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Larissa Knapp Named Executive Assistant Director of FBI National Security Branch
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Larissa Knapp Named Executive Assistant Director of FBI National Security Branch

Larissa Knapp, a more than 20-year FBI veteran, has been appointed executive assistant director of the National Security Branch at the bureau’s Washington headquarters.

In her new role, Knapp will oversee national security and intelligence operations, including cases related to terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, the FBI said Monday.

Knapp will also lead the Terrorist Screening Center, which facilitates the sharing of terrorism intelligence across the U.S. government.

She most recently served as the executive assistant director of the FBI’s Human Resources Branch and served as an acting associate deputy director of the bureau.

She joined the FBI in 1997 as a special agent in the New York Field Office, where she oversaw computer intrusion and intellectual property cases. In 2003, she moved to the FBI office on St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, to focus on counterterrorism matters.

Prior to her appointment to the HR Branch, Knapp held various positions at the FBI’s Counterterrorism Center, FBI Headquarters, Intelligence Operations Branch and the Washington Field Office.

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Maj. Gen. Stacey Hawkins Nominated as Commander of Air Force Sustainment Center
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Maj. Gen. Stacey Hawkins Nominated as Commander of Air Force Sustainment Center

Lloyd Austin, secretary of the Department of Defense and a 2022 Wash100 Award recipient, said President Biden has nominated U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen. Stacey Hawkins to serve as commander of Air Force Sustainment Center within Air Force Materiel Command at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma.

The Tuesday announcement also included Hawkins’ potential appointment to the grade of lieutenant general.

Currently, Hawkins is the director of logistics, engineering and force protection for Headquarters Air Combat Command at Joint Base Langley-Eustis in Virginia. He oversees a team responsible for integrating requirements, planning and budget execution in support of over 1,100 fighters and special mission aircraft in 35 wings.

Hawkins is also tasked to oversee strategy, policy, resources and performance management of aircraft maintenance as well as other force protection efforts.

His career includes time serving as director of logistics, civil engineering, force protection and nuclear integration for Air Force Materiel Command.

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Vice Adm. Brad Cooper: US Naval Forces Seek More Domain Awareness With Unmanned, AI Platforms
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Vice Adm. Brad Cooper: US Naval Forces Seek More Domain Awareness With Unmanned, AI Platforms

Vice Adm. Brad Cooper said the U.S. Navy is working to build a fleet of unmanned surface vessels and an integrated network of systems to increase maritime awareness in the Middle East.

The Fifth Fleet, one of the three Navy components being led by Cooper, collaborates with private and academic entities in an effort to deploy unmanned platforms with artificial intelligence technology in the region, U.S. Naval Forces Central Command said Wednesday.

Cooper told attendees at a recent conference in the U.K. that a partner network has the potential to increase domain awareness among U.S. and allied naval forces by up to 40 times with the use of data from interconnected sensors.

“Every partner and every sensor offers new information that can be added to what we call the ‘Digital Ocean,’ an intelligent synthesis of around-the-clock inputs encompassing thousands of images,” he added.

NAVCENT formed a task force in September 2021 to support the Fifth Fleet’s unmanned-AI technology integration efforts. The numbered fleet aims to launch USVs by the summer of 2023, according to NAVCENT.

Vice Adm. Brad Cooper: US Naval Forces Seek More Domain Awareness With Unmanned, AI Platforms

Time is running out to reserve your seat at the Potomac Officers Club’s Annual Navy Summit on June 2, which will feature Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro as the keynote. Visit the POC Events page to register for this in-person event that will be held at The Ritz–Carlton in McLean, Virginia.

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Lynne Parker: NAIRR Task Force Outlines Plan for AI Research Cyberinfrastructure in Interim Report
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Lynne Parker: NAIRR Task Force Outlines Plan for AI Research Cyberinfrastructure in Interim Report

Lynne Parker, director of the National Artificial Intelligence Initiative Office at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said the National AI Research Resource Task Force submitted to the president and Congress an interim report outlining a plan for the creation of a cyberinfrastructure that would democratize access to AI-related tools, datasets, testbeds and computing capacity for AI researchers and students.

The report lays out the task force’s approach to establishing the national AI resource that advances protections for privacy, civil liberties and civil rights and promotes equitable access and diversity, Parker wrote in a blog post published Wednesday.

According to the report, the shared resource should be designed to meet four key goals for AI research and development and these are spurring innovation, increasing diversity of talent, improving capacity and advancing trustworthy AI.

The document suggests that multiple agencies should be funded to work together to support NAIRR resources and management and that the national resource should coordinate a network of compute providers and data to promote a responsible and transparent data ecosystem.

The task force recommends the creation of an independent entity that would oversee the daily operations of the infrastructure, security, user support and resource allocation while addressing accessibility, diversity, inclusion and equity issues and calls for the implementation of a tiered access model to address heterogenous security needs.

Parker said the task force is soliciting public comments on the report’s findings and recommendations to inform the development of a roadmap to achieve the vision for the national AI research resource. Responses to the request for information are due June 30.

OSTP and the National Science Foundation will hold a public listening session on June 23 to seek insights on the interim report’s findings.

Parker also serves as deputy U.S. chief technology officer and co-chair of the NAIRR Task Force.

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HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra Formalizes Health Research Project Agency
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HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra Formalizes Health Research Project Agency

Xavier Becerra, secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services, has officially organized the Advanced Research Project Agency for Health to drive innovations in the biomedical discipline.

Becerra appointed Adam Russell, a former program manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, to serve as acting deputy director of the new entity that will operate under the National Institutes of Health, HHS said Wednesday.

Russell is currently serving as chief scientist of the University of Maryland’s Applied Research Laboratory for Intelligence and Security and will formally assume the ARPA-H leadership role in June.

“ARPA-H will have a singular purpose: to drive breakthroughs in health, including the prevention, detection and treatment of diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer’s and diabetes,” said Becerra, an inductee into Executive Mosaic’s Wash100 for 2021.

Public Law 117-103, which was enacted on March 15, authorized the department to establish ARPA-H.

HHS said President Biden intends to appoint a full-time director for the new research agency.

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CBO’s Phillip Swagel: Federal Budget Deficit Could Drop to $1T in 2022
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CBO’s Phillip Swagel: Federal Budget Deficit Could Drop to $1T in 2022

Phillip Swagel, director of the Congressional Budget Office, said CBO projects the federal budget deficit to drop from $2.8 trillion in 2021 to $1 trillion in 2022 as the economy bounces back and federal spending in response to the COVID-19 pandemic dwindles.

“In our projections, which reflect the assumption that current laws governing federal taxes and spending generally remain unchanged, federal deficits nonetheless remain large by historical standards and generally increase over the next decade,” Swagel said in a statement published Wednesday.

He noted that CBO projects the deficit to rise to 6.1 percent of gross domestic product by 2032 or more than $2 trillion over the next decade.

The agency expects outlays to average 23 percent of GDP by 2032 and federal debt held by the public to fall to 96 percent of GDP by 2023 and to rise following that year.

CBO also predicts that elevated inflation will continue through 2022 due to robust demand and restrained supply in the markets for services, goods and labor.

“Real GDP (that is, GDP adjusted to remove the effects of inflation) grows by 3.1 percent this year, and the unemployment rate averages 3.8 percent. After 2022, economic growth slows, and inflationary pressures ease,” Swagel said.

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Joint Interoperability Test Command to Establish IT Testing Facility; Capt. Robert Matthias Quoted
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Joint Interoperability Test Command to Establish IT Testing Facility; Capt. Robert Matthias Quoted

The Department of Defense’s Joint Interoperability Test Command held a groundbreaking on May 17 for a $35 million facility at Fort Huachuca in Arizona as part of efforts to expand JITC’s capability to test and evaluate information technology and national security systems in support of joint warfighting requirements.

“Today’s groundbreaking of our new 40,422 square foot Test and Evaluation Facility shows this country’s commitment to JITC’s contribution, and the forward lean the DOD must make toward advancing joint capabilities, forging alliances and embracing critical innovation,” Navy Capt. Robert Matthias, commander of JITC, said in a statement published Wednesday.

“We are proud to be a part of the leading-edge in modernizing information technology and national security systems to join greater forces and overcome pacing threats,” Matthias added.

The planned test and evaluation facility will accommodate over 600 personnel, provide access to classified open storage areas for collaborative testing environments, house 229 server cabinets, serve as a redundancy backup for networking services across the campus and integrate with the distributed network control center and related facilities.

Construction work will kick off in June and the new facility is expected to open in early 2024.

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Verizon Publishes Annual Report on Cybersecurity Trends; Hans Vestberg Quoted
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Verizon Publishes Annual Report on Cybersecurity Trends; Hans Vestberg Quoted

Verizon has released its annual report analyzing cybersecurity crimes and patterns in system vulnerabilities across the world.

The 2022 edition of the Data Breach Investigations Report found that ransomware intrusions grew by 13 percent in one year, which amounts to more than the increases in the statistic in the prior five years combined, the telecommunications company said Tuesday.

Hans Vestberg, CEO and chairman of Verizon, posited that while many societal shifts over the preceding years of the pandemic have affected businesses, cybersecurity presents the most pressing area for evolution and change.

“As we continue to accelerate toward an increasingly digitized world, effective technological solutions, strong security frameworks, and an increased focus on education will all play their part in ensuring that businesses remain secure, and customers protected,” Vestberg remarked.

The Data Breach Investigations Report also reflected an overwhelming amount of cyber attacks coming from organized crime; external bad actors were four times more likely to stage a breach than an inside source.

The report additionally confirmed the surplus of supply chain issues that have gripped the business world over the past year, some of which are visible in cybersecurity incidents. 62 percent of system interceptions were perpetrated by a company’s partner, due to the fact that successfully imperiling a business partner can be a force multiplier for cybercriminals.

Based on the study’s findings, the human factor remains the most likely reason an organization’s system is cyber compromised. 82 percent of breaches were due not to a technological weakness but a human mistake, misuse of privilege or a social engineering incident. The latter category alone accounted for 25 percent of breaches.

“While the report has evolved, the fundamentals of security remain the same. Assess your exposure, mitigate your risk, and take appropriate action,” said Dave Hylender, lead author of the DBIR.

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Deltek Releases 13th Annual Clarity Government Contracting Industry Study; GovCon Expert Kevin Plexico Quoted
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Deltek Releases 13th Annual Clarity Government Contracting Industry Study; GovCon Expert Kevin Plexico Quoted

Deltek announced the release of the 13th Annual Deltek Clarity Government Contracting Industry Study on Wednesday to identify and share the current trends and market outlooks in the government contracting (GovCon) sector.

After collecting survey responses from over 650 members of the GovCon community, Deltek has revealed their findings to help government contractors address the biggest challenges impacting business development, risk management, financial compliance, manufacturing, contract management & procurement, human capital management and IT professionals.

“The challenges companies reported include growing in headcount while facing increased competition, citing business development and digital integration of functions as key areas of growth and investment,” said GovCon Expert Kevin Plexico, senior vice president of Information Solutions at Deltek and a 2022 Wash100 Award recipient.

After this year’s surveys and information collection, Deltek revealed that business development has emerged as a critical investment area for the GovCon sector and diversification among the new markets has been used by federal organizations to drive organic topline growth.

In addition, Deltek learned that the manufacturing sector is undergoing digital transformation efforts as a critical growth area with more than 60 percent of respondents mentioned supply chain issues as one of the greatest challenges and risk concerns as well as the complexity to underscore the need for technology and contract management integration.

“This year, we heard from many businesses that although 2021 was not a superb year, results moving into 2022 were surprisingly positive with increased win rates expected,” said  GovCon Expert Kevin Plexico, senior vice president of Information Solutions at Deltek and a 2022 Wash100 Award recipient.

The full results are now available in the report here, or watch this on-demand webinar to learn more about the study.

About Deltek 

Better software means better projects. Deltek is the leading global provider of enterprise software and information solutions for project-based businesses. More than 30,000 organizations and millions of users in over 80 countries around the world rely on Deltek for superior levels of project intelligence, management and collaboration.

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NASA Taps National Academy of Sciences for Space Research Work
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NASA Taps National Academy of Sciences for Space Research Work

The National Academy of Sciences in Washington D.C. will provide space-related research and advisory services to NASA under a five-year, $32 million contract.

NAS will commence work on June 1 under the Strategic Advice Supporting NASA Science and Technology Programs contract, the agency said Wednesday.

The nonprofit organization will explore items of national importance that fall under space, biological, physical and Earth science disciplines.

Work under the SASNSTP indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract includes support for decadal surveys and advice on various space applications.

Congress formed the academy in March 1863 under the Lincoln administration to act as a national organization focused on helping the government advance science and art subjects.

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