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Democrats’ midterm sweep puts CISA cuts, intelligence disputes under scrutiny

David DiMolfetta — Wed, 04 Nov 2026 13:56:00 -0500

House Democrats plan to investigate how the Trump administration’s cuts to the nation’s cyberdefense agency affected its ability to protect federal networks and help states secure elections, part of a broader inquiry into the Department of Homeland Security when the party takes control of Congress in January.

Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., who is in line to chair the House Homeland Security Committee following that takeover, said Democrats would examine the department’s use of its powers against Americans, its immigration enforcement practices and its dealings with contractors.

The party’s wins in both chambers mean Democrats will decide which officials to call before Congress and what records to seek, under subpoena authorities given to whichever party has the majority in a given chamber.

If a permanent director for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is nominated again, Senate Democrats will also have a say in who leads the agency. The same can be said for a nominee to lead the National Counterterrorism Center, whose previous leader resigned earlier this year.

“We will investigate the administration weaponizing DHS against Americans, its out of control immigration policies, and its blatantly corrupt self-dealing,” Thompson told Nextgov/FCW. “The American people expect nothing less, and we will deliver.”

The panel also plans to examine the department’s surveillance of Americans engaged in protected speech, its handling of whistleblowers and whether federal officials steered contracts to political allies. On cybersecurity, they want to know how DHS is preparing for attacks aided by artificial intelligence and what became of services the department scaled back.

What CISA lost in the cuts

Thompson and Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., who is positioned to chair the Homeland Security cyber subcommittee, have already asked Congress’ watchdog to assess the impact of staffing cuts at CISA, which helps defend civilian federal networks and other frequent hacker targets like water systems and telecom networks.

CISA lost roughly a third of its workforce after Trump retook office, though the agency has made efforts to refill its roster. By September, about 250 prospective hires had tentative offers and were waiting for clearances, acting Director Nick Andersen said, as part of an effort under DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin to recant some of the cuts made to the cyberdefense agency over the last two years.

Ramirez, in a June interview with Nextgov/FCW, said she was planning a significant DHS overhaul bill for next year. She also gave positive feedback on CISA’s rehiring plans, though she added it may not be enough.

In a post on X after the election, she had a message for Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, White House aide Stephen Miller and others involved in immigration enforcement: “Clear your schedule.”

In the Senate, the retirement of Michigan Democrat Gary Peters puts Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., next in seniority among Democrats on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Hassan and Peters have already asked DHS to preserve records belonging to former Secretary Kristi Noem and her adviser Corey Lewandowski.

Hassan has also pressed CISA on its own security practices after reports that a contractor left agency account information and passwords in a public database.

One issue facing both homeland security panels could come due before Democrats take over. A law protecting companies from lawsuits when they share information about cyber threats is operating under a temporary extension through Dec. 11. Without a longer renewal planted this year, the incoming chairs could inherit a fight over the legal protections companies rely on when communicating with the government about cyberattacks.

When intelligence findings conflict with the White House

Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., and Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., are in line to chair the intelligence committees in their respective chambers after two years of disputes over whether spy agencies can deliver findings that contradict the president without putting analysts’ jobs at risk.

One major dispute centered on Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan gang Trump said was carrying out an invasion at the direction of Nicolás Maduro’s government.

Most U.S. intelligence agencies assessed that Maduro was not directing the gang’s operations in the United States. Then-Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard subsequently fired the two leaders of the National Intelligence Council, which produced the assessment.

Warner also challenged Gabbard directly over Iran. At a Senate hearing in March, weeks after the U.S. and Israel went to war, he pressed her on a passage in her written testimony that she skipped in her opening remarks. It said Iran had made no effort to rebuild its uranium enrichment capability after U.S. strikes the previous June, a finding that bore on President Donald Trump’s claim that Iran posed an imminent threat.

A day earlier, Joe Kent, Trump’s director of the National Counterterrorism Center, had resigned over the war, saying he did not believe Iran posed such a threat.

Last June, after Trump said U.S. strikes had “obliterated” three Iranian nuclear sites, a preliminary Defense Intelligence Agency assessment suggested the attacks could have set the program back only a few months.

When Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fired DIA Director Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse that August without explanation, Warner pointed to the dispute in accusing the administration of “treating intelligence as a loyalty test.”

Himes has already signaled one investigation he wants to pursue. In September, he alerted an association representing intelligence contractors that lawmakers could seek records and testimony about donations to Trump’s White House ballroom. He wants to know who solicited the contributions and whether companies believed giving money would help them secure government work or access to senior officials.

At least a third of the Republicans on the House intelligence panel won’t return to Congress in January. Missouri Rep. Ann Wagner and Pennsylvania Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Scott Perry lost reelection Tuesday. New York Rep. Elise Stefanik didn’t seek another term, and Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw lost his primary.

Himes and Warner also face a decision about the government’s own surveillance powers should lawmakers leave it unresolved this year, namely Section 702 authorities under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Those authorities let spy agencies compel internet and telecom providers for contents of phone calls, emails and text messages of foreigners located abroad without a warrant, but, in doing so, agencies can also collect Americans’ data if they are communicating with a foreign target. The controversial program expired in June, though certain collection procedures can continue through this spring under court approvals issued in March.

Who oversees military cyber operations

Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., and Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., are positioned to lead the Armed Services committees, which help write the annual defense policy bill.

Smith told The Washington Post he wants to investigate military operations, politicization of the armed forces and possible corruption in defense contracting. Both lawmakers challenged the administration over the firing of Gen. Timothy Haugh, who led the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command.

Much of the detailed oversight of military hacking and network defense would fall to Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., if they move up from their current posts as ranking members. Khanna is the top Democrat on the House Armed Services cyber subcommittee, which also oversees Pentagon software purchases and AI programs.

Rosen is his counterpart on the Senate Armed Services cybersecurity subcommittee, where lawmakers have examined how the military recruits and trains its cyber forces. A major Defense Department Cyber Strategy was planned for release in September but has been sitting in limbo for sometime.

Khanna could also lead the House select committee on competition with China. That role would give him another avenue to scrutinize AI security. In October, he asked leading U.S. developers what they knew about Chinese efforts to obtain their code or use their models’ answers to train competing systems. He has also called for the U.S. and China to agree on when to shut down AI systems judged too dangerous to operate.

Morgan Adamski, a former executive director of U.S. Cyber Command and now PwC’s Cyber, Data & Tech Risk Platform Leader, said she will be watching how lawmakers approach CISA’s readiness and what federal agencies ask companies to report when they are hacked.

Hearings could give stakeholders a clearer picture of where federal defenses have fallen short, even if the rules they operate under stay the same.

“But greater oversight doesn't necessarily mean immediate legislative or regulatory change,” Adamski added. “The administration will continue to play a significant role in shaping federal priorities, so businesses should be prepared for continued policy uncertainty.”

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OpenAI hones public sector focus with new leadership hires

Frank Konkel — Wed, 04 Nov 2026 13:32:00 -0500

Fresh off a year in which more than 1 million federal employees gained access to its ChatGPT platform, OpenAI added several senior executives to its government team in October to further accelerate its momentum across the public sector.

OpenAI hired Yvette Cesario to be its new head of national security. Cesario formerly worked for Amazon Web Services, where she served as managing director for national security and was a founding member of AWS’ national security team, bringing cloud computing at scale to intelligence agencies. In her new role, Cesario will lead engagement with the intelligence community, which is increasingly looking to use generative AI in its mission space.

Peter Guerra will serve as OpenAI’s head of tech success. Guerra formerly worked as Oracle’s group vice president for data and AI for government, defense and intelligence, and was at Microsoft, Accenture and Booz Allen Hamilton prior to that. In Guerra’s new position, he’ll work to transition agencies from generative AI pilots to mission deployments.

Jamil Jaffer, who founded the National Security Institute and the AI & Innovation Institute at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, will take on the role of OpenAI’s head of global government cyber. Jaffer previously served as venture partner and strategic advisor at Paladin Capital Group, a defense technology-focused venture capital firm, and has held prior national security-focused roles in the House, Senate and the Justice Department’s national security division.

“OpenAI is focused on bringing advanced AI tools to public servants and helping them use the technology to serve the American people,” Katrina Mulligan, head of national security partnerships for OpenAI for Government, said in a statement. “Yvette, Peter and Jamil bring deep experience with the missions our government partners carry out every day.”

OpenAI also beefed up its policy communications team, hiring Megha Bhattacharya to serve as public sector lead. Prior to joining OpenAI, Bhattacharya served in the Biden-Harris Administration, including roles in the White House press office and in the State Department.

These hires coincided with OpenAI’s appointment of former U.S. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll to serve as senior counselor for national security modernization. Driscoll was hailed by President Trump as “a disruptor and a change agent” in 2024 before resigning Aug. 31.

“AI should give people more power over their lives and people should have a say in how it’s developed,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said. “The US has an extraordinary opportunity to work with other countries to spread the adoption of democratic AI and I’m excited to welcome Dan Driscoll to OpenAI to strengthen American leadership and help us do that.”

Major momentum for OpenAI

In August 2025, OpenAI was among the first companies to negotiate software discounts for government customers through the General Service Administration’s OneGov program, courting a new government market.

In September, OpenAI for Government announced a new multi-year agreement with GSA — dubbed OneGov 2.0 — offering federal agencies discounted, token-based pricing for its popular ChatGPT models. The new deal removed monthly platform fees and offered a 50% discount on token-based usage across those models beginning Oct. 1, one day after its original OneGov deal expired.

According to OpenAI for Government, the company onboarded 50 new government agencies during the months of September and October. During the same two-month span, OpenAI captured government contracts collectively valued at more than $550 million, according to GovTribe data. They include:

Treasury: $487 million potential value; $2.16 million obligated
Health and Human Services: $30.68 million potential value; $6.93 million obligated
Veterans Affairs: $34 million potential value; $4.20 million obligated
Labor: $875,000 potential value, fully obligated
Education: $1.42 million potential value; $711,000 obligated

In another summer milestone, the Pentagon unleashed a specialized version of OpenAI’s ChatGPT to troops and civilian defense users of the GenAI.mil platform. Through the platform, up to 3 million users have access to tools provided by Google, OpenAI and xAI.

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FedRAMP grants first ‘Class C’ certification to Perplexity

Grace Dille — Wed, 04 Nov 2026 13:11:00 -0500

FedRAMP has granted its first “Class C” certification to artificial intelligence company Perplexity, making it the first cloud service offering that is fully compliant with FedRAMP 20x’s new rules for moderate impact.

FedRAMP launched its 20x revamp effort in March 2025, and later released its consolidated rules in June 2026 that officially implemented many of the proposed changes piloted over the previous year.

The rules established the new “Class C” certification, which serves as the equivalent of FedRAMP’s old “moderate” level. The rules also introduced the FedRAMP 20x Class A certification, as well as Class B and Class D certification.

According to the FedRAMP Marketplace, there are currently seven Class A certifications, which serve as a new level to accelerate entry into the marketplace. There are 12 Class B certifications still in the 20x pilot phase, which serve as the equivalent of FedRAMP’s old “low” level. There are no Class D certifications yet.

In a Nov. 2 blog post, FedRAMP said the first Class C certification “marks the actual beginning of the race to expand the marketplace to enable federal agencies to work with many thousands of different cloud-based services that accelerate key agency operations to reduce the footprint of the information technology infrastructure that they directly manage.”

“It took a ton of work to get here, and a ton of collaboration with inspired stakeholders both government and industry-wide,” FedRAMP said. “Everything up until now has been development, piloting, training, preparing.”

In a blog post from Perplexity, the company said the new FedRAMP certification means federal agencies can search the live web and get cited answers within its certified environment.

It added that federal employees can also use Perplexity to summarize approved documents, draft briefing notes and outline policy updates.

Federal agencies can access Enterprise Pro for Government through the General Services Administration’s OneGov offer for $0.25 per agency through March 31, 2027. The offering provides agencies access to models developed by Perplexity and third-party model developers.

According to the company’s new FedRAMP certification, Perplexity’s Enterprise platform provides agency users with access to leading frontier AI models, “including OpenAI GPT, Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini, Perplexity Sonar and more.”

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What the midterm results mean for federal tech policy

Chris Teale, David DiMolfetta, Christian Robles, and Grace Dille — Wed, 04 Nov 2026 12:06:00 -0500

Major Democratic wins in the House and Senate on Tuesday are expected to shape how lawmakers will approach leading technology issues in the coming Congress.

Below, Nextgov/FCW and Route Fifty reporters break down the significant wins and what could be expected from Democrats in the coming year.

Notable wins and losses

Incumbent Republican Rep. Mike Lawler conceded to Cait Conley, a Democrat and former counterterrorism official running in New York’s 17th congressional district, according to The New York Times, though the Associated Press had not called the race as of Wednesday morning. Conley is a veteran who served as the director for counterterrorism on the National Security Council and an election security advisor at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

In an interview with Nextgov/FCW this summer, Conley expressed interest in a seat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over energy, telecommunications, technology and large portions of the nation’s critical infrastructure.

Rep. Kathy Castor, a key Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, won re-election in a redrawn competitive Florida seat, according to the Associated Press. She co-sponsored the Ratepayer Protection Act, bipartisan legislation meant to protect residents from higher energy costs that data center construction could drive. The bill passed the House in September and faces an unclear future in the Senate.

Not all former feds saw success Tuesday. Michael Masuda, a former engineer who worked in the State Department and the Democrat running in California’s 5th congressional district, lost his race against incumbent Republican Rep. Tom McClintock, according to the Associated Press.

Kristin Hook, a Democrat running in Texas’ 21st congressional district who formerly worked at the National Institutes of Health and the Government Accountability Office, lost her race against Republican Mark Teixeira, according to the Associated Press.

And Charles Borges, a Democrat running for a Maryland State Senate seat, lost his race against incumbent Jack Bailey, according to The New York Times. Borges is a former Social Security Administration chief data officer who filed a whistleblower complaint alleging a Department of Government Efficiency staffer copied Social Security numbers to a private cloud environment.

Cybersecurity, national intelligence and surveillance

Democrats’ midterm win in the House puts lawmakers who have questioned cuts to the federal cyber workforce and the Trump administration’s handling of U.S. spy agencies in a position to investigate both.

More broadly, with Democrats taking the Senate, they would gain a say in which of President Donald Trump’s picks to lead defense, intelligence and homeland security agencies get confirmed. While top cabinet nominees are filled for now, several dozen lower-level positions are still vacant, per data from The Washington Post and Partnership for Public Service.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the DHS agency that became the tip of the spear under Trump’s maximal deportation agenda and has received widespread backlash for a series of lethal incidents, will also receive significant oversight.

The second Trump administration has expanded ICE operations through AI-driven surveillance tools and private data brokers to track and profile individuals, prompting major concerns from lawmakers and civil liberties groups over misidentifications and digital tracking.

“We will investigate the administration weaponizing DHS against Americans, its out of control immigration policies, and its blatantly corrupt self-dealing,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson, who is poised to be the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee next year.

Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, won reelection Tuesday and has already put one group on notice. In September, he warned intelligence contractors that lawmakers were likely to investigate donations to Trump’s White House ballroom. Himes wants to know who solicited the money and whether companies believed a contribution would help them secure a government contract or gain access to senior officials.

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., who was also reelected, will chair the Senate Intelligence Committee and may lead various oversight missions. He has proposed changing who can serve as acting director of national intelligence, arguing that the White House should not be able to install a political appointee over experienced officials the Senate has already confirmed.

Both Himes, Warner and other Democrats who sit on their respective intelligence panels have expressed concerns about politicization of intelligence findings, which especially became a flashpoint after the Iran war started in late February.

A possible FITARA comeback

With Democrats regaining the majority in the House Committee on Oversight and Government reform, the scorecard established under the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act to grade the 24 largest federal agencies on their progress in modernizing IT may see a revival.

The House Oversight Committee traditionally held semiannual hearings to review the grades, compiled in collaboration with the Government Accountability Office.

However, the scorecard was discontinued in 2023 after Republicans took control of the committee. The late Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., FITARA’s author and then-ranking member of the committee, continued issuing his own scorecards and hosted roundtable discussions to review the results with agency chief information officers.

The last scorecard was released by Connolly in September 2024. Connolly died in May 2025.

Rep. James Walkinshaw, D-Va., who succeeded Connolly and previously spent over a decade working as his chief of staff, told Nextgov/FCW in June that the scorecard would likely resume if Democrats regained control of the House.

Walkinshaw also said Congress should modernize the grading scale to account for advances in artificial intelligence and cybersecurity threats.

“The question is obviously, ‘how do you develop those metrics in a way that’s objective?’ But I think that scorecard proved to be over time a good forcing mechanism to nudge agencies to modernize,” Walkinshaw said.

Walkinshaw won reelection in Virginia’s 11th District race on Tuesday.

AI companies face a new political landscape

The 2026 midterms marked a new milestone in the technology industry’s efforts to combat election misinformation, with major AI companies establishing dedicated “war rooms” to monitor their platforms for misuse.

OpenAI and Anthropic were among the companies preparing for potential AI-driven election interference, reflecting growing concerns about how generative AI could be used to spread misinformation and confuse voters.

The election also offered a test of whether artificial intelligence is becoming a more prominent political issue. AI policy has become a point of contention between lawmakers and technology companies, particularly as communities raise concerns about data center construction, electricity costs and the technology’s potential impact on jobs.

Several congressional races featured candidates who made AI regulation a central part of their platforms.

Democrat Abdul El-Sayed won the Senate race in Michigan and has called for a new Cabinet-level agency to oversee AI development and for a pause in AI frontier development.

In California’s 11th Congressional District, Democrat Scott Wiener similarly proposed the creation of a federal regulatory body to oversee AI safety and security. As of publication, Wiener’s race has not yet been called, but he is leading in current numbers.

Democrat Manny Rutinel, the congressman-elect in Colorado’s 8th District, campaigned on requiring independent safety reviews before major AI model releases.

According to polling released Tuesday from The Alliance for Secure AI and YouGov, 81% of voters said they support candidates who favor AI safeguards.

“AI has quickly become a top issue in this election, and will only become more salient as we approach the 2028 presidential election,” Alliance CEO Brendan Steinhauser said in a statement. “From here on out, every candidate from both parties will need to be an AI safety candidate if they want to win in 2028.”

According to an NBC News exit poll, 56% of voters said artificial intelligence and data centers were a “crucial or major factor” in their vote for Congress, and 44% said they were “a minor factor or not a factor” in their vote.

After the results poured in on Tuesday evening, Democrats pledged to focus on AI when they take over the majority in January.

Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Greg Casar, D-Texas, called for Democrats to make taking on AI a top priority. Casar said the results are “the early tremor of a much bigger AI earthquake upending American politics.”

In his victory speech on Tuesday, Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., said “the titans of Silicon Valley dig bunkers for themselves and warn that the artificial intelligence they’re creating risks human extinction.”

Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., said Big Tech executives will “need to plant new forests for all of the subpoenas we’ll be printing,” in a post on X.

“For all the unknowns we may face in our future, Americans made it clear tonight that the era of Trump’s unchecked corruption is officially over,” said Geordan Neinstein, co-founder of the “New. Digital. Now.” PAC and a former manager at the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee.

“I look forward to more transparency when CEOs testify in front of a Democratic Congress,” he added when asked about expected oversight of technology and AI topics.

Other federal policy shifts

Though votes are still being counted, the next Congress will likely face pressure to deliver on affordability and hold the Trump administration accountable, Amanda Renteria, CEO of civic tech nonprofit Code for America, told Nextgov/FCW.

She expects that means Congress will weigh solutions — such as clearer guidance and longer timelines — that would help states implement the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s Medicaid and SNAP changes, noting that state officials will face pressure to implement quickly redesigned IT systems for Medicaid, SNAP and other programs. She also expects Congress to develop artificial intelligence policy and hopes it will revisit bipartisan policies such as the Earned Income Tax Credit.

Democrats will likely scrutinize defense spending growth, reorienting technology funding and procurement priorities, advisory firm Clark Street Associates wrote in a blog post.

For example, Democrats may push for increased funding for energy research programs, including the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy, or ARPA-E. But other technology priorities, such as domestic refining and processing of critical minerals and reducing supply chain dependency on China, will likely remain bipartisan, the post said.

“Overall, the election changes the political map more than it changes the underlying defense technology requirements,” VJ Sahi, senior managing partner at Clark Street Associates, told Nextgov/FCW.

With Democrats soon taking over Congress, they have less of an incentive to work on appropriations bills with Republicans during the forthcoming lame duck session, Sahi added.

Voters reject data centers in local ballot initiatives

It was a bad election night for data centers, as opponents of their development were successful in virtually all 40 ballot measures across 10 states, according to preliminary results.

Voters in localities of various sizes in the Midwest, South, East and West largely voted to reject data centers being built in their jurisdictions, although some of those votes are advisory and therefore not binding on local elected officials.

Ohio communities saw the most ballot initiatives on data centers, mirroring a state level effort to vote on a constitutional amendment banning new data center construction, which could be on the ballot next year. Almost 20 towns, cities and counties in the state held votes on data centers, with some asking voters if they should ban the construction of the centers writ large, while others were asked about amending their zoning laws to allow them. In every race, data center opponents appear to have been victorious.

Data centers also suffered defeats in localities in California, Illinois, Kansas, Maine and New Jersey. More votes are expected next month in Arkansas and North Dakota.

“Voters across the country have emphatically rejected the push for AI data centers. In state after state and race after race, Big Tech has failed to deliver — and everyday Americans have won,” said Mitch Jones, deputy director of Food & Water Action, a nonprofit that pushes for clean water and food.

“Not only in Washington, but in state capitols and village halls across the country, newly elected leaders are poised to stand up to the unregulated, reckless buildout of hyperscale data centers wherever they are proposed,” added Jones.

So far, the only city where data centers have prevailed in the vote last night appears to be Harwood, North Dakota, where the secretary of state’s office said 75% of the 430 people that voted rejected an amendment to the city charter that would have required an independent review and public hearing before adopting large industrial projects, including data centers. That would have applied to future projects, not the controversial Applied Digital campus that has already been approved.

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Former banking executive named GSA acquisition lead

Christian Robles — Wed, 04 Nov 2026 10:44:00 -0500

Jennifer Hill — who joined the General Services Administration as an advisor to Administrator Edward Forst in February — has been named the Commissioner of the agency’s Federal Acquisition Service, GSA announced Wednesday morning.

Since joining GSA, she has worked with FAS leadership to improve government operations through procurement consolidation, streamlined processes and the strategic use of the federal government’s purchasing power, according to a press release.

“I’m excited to execute on the Administrator’s vision for GSA acquisition: buy smarter, move faster, and reduce fraud,” Hill said in the release.

Before entering government, Hill spent 30 years at many financial companies, including Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and Citi, according to her LinkedIn. Over the past 10 years, she has consulted for financial services companies in asset management, specialized lending, banking and brokerage, according to the release.

Laura Stanton had been serving as acting FAS commissioner since April, when the previous acquisition head, Josh Gruenbaum, left GSA. Stanton has been deputy FAS commissioner since April 2025, a position the agency confirmed she will return to.

GSA also announced Wednesday that Mark Weiss has been named the Commissioner of the Public Buildings Service. Weiss is an executive vice chairman at Cushman & Wakefield, a global real estate services firm, and has 42 years of experience in commercial real estate, the release said.

“We will continue to advance the Trump-Vance Administration’s objectives and maintain the integrity of the federal government’s real estate portfolio,” Weiss said in the release.

Editor's note: This article has been updated to include clarification on Laura Stanton's position from GSA.

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Trump’s federal workforce overhaul faces a new Congress after Democratic wins

Sean Michael Newhouse — Wed, 04 Nov 2026 00:00:55 -0500

Updated at 9:45 a.m. ET on Nov. 4.

Democrats will retake the House and Senate, several news outlets projected on Tuesday.

With control of Capitol Hill, Democrats are in a stronger position to push back on President Donald Trump’s federal workforce reforms that they’ve expressed opposition to, such as widespread cuts to agency headcounts and budgets, removing civil service protections from roughly 8,000 federal positions through the Schedule Policy/Career job classification as well as perform oversight over matters like the former Department of Government Efficiency cost-cutting initiative.

The oversight implications were already on display Tuesday night. Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, posted “LAWYER UP” on social media.

LAWYER UP.
— Congressman Robert Garcia (@RepRobertGarcia) November 4, 2026

Democrats flipped Senate seats in several states, including North Carolina, South Carolina and Ohio.

Government Executive previously identified several congressional races that have an outsized impact on feds, generally because they feature an incumbent lawmaker who is involved with the annual agency funding process or veterans’ issues. The Associated Press projects that:

Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia, the top Democrat on the Appropriations subcommittee that oversees military construction and the Veterans Affairs Department, has retained his seat.
Democrat James Talarico will represent Texas’ more than 130,000 federal employees in the Senate.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, the chair of the Appropriations Committee, is projected to lose her race.
Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, R-Iowa, Jen Kiggans, R-Va. and Derrick Van Orden, R-Wis. — all senior leaders on the Veterans' Affairs Committee — failed in their re-election bids.
Reps. Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio, and Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, are expected to win their re-elections. They are the top Democrats on the Appropriations subcommittees with jurisdiction over the Army Corps of Engineers/Energy Department and Homeland Security Department, respectively.

Democrat Zach Dembo, a former federal prosecutor who said he resigned due to the president’s “politicization” of the Justice Department, won his race to represent Kentucky’s 6th District.

This story has been updated with additional information.

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Election office reports failed attempts to hack its online services

David DiMolfetta — Tue, 03 Nov 2026 23:42:00 -0500

An election office reported that someone probed its online services for weaknesses and tried unsuccessfully to break in Tuesday, while hackers made multiple attempts to guess login credentials at an agency involved in elections, according to an election security report issued Tuesday night.

The findings from the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center offered a fuller picture of the cyber activity election officials have seen as Americans vote in the 2026 midterms.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said Monday it would not hold election security briefings with members of the media.

A state election office also recorded five spikes in traffic to a webpage voters use to find ballot drop boxes. The office saw unusual traffic around 11 a.m. EST and said it fell after officials added a CAPTCHA, a check designed to distinguish people from automated requests. The report did not say whether voters had trouble accessing the page.

At the agency that reported the login attempts, activity came from a single internet address. When the agency flagged it, several election offices said they had seen malicious traffic from the same address. None of the attempts succeeded, a person aware of the situation said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to communicate their knowledge.

The evening update also detailed how officials accommodated voters after the bomb threat that forced voting outdoors at a Toledo, Ohio, elementary school earlier Tuesday. A court allowed voters assigned to that polling place to cast provisional ballots until 9:15 p.m. local time.

In a mid-Atlantic state, three schools serving as polling places received threatening calls. Two calls involved shooting threats and one involved a bomb threat, according to the report.

As of 9:30 p.m. EST, the centers said they had received no reports of foreign influence operations.

In one southern state, texts gave voters incorrect polling hours. In a southeastern state, a video purported to show ballot boxes being moved outside a county courthouse. Officials said the objects in the video were backup batteries for voting machines.

“I am absolutely willing to accept those results,” President Donald Trump said in an interview with The New York Times Tuesday night, as results poured in showing major Democratic gains in House and Senate races. “We’ll work with the Democrats, and we’ll, you know, look forward to working with them. We’ll probably work something out,” he added.

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Election security center reports limited threats as voting glitches fuel fraud claims

David DiMolfetta — Tue, 03 Nov 2026 17:17:00 -0500

An organization that tracks election threats for state and local officials said Tuesday afternoon that it had seen limited threat activity during the midterms, though a handful of incidents that briefly disrupted voting and equipment problems in some states have fueled unfounded claims of fraud.

Most cases have been resolved quickly, the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center said in a 3 p.m. EST update.

“The midterm elections are a massive undertaking. Each cycle, some jurisdictions experience challenges and rely on layered safeguards to protect the accuracy of results,” said Geoff Hale, an election security visiting fellow at the Center for Democracy and Technology.

“This election cycle, the incidents we’re hearing reports of aren't significantly different than those in previous years. So far, we have not seen evidence of significant cyber incidents,” added Hale, who was also former associate director for election security and resilience at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

Physical threats and disruptions

In Toledo, Ohio, a bomb threat at Beverly Elementary School forced voters to leave the building around 10:30 a.m. Election workers brought machines outside so people could vote while police searched the school. Authorities cleared it around 12:15 p.m. At least four other schools in the area received threats, according to the center, though none were being used for voting.

Nextgov/FCW asked the FBI whether investigators had determined who was behind the bomb threats. CISA was also asked for an assessment of the day’s activity so far.

In Georgia’s Fulton County, some voters reported receiving texts saying their polling place had moved. It was unclear who sent the messages or how many people received them. The county said the texts hadn’t come from its office and directed voters to Georgia’s official polling-place lookup to check where to cast their ballots.

Tech issues and false information online

Headline-making ballot issues arose in New York’s Westchester County Tuesday morning. Across much of the county, scanners couldn’t read ballots because they hadn’t been updated after a change to a local race, the New York State Board of Elections said. Some scanners are back online as of this afternoon.

The issues in Westchester are real but “are getting picked up with a false, conspiratorial framing that suggests that the issues — and remedies — are an intentional effort to disenfranchise certain voters,” according to an analysis produced by the Center for an Informed Public.

By mid-afternoon, rumors about the Westchester glitches had circulated widely online and buried the state’s actual explanation, Quinn Raymond, co-founder of VoteShield, told Nextgov/FCW.

In Florida’s Broward County, a feature designed to check that each voter received the correct ballot instead held up voting when polls opened at 7 a.m. The problem was fixed by 7:20 a.m.

As of 1:30 p.m. EST, the ISAC said it had received no reports of foreign influence operations.

The election threat center also flagged unusual traffic at one election office, which reported more than 600 web requests a minute Tuesday. It was unclear what caused the spike or whether voters had trouble reaching the site. In a separate incident last week, an election office reported that a network of automated devices had flooded the webpage voters use to find ballot drop boxes.

So far, the most common false allegation is that Democrats were behind the disruptions, according to Carah Ong Whaley, executive director of Better Choices for Democracy, who shared an assessment with Nextgov/FCW.

Whaley also flagged a fabricated story claiming the FBI had found more than 20,000 fraudulent ballots marked for Democrats in a Houston storage facility. Lead Stories, a fact-checking website, traced the claim to a social media account that regularly posts satire.

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Commenters largely oppose 2030 Census overhaul, analysis finds

Christian Robles — Tue, 03 Nov 2026 16:15:00 -0500

Advocacy groups in the federal data, local government, public health and other spaces largely urged the Census Bureau to reject a sweeping overhaul of the 2030 Census in comments that were due yesterday.

The draft overhaul would eliminate questions about race, ethnicity and sexual orientation on short-form census documents and other questionnaires, if finalized. It would also no longer count undocumented immigrants and immigrants who are legally in the U.S. but are not lawful permanent residents toward the apportionment of the House of Representatives.

Of 126,120 published comments on Regulations.gov as of Tuesday morning, 112,178 — or 89% — oppose the draft rule, according to an analysis from pop-up consortium Hands Off Our Census. Most of the remaining comments supported the draft rule, although a small number — 577 — were categorized as neither.

The proposal to remove certain immigrants from population counts was the most frequently discussed topic in opposing comments. The next most discussed topics were apportionment and redistricting effects, the removal of race and ethnicity data and constitutional concerns, the analysis found.

The findings stem from an open-source tool that uses a large language model-based process, traditional statistical methods and human oversight to categorize draft comments, Chris Marcum, Federation of American Scientists senior federal data policy advisor, told Nextgov/FCW. Humans audited an initial model and a “second, more sophisticated” model, which was used when the first one struggled to categorize comments, he added.

Hands Off Our Census is a project of dataindex.us, FAS Data Policy Institute, American Statistical Association and dozens of other groups. The project circulated a comment template urging the Census Bureau to extend a comment period from Nov. 2 to Dec. 10, and to abandon provisions around excluding certain immigrants from counts and removing demographic questions.

Comments reveal why specific groups oppose the draft Census overhaul.

“Excluding immigrants from the decennial census count and eliminating race and ethnicity data would make it much more difficult to identify and address community needs,” Anthony Wright, executive director of nonprofit Families USA, said in a press release.

The release said that, if proposed changes are finalized, states could lose Medicaid funding because excluding immigrants from population counts could “artificially increase” a state’s calculated per capita income. Researchers and public health agencies would lose race and ethnicity data that helps measure inequities, target interventions and evaluate policies, it added.

The National League of Cities, United States Conference of Mayors and the International City/County Management Association called for the withdrawal of the rule in a joint comment letter.

The letter warns that proposed changes would harm local governments’ ability to manage services and alter federal funding local governments receive.

“Complete and holistic census data is critical for local leaders in helping make decisions about public safety, housing, transportation and other core services,” Clarence Anthony, CEO and executive director of the National League of Cities, said in a press release.

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My feed is full of robots. Someone should check on them.

Camille Tuutti — Tue, 03 Nov 2026 15:00:00 -0500

In one video, a headless robot sweeps up dust and waters a bonsai tree. It's Voxel, a robot butler from New York startup Tuesday Labs that’s expected to cost about $20,000. You can reserve one with a refundable $200 deposit, though the robot in the video is a prototype.

In another video, a robot front-flips off a car, kicks in another car’s door and elbow-drops its roof. It leaps off a shipping container, rolls and comes up with a roundhouse kick. Then it shields a seated woman from a man with a knife. It’s Chinese robotics company Unitree’s H2-X, the “Kung Fu Legend Guardian.” In a third video, human pilots control humanoid robots as they trade punches and grapple at Singapore’s first robot fighting tournament.

You can barely scroll in peace these days without running into a robot. Sometimes, they're ducks. At Nvidia's recent GTC conference in Berlin, CEO Jensen Huang shared the stage with four Microducks, 10-inch bipeds from Pollen Robotics. He asked them to sit, stand and take a nap. Three toppled over on command, and the fourth needed persuading. The same day as Huang’s keynote, Elon Musk told investors that Tesla’s Optimus humanoid had entered early production, with customer shipments planned for next year.

The videos in my feed come with fine print: Unitree says its video wasn’t sped up, but it hasn’t disclosed how much of the H2-X’s performance was autonomous. Tuesday Labs expects to substantially redesign Voxel's hardware before launching it.

Global humanoid robot shipments topped 22,000 in the first half of 2026, up nearly 300% from a year earlier, according to an August report by Counterpoint Research. Shanghai-based Agibot led with about 9,700 units, followed by Unitree. The five largest vendors accounted for 86% of shipments.

Money is a big reason robots are having their heyday. Investors put $11 billion into humanoid robotics startups through Oct. 6, over twice 2025’s record of $4.8 billion, according to Dealroom, which tracks startup investment. Chinese companies received 63% of the funding. Beijing has set a goal of over 10,000 humanoids in commercial use by the end of 2026.

Prices are falling, too, and the software is getting better at teaching a body to move. A Forbes analysis of IDC’s revenue and shipment estimates puts the average humanoid price at about $29,600 in the first half, down from roughly $37,000 a year earlier. Nvidia showed how software trained in the cloud and tested on one of its PCs could then run on the ducks.

But most of these robots still aren’t folding anyone’s laundry—some can’t even get through a demo.

In May, a video circulated of a Unitree robot that fell twice during a Michael Jackson routine and had to be dragged offstage. In June, at Computex in Taipei, a Qualcomm-powered humanoid walked onstage with a glass tray and collapsed face-first shortly afterward. Qualcomm said a “brief communication glitch” triggered a controlled shutdown and that the robot’s safety systems “worked as intended,” according to a statement to Creative Bloq. On Aug. 24, during the weightlifting final at the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing, a robot picked up its weight, struggled with it, dropped it and stumbled into the judges’ table.

Counterpoint found that over 60% of first-half shipments went to entertainment and performance, data production and research. Some are literally being bought to put on a show, which helps explain my feed. The weightlifter who crashed into the judges’ table has over 580,000 likes on a single Instagram post. We love a good success story, but we love a good faceplant even more.

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Binance says fake job interview helped North Korean hackers steal $6.3 billion in crypto

David DiMolfetta — Tue, 03 Nov 2026 13:41:00 -0500

A Binance software engineer who thought he was interviewing for a new job downloaded a coding assignment that gave hackers access to his work computer, the cryptocurrency exchange said Tuesday in a detailed account of how attackers stole a record $6.3 billion from its digital wallets last week.

The FBI attributed the Oct. 29 theft to North Korea over the weekend. The bureau has asked cryptocurrency firms to block transactions involving the stolen funds. The DPRK has denied involvement, South Korean news agency Yonhap reported Monday, citing state media.

Binance traced the campaign back to June, when a member of its team downloaded a tampered software installer while trying to set up an AI coding tool.

The company caught the intrusion, replaced the computer and changed the employee’s credentials. But by then, the intruders had learned who worked on the systems that manage Binance’s wallets.

In September, someone posing as a recruiter approached a different Binance engineer through a legitimate job site. The engineer sat for two interviews, including one with the supposed CEO. Near the end of that conversation, he was asked to download an assignment laced with malicious code that ran as he set it up on his work computer and escaped detection by Binance’s security software.

On Oct. 20, the hackers used that computer and an internal Binance AI tool to gain control of two wallet engineers’ computers. Nine days later, they used one engineer’s credentials on the other’s machine to reach the service that approves transfers. The moves allowed them to move funds without going through the exchange’s normal withdrawal process, the company said.

“In a world where quiet quitting exists, it should come as no surprise that employees are interviewing on company time,” said Tyler Reguly, the associate director of security R&D at cybersecurity company Fortra. “Organizations need to counter this with adequate controls in place. Particularly, controls around what can be downloaded and executed on a corporate laptop, as well as the permissions granted to the user.”

Binance said about $2.85 billion in stolen assets had been frozen or intercepted. Separately, the exchange said it would cover customer losses and had already replaced 98% of the affected assets as of Oct. 31.

“This should not have happened, and ⁠we apologise for the concern, disruption and uncertainty it caused our users, partners and the wider industry,” Binance said.

North Korean operatives have long posed as job seekers to pilfer funds for Pyongyang’s regime and weapons programs.

Earlier this year, the U.S. intelligence community assessed that Pyongyang has been able to net at least $1 billion annually in cryptocurrency heists and other financial crimes to fund its weapons development.

In a separate operation the FBI disrupted this fall, operatives used laptops stationed in the U.S. to make it appear they were working there. Such arrangements help them land remote jobs and collect paychecks from American companies while gaining access to their networks.

It’s expected the stolen assets will be used for broader money laundering activities.

“They have too much money for their trusted laundering venues to handle. So the money will flow to a wider network of services, like bridges, instant exchanges, and swappers due to a wider set of money launderers,” said Jonathan Levin, CEO and co-founder of blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis.

Crypto bridges let users move funds from one blockchain to another, while instant swap services let them trade one cryptocurrency for another. Hackers can use both to make stolen funds harder to trace.

“Our investigators are tracking novel automated laundering mechanisms using our new AI capabilities that match the attempted speed and sophistication of the launderers,” Levin added.

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Industry groups urge Congress to renew cyber threat-sharing law through defense authorization

David DiMolfetta — Mon, 02 Nov 2026 17:17:00 -0500

A coalition of 35 industry groups is urging Congress to use the annual defense policy bill to renew a law that gives companies legal protections when they share information about cyber threats with the federal government.

In a Nov. 1 letter to the leaders of the House and Senate Armed Services committees, the groups asked negotiators to keep a provision in the House bill that would extend the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015 through 2035. The law lapsed during last year’s record government shutdown and has since stayed in place through a series of spending bills. Its current extension expires Dec. 11.

The signers include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Business Software Alliance, American Bankers Association, Airlines for America, the American Public Power Association and the National Rural Water Association.

“In this environment, the speed and breadth with which defenders share information determines whether they keep pace with adversaries,” the groups wrote. “That speed depends on the legal certainty CISA 2015 provides.”

The key liability protections in the law are designed to shield firms from lawsuits and regulatory penalties when sharing threat information with federal partners like the FBI or National Security Agency. That data often includes personal or proprietary information tied to individuals and companies affected in cyber intrusions.

Industry groups have consistently warned lawmakers that allowing the measure to lapse would create legal risks for companies sharing breach data, leading to a drop in private sector threat disclosures.

On the first day of the shutdown last year, cybersecurity attorneys were already fielding calls from clients about whether their existing agreements still protected them.

Congress restored the law through January 2026, when it reopened the government in November 2025. Lawmakers extended it again in February of this year, this time through Sept. 30, then moved the deadline to December in a stopgap funding bill.

A sticking point in the Senate reauthorization process has been what else to put in a longer renewal. Sens. Gary Peters, D-Mich., and Mike Rounds, R-S.D., pushed for a 10-year extension during last year’s shutdown.

But Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Rand Paul, R-Ky., told Roll Call last month that he wanted a provision barring federal officials from pressuring social media companies to restrict speech. Paul — who has routinely pushed back on clean extensions of the law — said he and Peters had discussed the amendment several times without reaching an agreement.

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Data centers are the digital steel of the AI century. America can't stop building them.

Tom Suder — Mon, 02 Nov 2026 17:14:00 -0500

I grew up in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, a steel town that knows what losing an industry costs. When the mill closed, the jobs and the tax base went with it. Families watched storefronts empty and kids move away. Data centers sound far from the kitchen table. They are not. They are where artificial intelligence lives, and every advance below runs on one.

Start with science. The Department of Energy's Genesis Mission, launched in November 2025, connects DOE's 17 national laboratories and their supercomputers into one AI discovery platform, aiming to double the productivity of American science within a decade. The order behind it says America is "in a race for global technology dominance."

Then the taxpayer. Through ATARC, I hear firsthand how government officials are using AI to serve the American people. Our fraud working group brings oversight officials and industry together to stop improper payments in Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP and Social Security before the money goes out the door. At our October forum in Reston, inspectors general also focused on how AI and shared data can spot risks faster.

Then cancer, which touches nearly every family. In Sweden's MASAI trial of more than 105,000 women, AI-supported mammography found 29% more cancers than standard screening. Sybil, built at MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital, predicts lung cancer risk up to six years out from a single CT scan.

This is the space race of our time, and America is canceling launches. The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, citing Heatmap data, reports that at least $260 billion in planned U.S. data center investment has been canceled after local opposition this year, costing more than 2 million construction jobs, while China keeps building.

Loudoun County, Virginia, shows what is at stake. It is the world's largest data center market and has the nation's highest median household income. Its roughly 233 data center buildings generated $1.2 billion in property taxes in fiscal 2026 — 39% of the county budget — which has helped cut homeowners' rates. Replacing that revenue would take roughly 63 more cents on today's 80.5-cent rate. Just as Silicon Valley grew up around the chip, a data center ecosystem has grown up in Loudoun: electricians, construction crews, network and cybersecurity professionals, suppliers and a community college degree in data center operations.

Not every voice against this industry is a neighbor. In August, X reported roughly 200 accounts tied to a suspected Chinese bot farm pushing Americans to oppose data centers. Most opposition is homegrown, but Beijing knows what is at stake, and so should we.

So let me be blunt: local zoning is paramount. If a community does not want a data center next to its homes, it does not go there. Period. The race will be won by building where communities welcome the investment, not by steamrolling neighborhoods.

The administration's job is to make those projects possible, and the biggest barrier is power. Speed permitting for generation and transmission, clear the way for advanced nuclear and make the biggest users pay the full cost of their power so households never subsidize hyperscalers.

Which brings me home. The Wall Street Journal has reported on a $2 billion plan to turn Aliquippa's long-closed mill site into a power plant and AI data centers. For towns like mine, the bigger risk is another generation of empty mill sites.

Aliquippa's mills made the steel that built America's century. Data centers are the digital steel that will build the next one. Respect the neighbors. Power the grid. Keep making digital steel.

Tom Suder is the founder and president of the Advanced Technology Academic Research Center (ATARC), a GovExec company.

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Tech companies brace for AI-driven election misinformation

Grace Dille — Mon, 02 Nov 2026 16:29:00 -0500

As Americans head to the polls on Tuesday, major technology companies are taking action to ensure their artificial intelligence models provide accurate information about the midterm elections.

AI companies OpenAI and Anthropic have set up dedicated “war rooms” to monitor their platforms for misuse, according to exclusive reporting from Politico and Semafor.

OpenAI and Anthropic did not respond to requests for comment regarding the war rooms. An Anthropic spokesperson did point Nextgov/FCW to a blog post that said the company deploys “automated classifiers that are trained to detect election-related abuse” within Claude.

The war rooms are meant to provide users with reliable voting information and prevent the spread of misinformation, particularly through the generation of misleading AI-generated images.

Similarly, a Meta spokesperson pointed Nextgov/FCW to a company blog post noting that the social media company had activated its Election Operations Center in the week leading up to Election Day.

“Our Election Operations Center is a command center we have used for dozens of elections around the world in recent years,” Meta wrote. “It brings together subject matter experts from across the company … for real-time monitoring so that we can address potential abuse across our platforms.”

An Oct. 22 report from the Brennan Center found that, of six AI image generators analyzed, ChatGPT “significantly improved its protections against the creation of election disinformation” since May, while several other platforms remained willing to generate realistic fake election images.

For instance, when given a potentially harmful election prompt, ChatGPT will not create a realistic-looking image. The platform now returns a “cartoonish image” that would not be mistaken for a real photo.

The analysis looked at OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, Meta AI, Black Forest Labs’ Flux, Runway and SpaceXSI’s Grok.

“It is promising to hear that leading AI technology companies are working hard to ensure their platforms provide accurate information about our midterm elections and immediately detect and interrupt abuse attempts,” Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said in a statement to Nextgov/FCW.

“As more Americans turn to AI and social media for important information, our leading technology companies have a responsibility, which many of them acknowledged in 2024, to protect the integrity of our elections and support free, fair and secure midterms,” he added.

Warner and several of his Democratic colleagues wrote to leading technology companies last month urging them to ensure their platforms help protect the integrity of the midterm elections.

Among their requests, the lawmakers encouraged the companies to ensure their AI-generated content responds to election-related questions by only pulling from “highly authoritative sources,” rather than social media platforms.

In a statement to Nextgov/FCW, Microsoft said it is continuing to make improvements to Copilot as Election Day nears.

“Helping people find accurate, reliable election information has long been a priority for Microsoft,” a company spokesperson said. “We have made improvements to how Copilot responds to election-related questions, and we’re continuing to test and refine them with a focus on consistently delivering reliable information.”

The spokesperson also directed Nextgov/FCW to a company blog post that said “malicious deepfakes of candidates and election officials are disallowed on Microsoft platforms, and targeted individuals can report them directly.”

The company said it is also working to “point voters to accurate information directly from state and local election officials.”

Still, independent testing suggests that tech companies have more work to do. The Brennan Center found that, while ChatGPT improved its safeguards, Google’s Gemini and Meta AI became more willing to generate convincing fake election images, and the other tools showed little change.

Google did not respond to Nextgov/FCW’s request for comment, nor did Perplexity.

Editor's note: This article has been updated to include Anthropic's response.

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Medicare’s AI-assisted coverage review pilot hit early snags, documents show

Christian Robles — Mon, 02 Nov 2026 13:19:00 -0500

A federal program testing whether artificial intelligence and other technologies can help Medicare reduce wasteful spending ran into problems after a rushed start, according to Freedom of Information Act documents the Electronic Frontier Foundation released Tuesday.

Technology companies have used AI in six states to help human clinicians determine whether Medicare will cover select services since the beginning of the year, when CMS launched the program known as the WISeR model. Services undergoing AI-assisted coverage reviews have included skin substitutes and electrical nerve stimulator implants.

Hospital groups and members of Congress have criticized the initiative for delaying medical care for seniors and burdening medical providers with extra paperwork.

But the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services also raised concerns with the WISeR model, informing four of the program’s six vendors of issues earlier this year, per the newly released documents.

Three of the vendors — Genzeon Corporation, Virtix Health and Zyter — received requests for information from CMS outlining problems like reports of slow coverage determinations and questionable coverage denials. The fourth company — Innovaccer — received two requests for corrective action plans from CMS, which sought step-by-step plans to address issues, documents revealed.

“These newly released documents show that the WISeR rollout was rushed and rocky from the start, highlighting the dangers that arise when governments treat AI like a silver bullet for complex problems,” EFF wrote in a Tuesday blog post about the documents.

Following publication, a CMS spokesperson told Nextgov/FCW there are no active corrective action plans and that all participating technology companies are considered to be in compliance with WISeR model rules. CMS continues to monitor companies' performance and will release a more complete view of early WISeR model performance as part of a forthcoming six-month report, the spokesperson added.

Companies respond to CMS concerns

CMS sent Genzeon Corporation — the WISeR vendor for New Jersey — a Feb. 6 request for information citing a backlog of coverage determination cases as of Jan. 27 and the mistaken creation of duplicate unique tracking numbers for cases. The company implemented corrective actions to address the issues and had more fixes in progress, according to a Feb. 13 response letter.

Medical providers complained that Virtix Health — the WISeR vendor for Washington — issued slow Medicare coverage determinations, questionable denials and blank determination letters, according to a March 17 letter from CMS.

The company acknowledged the concerns but said “the majority of requests requiring clarification involved provider misunderstanding” of the WISeR model, according to a March 24 response letter to CMS. Virtix Health added that provider misunderstanding had “improved meaningfully over time” thanks in part to active “provider education efforts.”

Because of that provider education work, “63.7% of requests are affirmed during individual reviews, the affirmation rate increases to 84.3% after providers have the opportunity to resubmit with improved documentation,” the company told Nextgov/FCW.

CMS required Virtix Health to submit a corrective action plan because the company did not respond within the 72-hour turnaround time for approvals, NPR affiliate KUOW reported in June. Virtix Health received the corrective action plan on June 23, according to the company, and CMS has said the turnaround time issue has been corrected, the outlet reported.

That corrective action plan closed on Aug. 14 and, since the first quarter, Virtix Health has reduced the average turnaround time for prior authorization to 1.18 days and 1.17 for prepayment review, the company told Nextgov/FCW.

CMS told Zyter — the WISeR vendor for Arizona — in a Feb. 27 letter that it received reports that the company was not issuing timely determination letters and may have lacked adequate processes for escalating provider concerns.

Zyter attributed technical challenges to the “accelerated implementation timeframe and compressed onboarding timeline” for its participation in WISeR, according to a March 5 response letter. CMS launched the WISeR model less than six months after announcing it.

Zyter’s March 5 letter detailed actions the company took to address concerns along with additional plans.

Zyter “promptly addressed” early WISeR model implementation concerns alongside CMS, company CEO Sundar Subramanian told Nextgov/FCW.

Zyter’s provider portal “has been operating successfully for more than six months, with authorization determinations routinely processed within minutes or near real time, and timely issuance of determination letters to providers and beneficiaries,” Subramanian added.

Innovaccer — the WISeR vendor for Ohio — received a Jan. 7 request from CMS for a corrective action plan, alleging its early implementation of the pilot did not comply with program requirements, such as responding to providers electronically.

The company said in a Jan. 16 letter it was compliant with all program requirements except for the requirement that it maintain a secure electronic portal for coverage pre-approval submissions. The company added that it warned CMS it would not have that portal ready by WISeR’s launch through October and December 2025 letters.

Innovaccer received another corrective action plan request on Feb. 20 after CMS concluded it did not comply with the first plan the company submitted. In that second request, CMS said the provider portal Innovaccer promised to work on was not yet fully functional by a Feb. 5 deadline. The company maintained it complied with WISeR model requirements and requested a meeting with CMS, according to a Feb. 27 response letter.

Innovaccer’s provider portal is currently “fully live,” the company told STAT in September, though it did not say when it went live.

Genzeon Corporation and Innovaccer did not respond to requests for comment by publication.

The letters released Tuesday add to early WISeR model issues revealed by FOIA documents released by EFF in September.

“I HAVE HAD TO WATCH 3 PATIENTS CRY AT BEDSIDE FOR NOT HEARING BACK ON THEIR PRIOR AUTH FOR KYPHOPLASTY/VERTABRAL AUGMENTIATION [sic] PROCEDURE. THESE PATIENTS ARE IN DEEP PAIN,” one Ohio-based provider wrote in a March feedback survey released by EFF.

Following publication, the CMS spokesperson flagged another document EFF previously released — a March 30 weekly status report detailing coverage determination data. They explained that the data does not reflect technology companies' current performance and that the "non-affirmation" data not equate to coverage denials, which EFF suggested in a blog post.

Ongoing scrutiny

Lawmakers and hospital groups have continued to scrutinize the WISeR model.

The House Appropriations Committee advanced a bipartisan amendment that would suspend funding for the WISeR model and other pilots testing coverage determinations in traditional Medicare.

Amid the scrutiny, the Trump administration has not signaled it will end the WISeR model.

“There are a lot of things about WISeR that are not working,” Kimberly Brandt, CMS deputy administrator, acknowledged at a conference last month.

“I don't have an answer for you in terms of what's going to fix it,” Brandt said in response to a conference attendee.

But “there are a lot of things that [the CMS Innovation Center, which oversees the WISeR model, is] trying to fix on this, and especially because of the congressional scrutiny on this, they are committed to trying to get that right and get it better,” she continued.

Meanwhile, Senator Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., wrote in September that documents suggest CMS plans to expand the WISeR model to additional services, including oncology care and cardiac catheterization.

Chris Klomp — who was then a nominee for Health and Human Services Deputy Secretary — did not confirm CMS plans to expand the pilot in response to Warren’s question.

He did, however, say CMS is monitoring the pilot’s processing time, provider burden, beneficiary experience, access, clinical quality and savings in response to another senator’s question.

“Decision[s] about changes to the model would be based on such experiences and findings,” Klomp wrote.

Editor's note: This article has been updated to include comment from CMS and additional information about when Virtix Health received the corrective action plan request from the agency.

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US order to purge Acronis tied to years of scrutiny over Russian ties

David DiMolfetta — Mon, 02 Nov 2026 10:03:00 -0500

A U.S. government order posted last week that jettisons Acronis products from federal civilian systems was years in the making and focused largely on the firm’s development ties in Russia, two sources familiar with the matter told Nextgov/FCW.

The Swiss cybersecurity firm had been under the microscope since the first Trump administration, where officials had scrutinized it under Foreign Ownership, Control or Influence guidelines — or FOCI — according to a former U.S. official with knowledge of the matter.

On top of this, key areas of scrutiny included whether Russian developers remained involved in Acronis products’ codebases, and whether the company had adequately mitigated related supply chain risks, according to a former DHS official aware of the efforts.

Both former officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to communicate sensitive information about how Acronis has been examined across the Biden and Trump administrations. Neither said there was concrete evidence produced indicating Acronis offerings had backdoors communicating with Moscow.

The move highlights a contemporary case of bipartisan, multi-administration foreign ownership review, and it underscores how long it can take officials to firmly determine that products tethered to government systems pose a security threat before they are kicked out of the federal market.

FOCI reviews, in essence, are sweeping government checks on whether a foreign person or entity could influence a company in ways that create national security risks.

Under a Department of Homeland Security directive signed July 31 by Secretary Markwayne Mullin, federal civilian agencies have until January 27 of next year to completely eliminate all software from the Swiss-headquartered vendor. The directive followed a formal risk recommendation from the interagency Federal Acquisition Security Council, or FASC.

The final removal order was only publicly posted to the Federal Register this past week. Its existence was first reported by Politico.

It’s not entirely unusual for foreign ownership assessments to cross between presidential administrations, though the long timeline underscores the sometimes sluggish pace of federal supply chain security reviews: nearly a decade in this case. The reviews can leave targeted firms in limbo and slow their business activity while vetting occurs.

“The FASC keeps very tight control because of the damage it can do to companies and others. They take their job very seriously,” said the former DHS official, who added that they wished the council sometimes would work faster, referring to the Acronis scrutiny taking years.

The former DHS official also said Acronis could potentially face costly challenges contesting the scrutiny and may be less able to push back than a much larger company facing similar oversight. Other federal contractors that use Acronis could soon also find themselves removing company products from their systems.

But, unlike other recent initiatives, the move does not fully ban the company from operating in the American private sector. The U.S. government, for instance, banned federal agencies and contractors from using Russia-based Kaspersky products starting in 2017, but later expanded the restriction through federal acquisition rules and comprehensive commercial sales bans.

In recent years, Acronis products have been purchased for government use often through resellers rather than contracts awarded directly to the company, according to GovTribe, a federal market intelligence platform owned by Nextgov/FCW parent company GovExec.

Various defense and civilian services have used its products, including the Defense Information Systems Agency, Drug Enforcement Administration and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Acronis was last awarded a federal contract in 2016.

Founded in Singapore in 2003 and currently headquartered in Schaffhausen, Switzerland, Acronis offers data protection, backup, secure file sharing and recovery solutions.

The company historically relied heavily on engineering and R&D talent based in Moscow. To bypass strict Russian laws against foreign tech procurement, Acronis entered a licensing agreement with a legally distinct Russian entity called Acronis Infoprotection, which took the core Acronis codebase, modified it to meet Russian government encryption standards and resold the localized software to Kremlin ministries and state-owned enterprises.

But after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Acronis suspended operations in Russia, condemned the war, and migrated tech talent to Bulgaria, Singapore and Israel. In 2025, Swedish private equity firm EQT also acquired a majority stake in Acronis, and co-founder Serg Bell stepped down from executive management, leaving current CEO Prakash Panjwani and Chairman Warren Adelman at the helm.

Despite these shifts, federal scrutiny remained, and it culminated in the first-ever order under the Federal Acquisition Supply Chain Security Act last July, barring Acronis from intelligence community networks. Subsequent bans by the General Services Administration and Department of Defense followed before last week’s DHS order was posted.

Bell’s ties to Russian military-scientific initiatives have previously come under scrutiny from U.S. intelligence officials.

An Acronis spokesperson did not say whether the company would challenge the DHS directive.

“On May 15, 2025, EQT, a Sweden-based private investment firm acquired a majority controlling interest in the Acronis group companies,” the spokesperson said. “Over 75% of the shares are owned by western blue chip investors including CVC Capital Partners, Sprincoast Partners and BlackRock. EQT requested and received CFIUS approval to close the transaction,” added the spokesperson, referring to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which vets overseas transactions for national security risks.

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Nominations are open for the 2027 Fed100 awards

Jessie Bur — Mon, 02 Nov 2026 09:21:00 -0500

Nominations for the 2027 Federal 100 awards are open, and we want to hear from you about the people who have gone above and beyond in advancing government IT work.

This will be the 38th year of the Federal 100 awards, which honor individuals who have gone far beyond the letter of their job descriptions in the past year to achieve remarkable impacts for government agencies and the American people.

Those nominated for this award showcase a range of important work being done throughout the community, and there are always far more outstanding individuals than a list of 100 can accommodate.

But it all starts with you, our readers. If you know people you believe should be among the 2027 Federal 100, please make sure our judges know about them too. Not certain what it takes to make the Federal 100? Here are five points to remember:

Any individual in the federal IT community is eligible: career civil servants, political appointees, contractors, academics and members of Congress.
The awards are for individual accomplishments in the 2026 calendar year.
Winners go above and beyond, whatever their level or rank. A fancy job title is not required, and just doing one’s job well is not enough.
Impact matters. Tell us what a nominee did and what that work accomplished.
You can submit multiple nominations. Please do so early and often.

The deadline for submissions is Dec. 31 at 11:59 p.m. ET, but don't delay — get started on your nominations today!

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Tech bills of the week: Creating a Congressional Office of Technology; Enhancing data center transparency; and more

Edward Graham — Fri, 30 Oct 2026 17:57:00 -0400

Standing up a Congressional Office of Technology

House lawmakers introduced a bipartisan bill on Thursday to establish an independent Congressional Office of Technology that can provide the legislative branch with unbiased information about the impacts of emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence.

The legislation — introduced by Reps. Mark Takano, D-Calif., Sean Casten, D-Ill., Bill Foster, D-Ill., Don Beyer, D-Va., and Jay Obernolte, R-Calif. — would revise and upgrade what was once the congressional Office of Technology Assessment, which operated from 1974 to 1995.

“Congress cannot continue flying blind into the future. We must have an office of independent experts as we face important decisions to guide emerging technology,” Takano said in a statement. “Establishing the Congressional Office of Technology will enable Members of Congress to work with experts across disciplines, receive informed and unbiased feedback on legislation, and gain detailed understandings of the issues that will impact our nation. I am proud to lead this bipartisan legislation alongside my colleagues who share my commitment to independent scientific expertise.”

Requiring disclosures about data center development

Legislation introduced by Rep. Eugene Vindman, D-Va., on Thursday looks to enhance transparency around data center development by requiring involved companies to publicly disclose information on their ownership, resource consumption and the potential impact of the facilities on the surrounding communities.

The proposal would require that data center operators behind current and proposed facilities submit this information to the Energy Department’s Energy Information Administration for collection and reporting. Companies would have to report on questions about their expected energy and water usage, if they have signed non-disclosure agreements with government officials and whether their facilities are located “within 1,000 feet of a school, national park, hospital, or home.”

Operators who fail to disclose the required information or submit misleading or incomplete responses would be subjected to fines of as much as $1 million per day.

“As data centers continue to expand across Virginia, the public needs clear, reliable information on how they impact local communities, infrastructure, and household costs,” Vindman said in a statement. “My legislation will shine a light on this rapidly growing industry, hold companies accountable, and give Virginians the information they need to make informed decisions about data center development.”

Enhancing the cybersecurity of cloud environments

Rep. Rich McCormick, R-Ga., introduced a measure on Monday that calls for the National Institute of Standards and Technology to develop “new standards, methodologies, and recommendations” to help strengthen the cybersecurity of cloud-based infrastructure.

The proposal calls, in part, for upgrading FedRAMP “to align with new cloud security standards and strengthen cybersecurity disclosures for federal cloud providers.” The bill also encourages the use of artificial intelligence tools to detect unusual cyber activity within cloud environments and would establish a voluntary “Cloud Security Certification Program” through accredited testing labs.

“From our financial information and medical records to our national security and critical infrastructure, our most sensitive information is stored and accessed through cloud-based systems,” McCormick said in a statement. “Our adversaries, including China, are constantly looking for ways to exploit vulnerabilities, launch cyberattacks, and steal sensitive American information. We cannot afford to leave Americans exposed to these threats.”

Improving the nation’s emergency alert system

Rep. Kevin Mullin, D-Calif., introduced a measure on Thursday that looks to enhance the nation’s emergency alert system by directing the Federal Communications Commission to craft “metrics, goals, and minimum requirements” for wireless emergency alerts.

The required performance metrics include tracking speed, coverage and geographic targeting of issued alerts. The FCC would also be directed to assess the use of enhanced capabilities including “more precise geotargeting, longer alert messages, multilingual alerts, and device compatibility,” as well as require that wireless providers better label emergency alerts.

Mullin said he introduced the legislation “because the federal government needs to improve the Wireless Emergency Alert system so that communities can trust they’ll receive timely and accurate information when they need it most.”

Combatting human traffickers’ use of AI

Rep. James Gallagher, R-Calif., rolled out legislation on Thursday that directs the State Department to evaluate “whether its Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons has access to the specialized technical expertise necessary to identify and respond to these evolving threats.”

The proposal comes after officials have raised concerns about the role artificial intelligence can play in driving human trafficking, including in a 2025 State report that warned that emerging technologies can be used to automate and expand victim grooming.

“Human traffickers are using new technology to prey on innocent children, and we cannot allow the federal government to fall behind,” Gallagher said in a statement, adding that “we need to make sure the people responsible for combating trafficking have the expertise necessary to recognize these threats and help stop them.”

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VA professional association asks Congress ‘to pause further deployments’ of new EHR

Edward Graham — Fri, 30 Oct 2026 17:24:00 -0400

A leading association representing physicians and dentists across the Department of Veterans Affairs’ network of almost 170 medical facilities is calling on lawmakers to halt additional rollouts of the agency’s new Oracle Health electronic health record system until independent evaluations of the software can be conducted.

In an Oct. 12-dated letter, the National Association of Veteran Affairs Physicians and Dentists asked Congress “to pause further deployments of the Oracle electronic health record (EHR) while protecting funding for patient care and safety at the sites already converted, and to allow deployments to resume only when VA has demonstrated that the system can support safe, reliable care.”

The request from the professional association — which says it represents the interests of approximately 20,000 physicians and dentists — was sent to the chairs and ranking members of the House and the Senate Veterans’ Affairs, Appropriations, Oversight and Government Reform and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs panels.

Nineteen VA medical sites now use the new EHR system, with the agency completing its most recent go-lives at two facilities in Ohio and Alaska on Saturday. The modernization project is part of a broader federal push to deploy a single interoperable federal EHR system across agencies like the Defense Department, Coast Guard and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, although VA’s component of the initiative has been slowed by roadblocks.

After facing a host of technical and usability challenges, cost overruns and patient safety concerns since the first modernized software rollout in 2020, VA paused most deployments of the Oracle Health EHR system in April 2023 to address the numerous issues plaguing the modernization project.

The Biden administration announced plans in December 2024 to resume deployments of the new software at four Michigan-based VA medical facilities in 2026. VA Secretary Doug Collins subsequently raised the total number of site rollouts this year to 13.

The missive, which NAVAPD disclosed on Thursday, comes on the heels of increased lawmaker scrutiny about the cost and future of VA’s massive modernization project, even as the agency has touted its successful resumption of EHR deployments.

VA initially signed a $10 billion contract with Cerner in May 2018 to modernize its legacy health record system, known as the Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture, or VistA. Cerner was subsequently acquired by Oracle in 2022 and rebranded as Oracle Health.

The agency and Oracle moved last month, however, to extend their contract to include an additional $17 billion ceiling and three one-year option periods — a move that reportedly surprised lawmakers from both parties.

Following a contentious House Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearing on the EHR modernization project last month, Democrat and Republican lawmakers voted 19-0 to subpoena both Oracle Chairman and Co-founder Larry Ellison and Oracle CEO Mike Sicilia to appear before the panel to further discuss the EHR modernization project’s cost and status.

As part of the fiscal year 2027 VA budget measure, NAVAPD asked top lawmakers to only allow EHR deployments to continue after VA “has completed an independent patient-safety assessment at the converted sites, corrected the critical deficiencies that assessment identifies, and documented each site's readiness with meaningful input from frontline physicians, dentists, and nurses, and reported the results to the Committees.”

The association also called for the committees to require that VA report and publicly disclose any documented patient safety events at the medical facilities using the new Oracle Health EHR software.

In addition to this future reporting requirement, NAVAPD also asked the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee to obtain patient safety incident data from Oracle “when its executives appear under subpoena.”

A spokesperson for Rep. Mike Bost, R-Ill., who chairs the House committee, told Nextgov/FCW that the panel “has and will continue to have oversight of the VA electronic health records deployment and program to ensure it delivers modern healthcare for veteran patients and VA providers nationwide,” and noted that “as part of that oversight, the Committee intends to hear from the CEO of Oracle on November 19th in an open hearing on progress made, as well as the look ahead going forward.”

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Democrats press OpenAI over safety researcher firings, security incidents

Grace Dille — Fri, 30 Oct 2026 16:01:00 -0400

A group of 20 House Democrats is pressing OpenAI CEO Sam Altman for answers about the company’s dismissal of three safety researchers, questioning whether the firings could discourage employees from raising concerns about AI safety risks.

In an Oct. 29 letter, led by Rep. Greg Casar, D-Texas, the lawmakers said their concerns come as the company continues to experience “a slew of cybersecurity incidents.”

“We demand that you commit to not firing whistleblowers sharing information related to the safety of your models and that you keep your current pause on your most capable models in place until independent third-party oversight is in place,” they wrote.

According to the lawmakers, the researchers were dismissed after OpenAI examined their personal phones and found disappearing messages enabled on the Signal app in conversations with an outside researcher. The company reportedly fired the researchers for violating “clear policies for handling sensitive information.”

The researchers dispute this account, saying they never shared any confidential information with outside parties.

“These firings raise concerns about how whistleblowers are treated inside OpenAI and how much OpenAI employees can engage with external parties, including when those external parties are conducting independent investigations of the company’s practices,” the lawmakers wrote.

The lawmakers want to know what information the three fired employees shared and why the sharing of that information was a fireable offense. They also want to know if OpenAI has fired other employees for expressing concerns over the safety of their models.

The letter also connected the dismissals to other cybersecurity incidents, pointing to the recent Hugging Face incident in which OpenAI agents escaped their testing sandboxes during a cybersecurity evaluation.

Months before the Hugging Face breach, the lawmakers said two OpenAI employees warned executives that the company’s latest models “were not being appropriately monitored during testing, and executives responded that the tests needed to move forward as quickly as possible to release the models on time.”

The lawmakers questioned why OpenAI continued developing the models despite those warnings. They want to know what additional steps the company plans to take following the Hugging Face incident to ensure similar cybersecurity incidents do not occur.

The group of Democrats also pressed Altman for a list of all of the security incidents the company is investigating. They also want to know if OpenAI can stop its models when they take unauthorized actions.

The letter calls for a response to their questions by Nov. 13.

Casar and other lawmakers have previously pressed OpenAI for information about its security practices. In August, Casar led a separate congressional inquiry into the company’s Hugging Face incident, seeking details about how its AI agents bypassed security restrictions.

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FBI links $6.3 billion Binance hack to North Korea

David DiMolfetta — Fri, 30 Oct 2026 12:34:00 -0400

The FBI and federal partners over the weekend attributed a $6.3 billion theft from cryptocurrency exchange Binance to North Korea.

“The FBI is aware of the incident and is engaged with relevant public and private partners to understand the scope of the activity, evaluate potential impacts and coordinate appropriate investigative steps,” the bureau told Nextgov/FCW Friday.

The bureau released an assessment on Saturday and provided a list of addresses that are holding or have held assets from the theft.

Blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs estimated that hackers transferred $6.36 billion out of Binance’s digital wallets Thursday, most of it in about 20 minutes. The company described it as the largest cryptocurrency theft on record, more than four times the $1.5 billion taken from rival exchange Bybit in February 2025.

TRM attributed the attack with high confidence to TraderTraitor, the North Korean hackers the bureau previously blamed for the Bybit theft.

The FBI made the same assessment, adding that it’s expected the stolen assets will be used for other money laundering activities.

About $3.24 billion remains in addresses linked to the hack, mostly in Ethereum and Bitcoin, according to Tom Robinson, the chief scientist and co-founder of blockchain analysis firm Elliptic.

“The funds that have not moved are very likely still held by North Korea. Those being laundered may already be with Chinese money laundering networks, which North Korea has used before,” he said Monday.

Binance allows customers to buy, sell and hold digital currencies. The attack targeted wallets the company uses to handle those assets across multiple cryptocurrency networks. The company said its preliminary investigation suggests the breach began with a compromised laptop belonging to an engineer who works on its software and operations. The attacker then accessed an internal service and submitted withdrawals without authorization.

“Decades of investment in cybersecurity have strengthened traditional defenses, yet the growing complexity of digital banking and AI have created new vulnerabilities,” said Phoebe Hodgson, a banking and payments senior analyst at GlobalData.

Binance said it temporarily halted deposits and withdrawals while conducting security checks. It pledged to cover all losses using its emergency protection fund and company money and said it would publish an updated accounting of the assets backing customer balances once repairs were complete.

Hackers can make stolen cryptocurrency harder to recover by exchanging it for other digital currencies and moving it between wallets. After the Bybit hack, the FBI said attackers had spread the stolen funds across thousands of wallets, and the bureau urged cryptocurrency companies to block further transfers.

North Korea has been stealing cryptocurrency for years as part of a broader effort to evade sanctions and raise money for the regime and weapons research.

Its operations have also involved the use of false identities meant to obtain remote technology jobs. Earlier this month, U.S. authorities announced the disruption of “laptop farms” in Texas that helped DPRK operatives pose as U.S.-based employees and send their earnings back to the regime.

Editor’s Note: This story was updated to reflect the FBI’s attribution of the hack to North Korea and to add comments from Tom Robinson.

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ODNI seeks economic data platform

Ross Wilkers — Fri, 30 Oct 2026 09:00:00 -0400

The federal government’s office for overseeing all U.S. intelligence activities has embarked on a new search for technology to help it better understand the overall economic landscape, including foreign investment and supply chain developments.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is eyeing a new data platform to help it better ingest economic and financial data from multiple sources, either through a complete offering or component-level offerings that can be assembled together.

ODNI launched this new market research effort on Monday through its Office of Economic Security and Emerging Technologies, which is also looking to automation as a way for tying different records to the same company or entity.

ODNI envisions the platform as focusing on the collection, organization and correlation of unclassified datasets such as commercially-available and publicly-available information.

The request for information describes how following the rollout, the platform should function as the U.S. government’s primary reference point for helping agencies in the intelligence community and select other areas contribute to overall economic security objectives.

Data management and integration, automated entity resolution, and bulk access to the data via application programming interfaces are ODNI’s primary goals

Contractors interested in this requirement can respond by filling out a matrix accompanying the RFI spelling out capabilities they have to offer, as well as writing a 15-page submission detailing their approaches and ideas for ODNI.

Responses to the RFI are due by 5 p.m. Eastern time on Nov. 16.

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Ex-government tech leaders pitch new vision for America.gov

Christian Robles — Fri, 30 Oct 2026 09:00:00 -0400

A group of civic technologists is urging the next administration to automate benefits enrollment rather than just build a one-stop shop for residents to apply for them.

New administrations have long promised to build one-stop shops Americans can use to navigate government programs such as Social Security. The Trump administration’s version of that vision is America.gov, an artificial intelligence-powered chatbot that provides Americans with information about government programs and will allow Americans to apply for certain programs next year.

But one-stop shops don’t solve all of the challenges Americans face in navigating the social safety net, according to a Tech Viaduct paper released Friday.

“We can only go so far, even with AI, at band-aiding over and piecing together a really broken and really inconsistent safety net,” Marina Nitze, former CTO of the Veterans Affairs Department under President Barack Obama and lead paper author, told Nextgov/FCW.

The next administration should fix the technical back end of the social safety net, in addition to offering a digital front door like America.gov, the paper argues.

By doing so, Americans would be able to use America.gov, as well as any AI agent, company or nonprofit, to assess whether they qualify for a government program and submit the necessary data, the paper envisions.

There are four steps to fix the back end of the social safety net, according to the paper.

The first step is for the administration to document the eligibility criteria for benefits administered by agencies such as the Social Security Administration.

The second step is to establish one authoritative source for each eligibility criterion — such as income and citizenship status — that benefit programs must accept as the truth for eligibility determination.

The third step is to rewrite program eligibility criteria so that the authoritative sources can actually serve as the basis for eligibility determinations. Tech Viaduct previously urged Congress to take the lead in standardizing technical definitions used for eligibility determinations such as disability, homelessness and income.

The final step is to validate that benefit programs pass standardized test scenarios to prove they are following the law.

The four-step process is simple on paper but has multiple complexities.

For example, some data will not have authoritative sources, such as a common SNAP question about whom someone regularly prepares food with, according to Nitze. In those cases, government officials should determine whether the question should be eliminated, streamlined or replaced with self-attestation, she said.

States may need financial incentives to determine how authoritative sources integrate with existing information technology systems for programs like SNAP and Medicaid, Nitze added.

To advance the four-step process, there needs to be a “commanding presidential directive to hold agency heads accountable” and collaboration with Congress in rewriting statutes as needed, according to the paper.

Pitching the vision

Tech Viaduct is a project of Democratic think tank Searchlight Institute that is preparing day one plans for the next administration.

Project staffers will attend the “What’s Next” conference in Denver in a few weeks to pitch 2028 campaigns on the new paper titled “Integrated Benefits: Our Vision for America.gov,” according to the Searchlight Institute.

Mikey Dickerson, the first administrator of the U.S. Digital Service and a senior Tech Viaduct advisor, is slated to speak at the event along with 2028 hopefuls such as former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

The Tech Viaduct team plans “to make the case that Integrated Benefits is a precondition to any future Democratic trifecta being able to enact its most ambitious plans — from universal health care to a reformed tax system and more,” the think tank told Nextgov/FCW.

But the paper argues that its new vision for benefits delivery is bipartisan.

“For conservatives who are more concerned about waste and fraud, adjudicating the same facts independently in every program is maddeningly expensive for federal, state, and local budgets alike,” the paper states. “Done well, [the four steps] will combat fraud by making honest mismatches disappear, so the real fraud stands out.”

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Officials suspect Iran in series of cyberattacks on military base freezers

David DiMolfetta — Thu, 29 Oct 2026 20:52:00 -0400

U.S. officials suspect Iran-linked hackers are behind a series of cyberattacks that have targeted freezers at military bases around the country and caused them to malfunction, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The outages have affected around six commissaries, the on-base grocery stores serving military personnel. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to communicate sensitive knowledge about the intrusions, which began around late August.

It’s not clear how exactly the cyberintruders may have accessed the freezer systems, though various digital vulnerabilities tied to freezer controls can expose the equipment to hacking and sabotage. It’s possible the assessments may change as investigators learn more about the hacks.

The attacks, if fully confirmed to be tied to Iran, would demonstrate the nation’s ability to disrupt certain military-related equipment inside the United States through cyber means, and comes as the Trump administration is reportedly planning follow-up strikes on Iran after the U.S. midterm elections next week.

The attribution would also fit a broader pattern of suspected Iranian activity against equipment controlling water treatment processes in recent months.

Iran has previously combined hacking in lead-ups to elections. During the 2024 presidential campaign, U.S. officials attributed the theft of Trump campaign material to Tehran⁠.

Cyber Command and various Defense Department law enforcement units are probing the freezer incidents. French authorities are also working with officials examining the matter. Earlier this month, hackers overrode temperature controls on commercial refrigeration equipment at some 350 French establishments, which forced supermarkets to discard spoiled food.

The investigation draws attention to the computers that control everyday equipment used to store and handle food, an often overlooked area of cybersecurity where a hack can spoil supplies or interrupt distribution of goods.

The Food and Agriculture Information Sharing and Analysis Center, an industry group that shares cyber threat intelligence on the nation's food supply, has warned that attackers can target internet-accessible industrial controls that may not have optimal cyberdefenses in place.

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