Engineers and scientists from the Department of Defense and Air Force Research Laboratory met with representatives from various universities to augment collaborative efforts and discuss potential machine learning research gaps. Attendees from the University of Chicago, University of Wisconsin-Madison and Toyota Technological Institute joined government experts to examine concerns in autonomous, command and control and artificial intelligence technologies, the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base said Tuesday.

AFRL aims to modernize machine learning applications in the U.S. Air Force via the development of research methods, algorithms and theories under the University Center of Excellence on Efficient and Robust Machine Learning initiative. The effort will also work to tap potential machine learning professionals from the government and academic sectors through seminars, joint projects, partnerships and open engagements.

The Department of Homeland Security released a request for proposals to establish an Executive Master of Business Administration learning track through the Center of Excellence program. DHS said Tuesday that its Science and Technology Directorate intends to award $10.5M to an accredited U.S. institution to develop the MBA program spanning business management, legal and technical subject areas.

The program must also cover technology-focused courses and enable DHS personnel to refine their skills in technology commercialization, industry relationship establishment and overall federal acquisition management. 

“S&T’s investment in this space will build a cross-DHS collaborative workforce with the capability and skillset needed to develop, acquire, implement and manage the transition process of operationally relevant technologies,” said William Bryan, DHS acting undersecretary for science and technology.

S&T will accept responses to the RFP through Aug. 9 ahead of plans to select a contractor by September. S&T’s COEs are U.S. university-led consortia comprised of government, industry, academic and other research entities that work to educate and train new homeland security personnel and experts.

Sue Gordon, principal deputy director of national intelligence and 2019 Wash100 Award winner, said the intelligence community should ramp up its efforts to advance transparency and share more information with the public as foreign governments continue to target the general public and commercial businesses, C4ISRNET reported Tuesday. 

“And what that means is, intelligence has to be made available for those decision-makers, whether it’s the populace — ‘You all are being duped’ – or the private sector – ‘You all are having your secrets stolen,’” Gordon said during a recent episode of the podcast Intelligence Matters. “You need to make different decisions. And we need to give you information so that you can make different decisions. And that is a big leap for us, culturally.”

Gordon also commented on IC’s report on Russian election interference, the “know the risk, raise your shield” cybersecurity campaign and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s data sharing efforts.

Gen. Terrence O’Shaughnessy, commander at the North American Aerospace Defense and Nothern Commands, said the U.S. government must maintain vigilance with increased activities in the Arctic region. O’Shaughnessy noted that Northcom and NORAD should prioritize the development of a framework to utilize an array of sensor systems to reinforce domain awareness, the Department of Defense said Tuesday.

He noted the Northern Command has partnered with the service branches to validate methods of operation in the Arctic area. In addition, O’Shaughnessy said the government should build a defeat mechanism to mature from single point defense to a wider area of coverage.

“We have to advance from these stovepipe systems to this broad-level architecture … that’s clearly joint,” said O’Shaughnessy. “It has to be able to ingest all of the various sensors we have out there and be able to bring it to a command and control capability,” he added.

A task force of the Washington, D.C.-based think tank Bipartisan Policy Center is looking into organizations overseeing executive branch agencies and assessing how those agencies implement oversight recommendations, Federal News Network reported Tuesday.

The task force found that those agencies do not spend enough time to implement improvements to their performance and are focusing more on responding to oversight recommendations and compliance-based activities. Such agencies and oversight bodies have not established a culture that assumes risks at the beginning.

“If overseers are aware of risks that agencies are taking prior to any incident, and if overseers were satisfied that mitigation of these risks was taken seriously, we avoid the type of ‘gotcha’ oversight that often stymies innovation and breakthroughs,” said Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Government Operations Subcommittee.

The task force called on the Government Accountability Office and inspectors general to focus their recommendations on performance measures and specific agency outcomes. Internal oversight groups should also work with GAO, IGs and other outside oversight organizations in terms of monitoring the progress of agencies and offering recommendations, according to the task force. The task force includes former officials from GAO, Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management, among other agencies.

Michael Griffin, undersecretary for research and engineering at the Department of Defense and 2019 Wash100 Award winner, said the Space Development Agency’s acquisition strategy seeks to accelerate the development of capabilities that are cost effective and responsive to any threat, the DoD website reported Tuesday.

The strategy supports SDA’s efforts to mass produce satellites that ensure redundancy and make it more challenging for adversaries to attack them, Griffin said Tuesday during SDA’s industry day. He also cited SDA’s role in advancing communication between service branches and government agencies to identify capability gaps and avoid duplication.

Derek Tournear, acting director of SDA, also spoke at the event to provide an overview of the agency and discuss its role in helping military branches advance their space initiatives. The report said SDA plans to deploy several platforms such as defensive anti-jamming, anti-spoofing and cyber capabilities and artificial intelligence-based ground systems and cross-networked satellites.

Senior government officials discussed a range of national concerns on chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear defense during the National Defense Industrial Association’s CBRN Conference and Exhibition in Delaware, National Defense magazine reported Tuesday. Andrew Kilianski, chief intelligence officer at the joint program executive office for CBRN, said that focus must be shifted to emerging threats and potential attacks from near-peer adversaries.

James Madsen, lead clinical consultant and clinical laboratory director at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Chemical Defense’s chemical casualty care division, noted that while Russsia is the country’s biggest chemical threat, China “knows more about marine toxins in particular than any other country in the world.”

Previously, President Trump released his budget request for fiscal 2020 which earmarks $1.4 billion for CBRN defense efforts.

Gary Washington, chief information officer of the Department of Agriculture, said at an ACT-IAC event that the department plans to issue a task order for systems modernization support in the coming days, FCW reported Tuesday. The task order will fall under the General Services Administration’s Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions contract for telecommunications services valued at $50 billion. 

“We’re very excited about some of the things — such as modernization, improved performance and delivery of services — that we’re going to be able to provide,” Washington noted. He added that USDA aims to complete the EIS modernization effort throughout its 17 networks by 2023.