The Daily Scoop Podcast

When you talk about operations at the edge, the State Department is up there among federal agencies with largest forward-deployed mission sets. With more than 270 posts that diplomats work out of in foreign territories, the State Department has a massive footprint at the edge. And according to Gharun Lacy, State’s Deputy Assistant Secretary for Cyber & Technology Security, each of those posts comes with its own unique challenges in securing their digital operations. Earlier this month, I hosted Lacy for a fireside chat at the GDIT Emerge: Edge Forward event, during which we discussed how State is innovating at the edge to boost security of consulates and embassies, how the department incentivizes innovation, the adoption of emerging technologies at the edge, and much more. U.S. authorities unsealed indictments, seized financial accounts and made an arrest in the latest attempt to crack down on North Korean remote IT workers as part of a coordinated action that the Justice Department announced Monday. The workers obtained employment at more than 100 U.S. companies using stolen and fake identities, costing them millions in damages and losses. The crackdown also included the seizure of websites and searches of 29 known or suspected “laptop farms” across 16 states that hosted victim company-provided laptops used to deceive companies. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts and the DOJ’s National Security Division arrested Zhenxing “Danny” Wang of New Jersey on Monday pursuant to a five-count indictment of Wang and eight alleged co-conspirators, all Chinese and Taiwanese nationals. A second five-count indictment from the Northern District of Georgia charged four North Korean nationals. The Department of Homeland Security is canceling a $10 billion IT and software contract, a move that comes amid the Trump administration’s push to route all deals through the General Services Administration. In a posting Friday, DHS said the decision to scrap all existing IT value-added reseller deals under its FirstSource III contract aligns with recent executive orders and was made following “a thorough analysis of active contract awards and solicitations to assess mission-criticality and continued needs.” The cancellation also includes solicitations and evaluations of proposals submitted via a second category for software, per the posting, and no additional awards will be made. Also in this episode: Deloitte's Ed Van Buren and Google Public Sector's Amina Al Sherif join SNG host Wyatt Kash in a sponsored podcast discussion on why agentic AI is essential for agencies striving to scale operations, lower costs and enhance efficiency. This segment was sponsored by Deloitte. 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 Social Security Administration has moved on to its third chief information officer of the Trump administration, tapping yet another individual with Department of Government Efficiency affiliations. According to an update to CIO.gov, a federal page that features IT leaders in the government, Aram Moghaddassi has taken over as SSA’s top IT official after previously working at the agency in a different role. Moghaddassi, who has also worked at the Labor Department, was at one point given access to IT systems at United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, FedScoop previously reported. Per his LinkedIn profile, Moghaddassi previously worked for two Elon Musk-owned companies: the social media platform X and Neuralink. Moghaddassi is at least the third DOGE associate to be named CIO at SSA since President Donald Trump took office in January. By and large, people don’t seem to be trying to access technology created by DeepSeek — the Chinese AI firm that’s rattled leading U.S. AI companies and lawmakers — on government systems. But it has happened at least once at a federal civilian agency. Since January, there’s been one attempt to access DeepSeek at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a spokesperson for the agency confirmed to FedScoop. The USDA successfully prevented access to the technology and has blocked DeepSeek through Microsoft’s Defender for Cloud Application service since Jan. 28, the spokesperson added. DeepSeek is banned along with other public AI sites “based on risk levels that Microsoft provides in their Defender applications,” the person said. The agency did not say whether there were attempts to access the technology before the block was implemented. Lawmakers are increasingly concerned about DeepSeek, a China-based large language model developer that threatens the dominance of American AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic. In the view of many federal officials, the company’s technology raises serious security concerns. Last Wednesday, lawmakers proposed the No Adversarial Al Act, which would ban the use of DeepSeek on government devices, create a registry of foreign adversary AI systems and establish a method for these technologies to be delisted. 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 Defense Department’s Office of the Chief Information Officer has officially kicked off its effort to improve how the Pentagon manages cybersecurity risks with advanced automation and continuous monitoring capabilities. The DOD CIO published a request for information Wednesday on Sam.gov calling for industry’s input on emerging technologies, solutions and business practices that can support the department’s attempt to revamp the Risk Management Framework (RMF). The initiative largely seeks to replace the legacy framework with a multi-phased construct that will be demanding for cyber and acquisition professionals. Officials are hoping to speed up capability delivery to warfighters. The RFI states: “Although RMF enhances security through continuous monitoring and risk-based decision-making, it’s often seen as slow and cumbersome. To meet the urgent demands of modern cyber threats and accelerate innovation, the DoD is working to streamline the RMF process — aiming for greater efficiency without compromising on security.” Federal agencies would be barred from using artificial intelligence linked to the Chinese government under legislation introduced Wednesday by a bipartisan group of House and Senate lawmakers. The No Adversarial Al Act proposal from Reps. John Moolenaar, R-Mich., and Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., the chair and ranking member of the House Select Committee on China, respectively, is a companion to legislation from Sens. Rick Scott, R-Fla., and Gary Peters, D-Mich. The bill is the latest in a series of other congressional proposals focused on DeepSeek, a Chinese startup whose low-cost AI model has stirred panic in U.S. tech and AI companies. 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.

Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins attempted to assuage lawmakers’ concerns Tuesday over how the agency plans to deliver critical health tech services amid drastic cuts to its workforce. Appearing before the Senate Appropriations Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Subcommittee, Collins said the VA is full steam ahead on planned deployments of its oft-troubled electronic health record at additional facilities, and is also pushing forward on the rollout of its External Provider Scheduling tool. The VA said in February that it had dismissed 1,000 employees, while the Associated Press reported in March that it planned to cut 80,000 staffers. The Oracle EHR system, meanwhile — plagued by technical problems since its launch during the first Trump administration — is scheduled to be deployed at 13 medical facilities by 2026. A suite of Elastic products will be discounted for agencies by up to 60% under a new deal announced Tuesday by the General Services Administration. The agreement, part of the GSA’s OneGov strategy to modernize how the government purchases goods and services, will give agencies access to discounts of Elastic’s self-managed solution starting at 27.5%, climbing to higher savings based on governmentwide annual spending. Stephen Ehikian, GSA’s acting administrator, said in a press release that the pact “represents a significant step in our efforts to drive cost efficiencies and modernize IT infrastructure across the federal government.” Additionally, discounts start at 15% for FedRAMP Moderate cloud deployments via GovCloud, jumping to 32% at the top volume tier. The pricing options are locked in for orders made prior to Sept. 30, 2027. 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 CIA, like other agencines in the intelligence community, is exploring how AI can boost its mission on both the human and open-source intelligence domains. As head of the open source enterprise for the CIA’s Directorate of Digital Innovation, Kevin Carlson is helping usher in AI for the OSINT mission set. During a recent interview on the sidelines of the Special Competitive Studies Project’s AI+ Expo, Carlson shared the potential for AI in open-source intelligence, how the CIA is looking to operationalize AI, the impact of the technology on the CIA workforce, and much more. U.S. Cyber Command played a role in American military’s operation against Iranian nuclear facilities over the weekend, according to top Pentagon officials. Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters in a briefing at the Pentagon Sunday morning that, “The strike package was supported by U.S. Strategic Command, U.S. Transportation Command, U.S. Cyber Command, U.S. Space Command, U.S. Space Force and U.S. European command,” later thanking the cyber operators, among others, who made the mission possible. However, no further details about Cybercom’s efforts were disclosed. The command referred DefenseScoop to the Pentagon for comment, where a spokesperson said they had nothing further to provide at this time beyond the transcript from Sunday’s press conference. Although details about Cybercom’s assistance for Operation Midnight Hammer, the code name for the strikes, remain murky, experts — most of whom spoke to DefenseScoop on condition of anonymity — outlined a number of possibilities for how the organization may have contributed to the effort. As the Army seeks to continue its transformation effort to become more efficient, the department’s chief information officer is looking to streamline systems and processes. And no longer will “that’s the way it’s always been done” be an acceptable justification for maintaining the status quo. There have been directives from top levels of Army leadership to cut down on business systems and automate capabilities where possible. CIO Leonel Garciga said last week at an industry event that there’s a big push right now from the secretary and the chief of staff to question: “do we need all of these systems, why do we have them?” calling some of it really old. Unveiled at the end of April, the Army Transformation Initiative is a top-down effort to improve how the service operates by shrinking headquarters elements, becoming leaner, slashing programs that aren’t efficient and changing how money is spent. The goal is to cut obsolete programs and systems that don’t contribute to success on the modern battlefield. 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.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is looking to hire a company to help it mine through data sources including social media, international trade data, blockchain information, property records, and the dark web — the latest example of the agency looking to beef up the tools and platforms it uses in its enforcement operations. In a government procurement posting published late last month, ICE said it was interested in deploying a service that can continuously monitor a million people or entities of interest — and analyze trends for the purpose of “identifying potentially criminal and fraudulent behavior before crime and fraud can materialize,” among other goals. In a request for information for “Data Analytics” shared by ICE’s investigations and operations support office in suburban Dallas, the government component outlined a range of requirements that it might seek from a contractor, like staff support, data analytics, and access to proprietary data. As the General Services Administration looks to form direct relationships with IT manufacturers to bring better value to agencies through governmentwide deals under its OneGov strategy, it’s going to disrupt a staple of the federal IT acquisition ecosystem: value-added resellers. A significant portion of federal IT contracting traditionally goes through resellers that provide software services on behalf of original equipment manufacturers that often don’t have the experience navigating or selling to the federal government. Those resellers, like Carahsoft, CDW-G and Iron Bow, however, specialize in that and provide additional services like integration, customization and support for commercial IT products. Lawrence Hale, assistant commissioner of the Information Technology Category in GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service, said Wednesday during a webinar hosted by George Mason University’s Baroni Center for Government Contracting that what GSA is trying to do by working directly with the manufacturers is flip that relationship. In going straight to OEMs for IT contracts — as GSA has done now with several vendors like Microsoft, Google, Adobe and Salesforce under its OneGov strategy announced in April — resellers won’t be eliminated. Instead, they can still serve as authorized partners or subcontractors to those IT manufacturers, Hale explained, whereas the opposite is often true today. 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 Defense’s Office of the Chief Information Officer is considering reducing the number of Pentagon employees who have Microsoft 365 E5 licenses, as it works with the Trump administration to rein in federal spending. The DOD currently maintains more than 2 million Microsoft 365 E5 licenses across two separate programs — the Defense Enterprise Office Solution (DEOS) and the Enterprise Software Initiative (DOD ESI). Through the established contracts, Pentagon components can purchase software licenses for commercial Microsoft products, including Office 365 applications and other collaboration tools. But ongoing efforts spearheaded by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have prompted the Defense Department to review how many of those licenses it actually needs, Katie Arrington, who is performing the duties of Pentagon CIO, told DefenseScoop. Arrington said June 6 in an exclusive interview: “Our Microsoft 365 contract [is a] very big contract here in the Department of Defense. Does every individual in the Department of Defense need an [E5] license? Absolutely not.” With the department’s Deputy CIO for the Information Enterprise Bill Dunlap, Arrington has been working alongside her DOGE representative to review individual position descriptions and multi-level securities to determine what level of Microsoft 365 E5 license that person needs, she said. Other criteria being considered include user and mission requirements for office productivity software, as well as collaboration capabilities, a DOD CIO spokesperson told DefenseScoop. Ten congressional Democrats are demanding answers from Palantir about reports that it is aiding the IRS in building a searchable, governmentwide “mega-database” to house Americans’ sensitive information. In a letter sent Tuesday to Palantir CEO Alex Karp, the lawmakers argued that the creation of a database of that kind likely violates several federal laws, including the Privacy Act. The Democrats wrote: “The unprecedented possibility of a searchable, ‘mega-database’ of tax returns and other data that will potentially be shared with or accessed by other federal agencies is a surveillance nightmare that raises a host of legal concerns, not least that it will make it significantly easier for Donald Trump’s Administration to spy on and target his growing list of enemies and other Americans.” The letter, led by Senate Finance Committee ranking member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., follows New York Times reporting last month that detailed the expansion of Palantir’s federal government work under the Trump administration, noting that the data-mining giant has received $113 million since the president’s January inauguration plus another $795 million award from the Defense Department. According to the Times, Palantir has spoken to IRS and Social Security Administration representatives about buying its tech. The Democrats’ letter said Foundry — a Palantir data analysis and organization product — has been deployed at the departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services, as well as the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health. 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 has made massive strides in recent months to position itself as a leading provider of foundational AI to the federal government. In fact, just Monday, the company launched what it’s calling OpenAI for Government, a new initiative focused on bringing its most advanced AI tools to public servants across the United States. A key driver of that work has been Katrina Mulligan, the head of the company’s national security policy and partnerships, who joined the Daily Scoop from the sidelines of the Special Competitive Studies Project’s AI+Expo in Washignton, D.C. During the conversation, Mulligan shared details about new work OpenAI is exploring with the U.S. national labs as well as how the company is navigating the complex federal business landscape. The Department of the Interior is evaluating the use of artificial intelligence as a potential tool to alleviate the backlog of probate cases it manages in tribal communities, per comments from Secretary Doug Burgum and an agency spokesperson. An Interior spokeswoman told FedScoop: “AI technology is being explored to further streamline the probate workflow especially in the realm of data entry and the ability to search multiple databases to find individuals. This is an ongoing internal process.” Michael Boyce, the inaugural leader of the Department of Homeland Security’s AI Corps, has left the position and joined U.S. Digital Response, a nonprofit that works with government agencies on technical projects on a pro-bono basis. Boyce, who stepped down from DHS in April, said in an interview with FedScoop that he’ll be an AI lead and generative AI technologist in residence at USDR focused on helping state and local governments deploy artificial intelligence, drawing on lessons learned from his time at DHS. Boyce’s exit comes amid an exodus of tech talent throughout the Trump administration, which has focused on reducing the workforce and pivoting from the top priorities of the Biden administration. Also in this episode: Mia Jordan, Industry Advisor for Public Sector Transformation at Salesforce, joins SNG host Wyatt Kash in a sponsored podcast discussion about how unified platforms help agencies modernize constituent engagement. This segment was sponsored by Salesforce. 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.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is doubling down on its investment in blockchain intelligence technology, along with other investigative platforms. According to a notice of intent on a government procurement website, the Department of Homeland Security component aims to buy more technology from TRM Labs, which focuses on crypto risk management but also offers a bevy of forensics services for government clients. ICE this week also posted an intent to sole source similar technology from Chainalysis, which comes amid a series of planned purchases for other digital forensics tools. Both Chainalysis and TRM Labs have myriad contracts with federal agencies, including the FBI, the State Department, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Internal Revenue Service. In posting its intent to single source both TRM and Chainalysis technology, ICE is indicating there is no other provider that could reasonably provide the same services. Executives from high-tech firms Meta, OpenAI and Palantir are joining the Army Reserve at the rank of lieutenant colonel to serve in Detachment 201, a new “Executive Innovation Corps,” the service announced Friday. The move is the latest push by the department to tap into capabilities and know-how from Silicon Valley and the commercial sector. The new corps “brings top tech talent into the Army Reserve to bridge the commercial-military tech gap” and is “designed to fuse cutting-edge tech expertise with military innovation,” the Army stated in a press release. On Friday, the service is set to swear-in Meta’s chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth, OpenAI’s chief product officer Kevin Weil, Palantir’s CTO Shyam Sankar and Bob McGrew, an advisor at Thinking Machines Lab who was previously OpenAI’s chief research officer. 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.

After an informative 45-day trial run, the Department of the Navy is getting set to expand its rollout of emerging AI capabilities for sailors, Marines and civilians to speedily adopt in support of their daily operations — via its new DoN GPT tool. Jacob Glassman, who serves as senior technical advisor to the assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition, told DefenseScoop Thursday that this is a new way for the Navy to rapidly innovate and rapidly prototype. GenAI encompasses the field of still-maturing technologies that can process huge volumes of data and perform increasingly “intelligent” tasks — like recognizing speech or producing human-like media and code based on human prompts. These capabilities are pushing the boundaries of what existing tech can achieve. Still, according to Glassman, the Navy has historically “struggled with AI adoption.” Amazon has received federal authorizations that allow Anthropic’s Claude and Meta’s Llama AI models to be used within high-sensitivity government computing environments, the company’s cloud computing division announced Wednesday. The company has achieved FedRAMP “High” authorization as well as at the Defense Department’s Impact Levels 4 and 5 for use of the two foundation models in AWS GovCloud, its government cloud environment, according to a blog post by Liz Martin, Department of Defense director at Amazon Web Services. That means it’s met the security requirements needed for the AI models to be used with some of the government’s most sensitive civilian and military information, and per Martin, it’s the first cloud provider to receive that level of authorization for Claude and Llama. 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.