Savannah River National Laboratory aims to mature fusion energy technologies in partnership with General Atomics and General Fusion under two Innovation Network for Fusion Energy awards from the Department of Energy.

“These two new INFUSE awards continue SRNL’s efforts to deepen industry engagement through public-private partnerships that help industry develop their technologies into viable commercial solutions,” Brenda Garcia-Diaz, fusion energy research program manager at SRNL, said in a statement released Tuesday.

The national lab will build two models that General Atomics will use as it develops a modeling workflow for a fusion pilot plant as well as conduct FPP optimizations with the company using the models. SRNL will also perform a preliminary cost analysis for the tritium processing facilities under the project, which will be led by SRNL scientist Holly Flynn and principal investigator David Weisberg from General Atomics.

“One of the most attractive aspects of a fusion power plant is the environmentally friendly hydrogen fuel, which doesn’t require any harmful mining or drilling activities,” said Weisberg. 

“But we also need to perfect the way we recycle fuel inside the power plant, and SRNL has expertise to advance the technological readiness of that system,” he added.

SRNL scientist George Larsen and Ryan Guerrero, chief technology officer at General Fusion, will oversee a project that seeks to understand tritium inventory to inform the company’s design for a commercial pilot plant.

The U.S. Coast Guard has begun transitioning authorized, government-provided mobile devices to the Department of Defense’s new collaboration platform, dubbed DoD365.

The DoD365 Mobile+ phones work as a mini-workstation that provides users with remote access to productivity and collaboration tools and applications, including Outlook emails, Teams, OneDrive documents and SharePoint, the Coast Guard reported Monday.

The service branch said it has transitioned 1,000 volunteer mobile users to DoD365 Mobile+ during the pilot project and plans to migrate the remaining 7,000 users licensed for BlackBerry Unified Endpoint Management services to the new collaboration software by July 31.

DoD365 Mobile+ can link smartphone users to many Common Access Card-enabled websites and is expected to feature additional capabilities in the future, including PDF document signing and printing.

Six members of Congress have called on the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency to require cryptocurrency mining companies to disclose energy consumption and carbon emissions. 

The Democratic lawmakers asked DOE Secretary Jennifer Granholm and EPA Administrator Michael Regan in a letter to submit information by Aug. 15 regarding their authority to impose a reporting requirement for the environmental impacts of cryptomining.

Their missive cites data from a congressional study of seven large cryptomining businesses that indicated the sector uses huge amounts of electricity.

“Our investigation suggests that the overall U.S. cryptomining industry is likely to be problematic for energy and emissions. But little is known about the full scope of cryptomining activity,” the lawmakers wrote.

“Given these concerns, it is imperative that your agencies work together to address the lack of information about cryptomining’s energy use and environmental impacts, and use all available authorities at your disposal …  to require reporting of energy use and emissions from cryptominers.”

The letter was signed by Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass; Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I.; Edward Markey, D-Mass.; and Jeff Merkley, D-Ore.

Reps. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., and Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich, also signed the written communication.

Lori Wade, chief data officer for the Intelligence Community within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said one of her top priorities for the IC is achieving data interoperability at scale and speed.

She said the IC should collaborate with industry and academia to advance the adoption of enterprise data services and serve as the foundation of a data-centric ecosystem that pursues the use of machine-enabled analytics.

“Second, we need end-to-end data management planning for the collection and acquisition of data – from why the data is being collected to who will use the data and how,” Wade said in an interview published Thursday.

“If data is an IC asset, then we need a plan for it. We need to plan and solve for the intersection of data integration and mission insight,” she added.

Another priority for Wade is improving the IC workforce’s data tradecraft and acumen.

“It is critical for the IC workforce now and in the future to understand how to work with data and stay current on the ever-changing digital and data landscape for not only Artificial Intelligence or AI, but all the emerging technology to coming,” she noted.

Wade said she intends to enhance the speed of data sharing to support missions by working tech and thought leaders to come up with tactical and strategic options as well as advance diversity and inclusion initiatives.

The Defense Information Systems Agency is searching for potential vendors that can help DISA’s chief financial officer maintain financial and accounting systems.

DISA released a sources sought notice Thursday on SAM.gov to let industry know of its plan for the recompete of financial management and system sustainment services to support accounting operations and compliance functions within the Office of the CFO.

The scope of work includes quality accounting, budget rate generation, execution reporting, variance analysis and business process enhancements.

OCFO CFA also requires assistance to develop software, perform analytical tasks and ensure the agency’s audit readiness. A selected contractor will also review and verify DISA’s workload related to foreign military sales cases.

Deloitte Consulting is the incumbent contractor for the services under a task order awarded through the Chief Information Officer–Solutions and Partners 3 contract vehicle.

DISA expects to issue the recompete award during the fourth quarter of the government’s 2023 fiscal year.

The FBI has issued an advisory informing financial institutions and investors that cybercriminals swindled approximately $42.7 million from 244 victims through fake cryptocurrency investment applications.

Criminals operating YiBit, one of the companies named in the advisory, took about $5.5 million from at least four victims between October 2021 and May 2022 by convincing them to download the YiBit app and make cryptocurrency deposits into wallets linked to their YiBit accounts, the FBI said Monday.

These victims received an email informing them to pay taxes on their investments to facilitate withdrawals. After doing so, they were unable to withdraw the funds.

The FBI warning also named another fraudulent crypto investment app associated with criminals operating under the corporate name Supayos. Two victims were defrauded with the Supay app.

The bureau called on financial institutions to inform clients of the fraudulent activity and encourage their customers to conduct online searches of their company names and logos to see if they are being associated with scams.

Investors should verify the legitimacy of an app and be cautious of unsolicited requests to download investment apps, according to the advisory.