delivery and a Marine Corps reservist, briefed DefenseScoop on the making and envisioned impacts of this new custom-for-the-military model in an exclusive interview and technology demonstration on Monday. He explained that there are already some users from combatant commands and other military groups that are able to leverage the tool on certain networks. 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 on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

Days before a deadline for federal agencies to submit to the White House their updated zero-trust implementation plans, a coalition of government IT leaders released a guide intended to strengthen data security practices. The 42-page Federal Zero Trust Data Security Guide, spearheaded by the Federal Chief Data Officers and Federal Chief Information Security Officers councils, zeroes in on “securing the data itself, rather than the perimeter protecting it,” part of what a Thursday press release termed “a foundational pillar of effective” zero-trust implementation. By Nov. 7, federal agencies must provide their updated plans for zero-trust implementation to the Office of the National Cyber Director and the Office of Management and Budget. The Federal Acquisition Institute, a career development resource housed within the General Services Administration, recently released a credential focused on artificial intelligence prompt engineering. The credential is more evidence that federal interest in purchasing AI technology continues to grow. The tool is specifically designed to help government acquisition staff evaluate large language models, the type of technology built by OpenAI and Anthropic. 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 on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

Scoop News Group last week hosted its annual CyberTalks event at the Andrew Mellon Auditorium in Washington, D.C., featuring the top cybersecurity officials in the public sector space. Much of the conversation throughout the day focused on the progress the Biden-Harris administration has made in cybersecurity modernization, how the White House is looking to sustain that, and what comes next. Federal CIO Clare Martorana and acting Federal CISO Michael Duffy joined me for a pair of fireside chats at CyberTalks to discuss that and more. If you missed the event, you’re in luck, because today we’re revisiting those conversations in their entirety on the Daily Scoop Podcast. Meanwhile, it’s election day. And while that will bring to a close the pre-election period that was busy for foreign and domestic actors looking to undermine confidence in U.S. elections, the post-election period could be an even bumpier ride, according to some observers. As reported on CyberScoop, federal agencies, state and local election officials, and experts say they are preparing for a chaotic, disruptive and messy period between election day and inauguration where foreign nations, domestic political groups and other bad actors will attempt to take advantage of a deeply divided electorate during a uniquely vulnerable time in America’s electoral cycle. And, the federal government is continuing to invest in generative AI technology produced by OpenAI, with a handful of agencies like the Defense Department, the Department of the Treasury, NASA, and the National Gallery of Art recently inking deals to use the enterprise version of the firm’s ChatGPT platform. The increased activity comes as policymakers weigh potential concerns with the technology, while also trying to exploit its potential benefits. It also shows how OpenAI is developing as an early frontrunner in providing the government with generative AI technologies on both the defense and civilian sides. 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 on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

Host Billy Mitchell continues his conversation with Andrea Fletcher, Chief Digital Services Officer at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), discussing CMS’s approach to open-source technology and AI adoption. Fletcher highlights CMS’s pioneering open-source program office, the first of its kind in the federal government, which enhances cybersecurity and promotes collaborative, cost-effective development. She explains CMS’s partnership with the U.S. Digital Service (USDS) to address technology talent gaps, streamline processes, and navigate regulatory challenges. Fletcher also shares CMS’s strategy for AI, focusing on workforce upskilling, fraud detection, and policy innovation to improve healthcare accessibility across diverse provider needs, from small clinics to large healthcare organizations. 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 on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.