Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden has asked Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and three other lawmakers to support legislation that would permit the U.S. Senate Sergeant at Arms to secure the personal accounts and devices of senators and their staff from hacking.

Sen. Wyden explained in a letter dated Sept. 19 that the SAA was legally prohibited from using public funds to provide protection for electronics and accounts that were not issued by the government.

Wyden’s office learned of this restriction after the sergeant at arms refused to help several senators and senate employees when their private emails were attacked by foreign agents.

Wyden insisted that, with the November elections fast approaching, and in light of the continuing cyber threat posed by foreign actors, “[this] approach must change to keep up with changing world realities.”

Wyden went on to call on Sen. McConnell, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, Sen. Roy Blunt and Sen. Amy Klobuchar to “support legislation that I am introducing to permit the SAA to provide cybersecurity assistance to senators and staff, on an opt-in basis, for their personal devices and accounts.”

The U.S. Navy is set to christen the LCS 22 or the future USS Kansas City littoral combat ship this Saturday in Mobile, Ala.

Tracy Davidson, wife of Adm. Philip Davidson who leads the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, will perform the christening as sponsor of the latest Independence variant LCS, the Navy said Thursday.

Austal USA began the construction of LCS 22 in November 2017.

The ship will be the second naval vessel to carry the name of Kansas City, following a Wichita-class replenishment ship that served in the Vietnam War.

Patrick Shanahan, deputy secretary of defense, said that cybersecurity will become the Defense Department‘s key basis in evaluating the defense industry, Fifth Domain reported Wednesday. His comments come as the Pentagon urges the industry to boost its cybersecurity focus, in support of a new cyber strategy.

Shanahan added that contractors belonging to the industry’s top tier are responsible for managing the supply chain and helping lower tier firms maintain security in products.

The DoD is implementing a new cybersecurity strategy aiming to address cyber threats posed by foreign competitors such as China and Russia.

This strategy is intended to increase force lethality, grow partnerships, reform the department, develop talent and help the U.S. compete in cyber space.

Lt. Gen. Steven Kwast, commander of the Air Education and Training Command, has said AETC intends to integrate artificial intelligence in the U.S. Air Force’s pilot training program, Federal News Radio reported Wednesday.

The command has tested AI and augmented reality pilot training systems in a beta program, and discovered that virtual trainers are capable of analyzing focus areas that students need to work on.

Kwast noted that AETC aims to leverage AI to train pilots to rapidly deploy personnel in the battlefield.

“Competence is the constant, so when you have learned to master the skill, you can go to your squadron and start being a part of the fight,” Kwast said.

He added that the command wants to deploy AI coaches to give airmen the freedom to choose what they want to learn about, which a human trainer will later validate.

AETC intends to submit its proposal to the secretary of the Air Force in 2019.

Reforming pilot training practices comes as the Air Force is set to deploy a new fleet of F-35 planes.

U.S. Navy Vice Adm. Thomas Moore, head of Naval Sea Systems Command, has said NAVSEA plans to introduce changes to the multiple-award contract/multi-order strategy in an effort to improve the contracting process with private shipyards for maintenance work, USNI News reported Wednesday.

NAVSEA has started a pilot program that aims to combine ship maintenance availabilities to provide private yards with a “little more stable and predictive work” and facilitate on-time delivery of ships, Moore said Tuesday at the American Society of Naval Engineers’ Fleet Maintenance and Modernization Symposium.

“My goal is eventually that we will eventually – on each coast – bundle availabilities six months at a time… so you can know at least what work you can have in the next six months and beyond,” he noted.

The service plans to test the strategy through repair work on the USS Gunston Hall (LSD-44) amphibious warship and two guided-missile destroyers, USS Bulkeley (DDG 84) and USS Arleigh Burke (DDG-51).

Moore said the Navy wants both public and private yards to complete ship maintenance work on time as the service ramps up its readiness efforts driven by the Defense Department’s new warfare strategy against potential adversaries.
 

President Trump intends to nominate Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., as director of the U.S. Trade and Development Agency.

Issa previously served as chair of the House committee on oversight and government reform, the White House said Wednesday.

Once confirmed, he will support USTDA in its mission to help companies export American-made goods and services to partner countries to generate more jobs in the U.S. 

Issa holds various House positions such as head of the subcommittee on courts, intellectual property and the internet, as well as the committee on foreign affairs.

Throughout his career in the government, the U.S. Army veteran has helped enforce stricter rules along the U.S. border, expose the mismanagement at the Mineral Management Services and proposed to investigate the cause of a financial crisis in 2008.

Issa additionally led the House committee on oversight and government reform in investigating the Countrywide Financial VIP Program, as well as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now’s misuse of taxpayer money, among other things.

The Department of Energy is investing $21.6M to fund 10 computational software research and development projects meant to facilitate the design of chemical-based energy production processes.

The projects are based on applications in computer-based chemical process modeling that is replacing traditional trial-and-error methods, the department said Wednesday.

The effort would leverage the DOE national laboratories’ petascale computers, built to make at least one quadrilion calculations in a second, and beginning 2021, the more advanced exascale computers.

The department’s Iowa-based Ames Laboratory, along with nine universities, will lead efforts to develop the open-source software. The software is designed to support processes covering fossil energy production, electrical energy storage and solar cells.

A National Institute of Standards and Technology study estimates the economic impact of an encryption standard launched two decades ago to be worth approximately $250B.

NIST said Wednesday the Advanced Encryption Standard is an algorithm that works to decrypt and encrypt electronic data and was cleared for government use in November 2001.

The agency tapped RM Advisory Services to survey private and government users of encryption systems and found that the AES program’s estimated benefit-to-cost ratio for the entire economy is 1,976-to-1.

“This outstanding return on investment exemplifies the economic value of federal research and development, for the private sector and for the broader American economy,” said Walter Copan, NIST director and undersecretary of commerce for standards and technology at the Commerce Department.

“It also demonstrates how bringing together the private and public sectors effectively to address a challenge can result in positive impacts on U.S. commerce.”

NIST officially proposed AES, also known as Rijndael, in October 2000 three years after it launched an international competition to replace the Data Encryption Standard amid rising vulnerabilities.

The U.S. government uses the royalty-free cryptographic algorithm in its Federal Information Processing Standard.

The Department of Health and Human Services has launched a collaborative program that will explore possible opportunities for the U.S. healthcare industry.

The Deputy Secretary’s Innovation and Investment Summit will be a year-long effort that will involve private sector innovators, investors and HHS personnel developing ways to boost investment and research in health services, the department said Wednesday.

DSIIS is expected to align with one of HHS Secretary Alex Azar’s department-wide priorities, which is to adopt a more value-based health care system in the U.S.

The workgroup will hold meetings on healthcare innovation, emerging opportunities and the implementation of government policies.

HHS Deputy Secretary Eric Hargan said the collaborative program will help modernize healthcare services for Americans.

“As the healthcare community innovates, HHS must also be innovative in how we engage with that community,” Hargan added.

The department will accept applications of interested participants for DSIIS until Oct. 3.