A new Center for a New American Security report offers several recommendations for U.S. government leaders to help ensure U.S. leadership in artificial intelligence.

CNAS said Tuesday the recommendations are classified into seven sections: research and development; human talent; illicit technology transfer; AI hardware; AI norms; government readiness; and AI standards and measurement.

The center called on the government to increase annual R&D spending on AI to $25B by 2025, incentivize industry research on AI by providing tax credits and access to government datasets and promote international R&D cooperation.

The government should raise the cap for H1-B visas, eliminate the cap for advanced degree holders and boost funding opportunities for university researchers to further develop tech talent.

Small and medium-sized companies should get more cyber defense support and universities should enhance collaboration with U.S. counterintelligence experts to address illegal tech transfer.

CNAS also recommended the establishment of multilateral export controls on semiconductor manufacturing equipment, an increase in the availability of affordable compute resources and diversification of semiconductor fabrication through the creation of an international fab consortium with allies. Domestic semiconductor manufacturing efforts should be supported with retooling incentives and semiconductor supply chains should be secured through public-private partnerships.

The Missile Defense Agency and industry representatives held a meeting at MDA’s Alabama headquarters to discuss potential ways of targeting hypersonic missiles and lay the groundwork for the Hypersonic Defense Regional Glide Phase Weapon System, Breaking Defense reported Wednesday.

“They’re going after the regional as opposed to the homeland mission,” Tom Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said of MDA’s efforts.

The new program comes as the Department of Defense works to accelerate hypersonic defense initiatives amid recent efforts of Russia and China to deploy such weapons.

A defense bill the Senate sent to the White House Tuesday includes $230.9M in funds to advance hypersonic defense programs. House and Senate appropriators also approved $108M in additional funding in support of MDA’s Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor program.

The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program has worked with industry and the National Institute of Standards and Technology to develop the Open Security Controls Assessment Language to help automate the authorization process.

FedRAMP said Tuesday it is seeking public comments on OSCAL Milestone 2 that offers a number of features, including a system security plan model meant to help organizations automate the documentation of privacy and security control implementation using OSCAL.

OSCAL Milestone 2 also features published draft FedRAMP baselines in JSON and XML formats, tools to convert the OSCAL profile, catalog and SSP content between JSON and XML and guidance document to help tool developers come up with OSCAL-based FedRAMP SSP content.

OSCAL is a standard that can be used in the evaluation and implementation of security controls. It is expected to help cloud service providers speed up the creation of their SSPs and enable third party assessment organizations to automate the planning, reporting and execution of cloud evaluation activities.

NASA has chosen four organizations to deliver science, technology, engineering and mathematics projects that promote space exploration.

Bell Museum of Natural History and Planetarium, Carnegie Institute, EcoExploratorio and Science Museum of Minnesota will host these educational projects under the Teams Engaging Affiliated Museums and Informal Institutions, or Team II, program, NASA said Wednesday.

The organizations will receive funds from a pool of $3.5M in cooperative agreements to pursue projects that tackle Moon and Mars exploration.

Bell Museum of Natural History in Minneapolis will host a planetarium show that will accommodate members of hearing-impaired and physically disabled communities. The presentation will also showcase the careers of such personnel at the space agency.

Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh will engage museums and schools with programs that simulate problem-solving situations in lunar exploration.

Puerto Rico-based EcoExploratorio will administer STEM events at community centers and schools within the island.

Lastly, Science Museum of Minnesota will hold an exhibit where participants can build imaginary shelters for Mars missions.

The projects are scheduled to be carried out over the next three years.

“These cooperative agreements will enable the recipients’ efforts to focus on the most up-to-date information from NASA,” said Beverly Girten, director of institutional engagement at the space agency’s Office of STEM Engagement.

NASA aims to further explore the Moon and Mars via manned missions under the Artemis program.

Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division has recently broken ground on the Virginia-based site of a future cyber warfare innovation facility.

The service branch said Monday its 10K-square-foot Cyber Warfare Engineering Laboratory will serve as a testing ground for weapon system software and hardware, cyber platforms and industrial infrastructure control systems.

“It’s only fitting that NSWC Dahlgren be given the conn for cyber engineering and be selected as the site for the Cyber Warfare Engineering Lab,” said Scott St. Pierre, Naval Sea Systems Command’s enterprise information technology officer.

Capt. Casey Plew, NSWCDD commanding officer, and Darren Barnes, NSWCDD acting technical director, also gave speeches at the groundbreaking ceremony.

“It will host live, virtual and constructive cyber warfare events to enable and empower our cyber experts to develop, build, test, accredit, field and sustain cyber-resilient systems,” Barnes said about the laboratory.