The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has issued a list of telecommunications equipment and services that pose a national security threat as part of its compliance with the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act of 2019. 

FCC said Friday the covered list released by the public safety and homeland security bureau includes telecom and video surveillance equipment from five Chinese companies: Huawei Technologies, ZTE, Hytera Communications, Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology and Dahua Technology.

Jessica Rosenworcel, acting chairwoman of FCC, said the list marks a big step in restoring trust in U.S. communications networks.

“This list provides meaningful guidance that will ensure that as next-generation networks are built across the country, they do not repeat the mistakes of the past or use equipment or services that will pose a threat to U.S. national security or the security and safety of Americans,” Rosenworcel added.

“The inclusion of these entities on the Covered List extends both to subsidiaries and affiliates of these entities, as well as to ‘telecommunications or video surveillance services provided by such entities or using such equipment,’” an FCC public notice reads.

Leaders and commissioners of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI), said the Department of Defense (DOD) and federal civilian agencies should come up with career pathways to help recruit and retain AI talent in government service, Federal News Network reported Friday.

“I was really struck in my work with the Defense Department of how many people work there for low and in difficult conditions because they were patriotic,” Eric Schmidt, chairman of NSCAI and former CEO of Google, said Friday during a joint hearing of the House Armed Services and House Oversight and Reform Committees.

“The ones that I spoke with did not fundamentally leave for money. They left because the opportunity in their career was more interesting in the private sector – that work that they wanted to do, they could not do well as federal or military employees. That’s got to get fixed,” he added.

Mignon Clyburn, an NSCAI commissioner and former commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), said Congress should direct the Pentagon to establish an emerging technology certification process for service personnel to help identify and retain AI talent.

Robert Work, vice president of NSCAI, former deputy defense secretary and a two-time Wash100 Award winner, said adding a computational thinking section to the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery could help the military identify potential AI talent.

The Potomac Officers Club will hold its 3rd Annual Artificial Intelligence Summit on March 30 to foster discussions on how to advance AI technology at speed and how private-public partnerships are key to maintaining the competitive advantage within the tech race. To register for this virtual summit and view other upcoming events, visit the Potomac Officers Club Events page.

U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Robert Skinner, director of the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), said he is in favor of outsourcing information technology services to commercial vendors to achieve cost savings, C4ISRNET reported Friday.

“I’m a big proponent of commercial IT as a service,” Skinner said Friday at the AFCEA Rocky Mountain Cyberspace Symposium. “We have to be careful as we kind of move forward with this. … I think we really need to get after this in a more holistic look and a faster pace.”

He said the military should take advantage of commercial technologies and advance the adoption of robotic process automation.

“How do we leverage the robotic process automation — bringing that into the fold with the combatant commands — to, I’ll say, take care of the irritants, so that the focus can really be on the command and control, the forces, getting after strategic competition in their area of responsibility,” Skinner said.

The Department of Energy (DOE) will award $18 million in funds through the second phase of the Next-Generation Energy Technologies for Connected and Automated On-Road Vehicles program to four projects that aim to lower automobile emissions.

Michigan Technical University will work to grow its test vehicle fleet and identify opportunities for range optimization while Southwest Research Institute will expand and implement hybrid power control, eco-driving and routing approaches into vehicles with level 4 automation capabilities, DOE said Thursday.

Ohio State University will incorporate system-level control and optimization tools into a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle in a bid to increase energy efficiency by 30 percent. The University of California Berkeley will focus on expanding its set of eco-drive, route and charge controls.

DOE initially awarded $32 million in funds to 10 teams during the first phase of NEXTCAR. The current group of awardees will receive additional funds at an undisclosed date to hold demonstration activities.

Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy launched the NEXTCAR effort to mitigate automobile energy consumption via the development of connected and automated vehicles.

The first phase of the program sought to build CAV technologies that could lower vehicle energy usage by 20 percent. Phase II seeks to decrease light-duty passenger vehicles' consumption by 30 percent.

Air Force Research Laboratory worked with Cornell University to create a new X-ray technology that can inspect composite components during the manufacturing process.

Micro-beam scanning and phase contrast imaging allow the technology to generate X-ray scattering images depicting the component's structure during and after manufacturing, AFRL said Thursday. Operators may use this tool to visualize errors that need to be fixed in a component's structure.

"If you could see the defect, you could pull the part out of production before it actually gets in a system and causes the system to fail, or (you can) adjust the processing parameters to correct for it," said Hilmar Koerner, who leads AFRL's research team for polymer matrix composites, materials and processes.

The U.S. Air Force expects the technology to reduce costs in certifying composite parts for satellites and unmanned aircraft systems.

AFRL used $7 million to establish two X-ray beamlines at the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source. The beamlines support the military's research pursuits in material science.

Maj. Gen. Richard Coffman, director of the U.S. Army's next-generation combat vehicle cross-functional team, said the service must modernize its armored vehicles to address Chinese threats in the Pacific, Military.com reported Thursday.

Coffman told attendees at an event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies that the U.S. needs to secure a “position of relative advantage” and deploy advanced armored vehicles and tanks to establish its position against China. 

"The reason why you need the land component in [the Pacific] is because it's the only component that will be decisive," said Coffman. "If you want to take land, if you want to hold land, if you want to clear land, you need the ground element."

The team intends to deploy lightweight vehicles capable of protecting personnel in the field, he noted. The U.S. Marine Corps has begun transitioning out of M1A1 Abrams battle tanks as it prepares to conduct missions in the Pacific, according to the publication.

NASA has commenced efforts to resume operations of the Hubble Space Telescope, a space observatory that recently assumed safe mode due to a software error.

The space agency said Friday it plans to have the space telescope back to normal by next Thursday, following Hubble's entering safe mode last Sunday. Hubble's main computer experienced a software error, which caused the spacecraft to enter a stable state until NASA personnel can solve the issue.

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center discovered the error during a software update meant to address fluctuations of Hubble's gyroscopes, which measure the spacecraft's turning speed.

The supposed software update could not enter the computer's memory due to lack of permission and in turn, caused the error. The spacecraft is now in a pre-science state as it awaits resumption of operations. NASA personnel will attempt to fix the software update for potential use in the future.

Lt. Col. Kristin Saling, a chief analytics officer at the U.S. Army, said the service branch must work to update its talent management practices as it moves towards multidomain operations, Federal News Network reported Thursday.

Saling, who works under the Army Talent Management Task Force within the office of the assistant Army secretary for manpower and reserve affairs, told the publication in an interview that the service must leverage its volumes of data and address data quality issues to inform decision-making.

The Army has used platforms such as the Integrated Personnel and Pay System – Army to expand its data inventory, she noted.

“We really started to realize we needed to bring together all this data that we had on our people to get after our force and understand essentially how we get the right person in the right job at the right time and how we change our processes so that we can do this over time,” said Saling.

She added that the Army seeks to enable personnel to have more control in developing their career trajectories through a “talent marketplace” concept.