Interview transcript

Terry Gerton Let’s start our new year by digging into what’s happening with the 8(a) program. It is probably under the tightest scrutiny in its 47-year history. Why does this administration care so much? What are they looking for?

Emily Murphy I think that there are a few things that have converged right now and that have sort of put 8(a) in the spotlight. And part of it is actually what the Biden administration did with the 8(a) program. But if you remember, there’s a statutory goal that says 5 percent of prime contract dollars are supposed to be awarded to small, socially and economically disadvantaged businesses. And 8(a) is the primary tool for making those awards. But President Biden, via executive order and some memos out of OMB, raised that goal to 15 percent, which brought a lot more money into the program, brought a more interest and scrutiny into the program, and led to the first of the lawsuits that we’ve seen in, you know, serious lawsuits we’ve seen in about 20 years since post-Adarand, about the 8(a) program. There was the Ultima case that was decided in ’23 that said SBA could no longer presume certain categories were socially disadvantaged. So that’s what led to people starting to look at the 8(a) program and put things in flux. The other thing actually goes back maybe about 10 years further, which was Congress back in 2013, 2014 looked at limitation on subcontracting and how did you make sure, not just in the 8(a) program but in all the socioeconomic programs, that if you’re giving work, setting aside work to a type of companies, the work was actually being done by those companies. And the old rules always said that 51 percent of the cost of the labor or 51 percent of the costs of the goods had to be done by the small business getting the work, 8(a), woman-owned, HUBZone, service deal, veteran, but it was really hard to figure out if anyone was following that because small businesses don’t usually engage in cost accounting. They certainly don’t have the cost basis of their subcontractors to figure it out. So you never could really figure out whether anyone was complying. And it created weird requirements for small businesses that we were hoping would grow into large businesses where it said, just you’re better off not teaming with anyone, just go it alone because you’re not gonna get in trouble. But then as soon as you’ve become a large business or an other-than-small business, we want you to start contracting with other small businesses. So Congress came in and said, all right, rather than this 51 percent of cost basis, we’re just gonna look at the dollars that are awarded to the company. And if, and we’re gonna start saying that 50 percent of the dollars that are rewarded to a company under any contract may be subcontracted to companies that are not similarly situated. So if an award went to a small business, they and other small businesses had to keep 50 percent of the dollars, and that they could use non-small businesses to do the remaining 50 percent of the work. They could work with other 8(a)s to meet that 50 percent goal and then the remaining 50 percent, they could used small businesses or women in small businesses or large businesses. But the plan was then to use the electronic subcontracting reporting system to track that and see whether or not that was being applied with. That hasn’t happened. But the changes, and it took a while to get the regulations in place to implement those, have now given us some insight to how subcontracting is, it’s made it much more easy to audit whether or not all small businesses, but in this case, 8(a)s, are following those rules. And there was the O’Keefe Media Group where they caught one company on saying that they were subcontracting more than I think they were allowed to under the program. So you had these changes of the goals which President Trump rolled back very beginning of January of 2025, but that didn’t change the fact that a lot of new money had come into the program and so the program was gonna get a lot more scrutiny. It sort of led us to where we are now.

Terry Gerton Well, the Pentagon has just announced that they’re going to conduct their own line-by-line review. What does the administration hope to learn separately from the SBA investigation by the DOD? Taking a deep dive.

Emily Murphy When I saw the secretary’s announcement on that, I thought it was interesting that he was making two different points. The first one was he wanted to make sure that all the contracts that were being awarded using the 8(a) program were following limitations of contracting. But he said that they were really gonna focus on those that were above $20 million. Now, sole source contracts above $20 million don’t go to just your average 8(a) company. There’s a cap on sole source awards, and it depends on whether it’s for goods or services. But it’s less than half of that amount. The only companies getting $20 million sole source awards through the 8(a) program are Alaska Native corporations, Native Hawaiian organizations, tribally-owned organization. They don’t have the same affiliation restrictions that traditional 8(a)s have, don’t the same management restrictions. So it’s a special subclass of 8(a)s and they said that when they focused on those who have $20 million, I thought it was interesting that they seemed to be looking at the larger 8(a) companies, the ones that have taken on more and more of this work.

Terry Gerton Should we read anything particular into that focus?

Emily Murphy I would think that that was the distinction I saw between the general 8(a) reviews taking place at SBA, the requests for review that were put out by Sen. Ernst (R-Iowa) and Senate Small Business and the work that was happening at the Pentagon. I also thought it was interesting that the Pentagon said the other thing they wanted to do was make sure that these contracts were for things that align with their priorities. Now that’s always a good thing to do. You don’t want to be spending money on things that don’t align with your priorities. But I thought it was an interesting take from the secretary’s announcement that the contracts that he was focusing on were those that were tribal organization-owned 8(a) companies.

Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Emily Murphy. She’s senior fellow at the George Mason University Baroni Center for Government Contracting and a former GSA administrator. Emily, let’s turn to the other agency that’s digging into the 8(a)s, Treasury. They’re looking at $9 billion of performance-based contracts. Where does that fit in this puzzle?

Emily Murphy The Treasury’s looking at similar issues with task orders and others issued under the 8(a) program to whether or not they met the requirements, but also it’s also getting into limitation on sub-contracting. So you’re seeing similar trends across all of the investigations. Well, the Secretary of War was talking about beltway bandits and Administrator Loeffler was talking instead about just looking at all 4,000 plus 8(a)s, Treasury is looking specifically at those that they awarded and that’s a good place to start for them and to make sure that they’re actually meeting, once again, that you’re not having what they’re calling a pass-through where, now one thing I do think is interesting is that this is all focused only on the 8(a) program where the pass-thru issue exists for all small business contracts and so if I were a small business, I’d making sure that any work that I’m doing, I wouldn’t assume that this is going to stop with the 8(a) companies. I think that the 8(a)s, because of that 15% goal in the prior administration are getting a lot of focus. But I would be concerned if I were another small business to make sure that I was documenting that I was following limitation on subcontracting.

Terry Gerton Let’s dig into that a little bit because the all of this activity collectively has sort of raised the level of angst among the government contracting community. If you were a legitimate small business 8(a) provider, what should you expect as these reforms move forward?

Emily Murphy If you’re following the rules, this shouldn’t itself be a fundamental challenge, with two caveats on that. The first one being, pause in the work and awards made to any 8(a) is going to change your pipeline and whether or not you’re able to exist. So if your pipeline was based on sole source awards of $4 million, $5 million, and there is a freeze on awards. That’s gonna put you in a more difficult spot in terms of does the agency that was going to make the award have the capacity to go out and run a competition? Will they do it as an 8(a) set aside rather than as a sole source? Does it need to be removed from the 8(a) program first in order for that to happen? So there’s some contracting challenges that go with that. The other challenge you’ve got is that if you look at the model deviation to part 19 of the FAR that was issued last summer. It changed the basis of award for 8(a) as well and it said that if 8(a) companies are on a multiple-award contract that, instead of doing sole sources to those 8(a)s you should do a competitive award and that if something has previously been in the 8(a) program and you want to instead award it to another socioeconomic group, say serviceable veterans or women, you no longer need to go to SBA and ask their permission. You can go ahead and do it on your own. So those are the challenges I’d be focused on more if I were an 8(a) company that was convinced it was complying with the limitation on subcontracting.

Terry Gerton And what do you think the administration is anticipating on the other side when they get these investigations complete and they see the results are we going to see tighter rules? Are we gonna see a new version of the 8(a) something completely different

Emily Murphy Well, Congress hasn’t really gotten self-involved in the 8(a) program in decades now. SBA is somewhat constrained as to what can or cannot change in the program on its own. And there are stakeholders on both sides of the 8(a) issue in Congress. You’ve got the ranking member on the House Small Business Committee has been a long time champion at the 8(a) program. Senators from states that have a lot of tribal contracting tend to be supportive of the program because it brings work back, a revenue back to their states and to communities that they consider to be underserved. So how much flexibility the administration will have to make structural changes to the program it remains to be seen and how much collaboration that they’re going to get? Are they going to take the results of that investigation and go to Congress and ask for changes? Or are they just going to change the practice of how they use the tools? Because again, there’s a 5% goal for awarding contracts to socially and economically disadvantaged — companies owned by socially and economically disadvantaged individuals. But there is no mandate that you must use the 8(a) program to do that. Does the administration then decide by administrative practice that they’re gonna pull back and they’re going to find other ways of meeting that goal?

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In 2012, a Defense Department inspector general report raised concerns about the limits of signature-based antivirus tools. The Senate Armed Services Committee echoed those concerns, acknowledging that the military’s cybersecurity system could only detect threats it already knew about. Worse, the system consumed so much communications capacity that commanders in low-bandwidth environments faced an impossible choice between operational security and mission execution.

More than a decade later, federal agencies are paying the price for ignoring that warning. The signature-based defenses that Congress questioned in 2012 are still protecting critical systems in 2025, and at the same time, adversaries have leapfrogged ahead with automation, AI, and constantly shifting tactics designed specifically to evade detection. The government’s failure to heed that warning established a dangerous pattern: Reactive defenses are always one step behind evolving threats. Today, that same approach leaves federal agencies vulnerable across multiple fronts — and email, the most universal communication channel, has become the easiest entry point for nation-state actors to exploit.

Chinese hackers impersonated a U.S. congressman — and federal defenses failed

In July, the Chinese state-sponsored cyber threat group APT41 as part of a spear-phishing campaign targeting trade groups and law firms ahead of critical U.S.-China trade discussions. Posing as Moolenaar, attackers asked recipients to share their feedback as part of a ploy to gather information, and included malware disguised as a draft proposal.

It should give government security leaders pause that this email evaded detection and successfully reached its targets. With malicious AI tools at their fingertips, adversaries (and their tactics) are becoming increasingly sophisticated — and more challenging to detect.

For decades, email has remained the leading gateway that cybercriminals leverage to infiltrate federal agencies. Email is a universal communication mechanism, and for federal agencies who frequently engage with the public, it must remain open and available. But recent attacks have exposed a sobering reality: Our federal infrastructure isn’t adapting quickly enough to keep up with threats, and vulnerabilities are growing.

Despite ongoing security awareness efforts and phishing security tests, many people still fail to recognize the risk that can come from a simple email. After all, when you’re using official systems, it’s easy to assume that once a message lands in your inbox, it’s already passed all the necessary checks. And as AI has made traditional phishing red flags — like a suspicious attachment or poor grammar — mostly obsolete, it’s not surprising that a recent phishing is now the starting point for 77% of advanced attacks.

Why government can’t keep up

Government bureaucracy moves methodically but slowly. It’s often the result of complex coordination across layers of hierarchy and competing priorities from multiple stakeholders. But when it comes to cybersecurity, this deliberative pace can create critical security gaps that deepen technical debt.

The challenge isn’t for lack of effort, as the DoD and other agencies have made real investments in modernization. But the security landscape has changed faster than policy can adapt. Defenses must move from reactive to adaptive. Future-proofing federal cybersecurity means embracing tools and strategies that don’t just chase yesterday’s threats using the same methods, but anticipate tomorrow’s with adaptive and modern techniques.

Here are ways government agencies can start to enact this approach:

• Revise BOD 18-01. While the 2017 directive includes several still-relevant protections, it doesn’t fully defend against newer, more advanced threats, particularly those that leverage AI to bypass legacy detection methods. This policy should now be assumed as baseline hygiene, not the ceiling for email security. Updated guidance must reflect the role of AI and behavioral analysis in identifying novel threats with no known signatures.
• Employ purpose-built, AI-native solutions. This administration has loudly declared the intention to move forward on AI, and in the new fiscal year, agencies have a timely opportunity to invest in tools that deliver impact without added complexity. Purpose-built, AI-native solutions offer a practical path forward, helping teams solve a specific problem — like detecting and stopping advanced email threats — without raising additional governance or risk concerns.
• Adopt a multi-layered security approach. Foundational measures like security awareness training and multi-factor authentication are still an essential part of any modern security program. By combining them with advanced, AI-native technologies that can more precisely detect anomalies, provide more tailored, sophisticated training, and better identify malicious activity, these measures will help ensure long-term protection against novel threats.

In this fiscal year, agencies will be expected to more widely embrace AI — a daunting but necessary shift. The focus should be on operationalizing AI to solve specific, labor-intensive tasks that drive mission impact. Email may seem routine, but it’s a vital link in mission execution and public trust. The Pentagon warned us 13 years ago that reactive defenses would fail. They were right. The question now is whether federal agencies will learn from that mistake, or whether we’ll be writing the same warnings in 2038 about the AI-powered threats we’re ignoring today.

Yejin Jang is head of government affairs at Abnormal AI.

The post The federal government ignored a cybersecurity warning for 13 years. Now hackers are exploiting the gap. first appeared on Federal News Network.

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OPINION — In the shadow of Mexico City's historic Palacio de Bellas Artes, global financial watchdogs will convene in February 2026 for the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Plenary and Working Group Meetings. In conference rooms far removed from South Asia’s violence, Pakistan will once again present itself as a responsible counterterrorism partner, armed with compliance reports, legislative amendments, and assurances of reform. On paper, Pakistan’s financial regulations increasingly resemble those of many developing democracies. On the ground, however, the networks that finance and enable terrorism continue to adapt and operate with troubling resilience. The widening gap between form and function is precisely what Western policymakers must confront as FATF prepares its next round of assessments.

The Compliance Illusion

Pakistan’s removal from the FATF grey list in 2022 was widely portrayed as a success story. Officials pointed to new anti-money laundering laws, terrorist financing prosecutions, and institutional reforms as evidence of a course correction. FATF itself acknowledged technical improvements, yet it also emphasized that effectiveness, not legislation, remains the ultimate benchmark. That distinction has proven critical.

Open-source reporting and documented financial intelligence patterns suggest that terrorist organizations such as Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) have not been dismantled but rather modernized. Recent documents reveal how these UN-designated outfits exploit humanitarian crises, such as the Gaza conflict, to funnel funds into terror activities. Under the guise of aid appeals and mosque reconstructions, figures like Hammad Azhar, son of JeM leader Masood Azhar, and Azhar’s brother Talha al-Saif orchestrate campaigns using digital wallets like EasyPaisa, SadaPay, and JazzCash, aggregating micro-donations and cryptocurrencies to evade detection. These efforts aggregate micro-donations and cryptocurrency transfers, often employing fragmented wallet structures and chain-hopping across platforms to avoid detection. Funds have reportedly supported militant infrastructure, including the establishment of more than 300 Mosques and the reconstruction of locations historically linked to LeT training facilities damaged during India’s 2025 Operation Sindoor.

This pattern reflects more than opportunism. Pakistan’s legal framework may align with FATF’s 40 recommendations on paper, but operational enforcement remains deeply inconsistent. Sanctioned individuals such as Hafiz Talha Saeed have led public rallies in Lahore under police protection, issuing threats against Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In 2025, senior Pakistani legislature Rana Muhammad Qasim Noon reportedly visited militant-affiliated reconstruction sites alongside local officials, revealing overt collaboration between state and non-state actors. Recruitment drives disguised as religious gatherings, often coordinated with Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam networks, have featured speeches praising Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, delivered by JeM commander Masood Ilyas Kashmiri at facilities such as Markaz Shohada-e-Islam in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Together, these cases point to a long-standing “management” model of extremism. Militant groups are not dismantled but rebranded, with political fronts such as the Pakistan Markazi Muslim League contesting elections while violence is normalized as a political instrument. As Greece-based policy analyst Dimitra Staikou has argued, this model exports instability through regional alignments and shields militancy behind formal democratic processes.

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Why Mexico City Matters

The February 2026 FATF meetings come at a moment when Pakistan’s engagement with the United States and Europe is deepening even as its internal security situation deteriorates. Militant violence has surged significantly, driven by attacks from the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan and Baloch insurgent groups. Rather than prompting a clean break with all forms of militancy, this instability risks reinforcing the proxy logic that FATF scrutiny is meant to dismantle. For Western policymakers, the danger lies in conflating cooperation with convergence in security priorities. Intelligence sharing, access agreements, or economic partnerships do not necessarily reflect aligned counterterrorism priorities. As I argued previously in The Milli Chronicle, Pakistan’s strategic incentives continue to reward selective tolerance of militant actors, particularly those oriented toward India. FATF’s effectiveness framework exists to test whether states are willing to disrupt these incentives, not simply mask them with procedural compliance.

FATF’s 2025 Comprehensive Update on Terrorist Financing Risks underscores the urgency. The report highlights a marked increase in hybrid digital methods, consistent with Pakistan-linked entities shifting from banks to fintech platforms to evade oversight. Although Pakistan exited the grey list in 2022 after four years of economic strain, FATF President Elisa de Anda Madrazo warned in October 2025 that the removal was “not bulletproof,” citing unregulated digital transactions as a continuing vulnerability.

Mexico City should therefore serve as a turning point. US and EU delegations should press for outcome-based evaluations focused on sustained investigations, verifiable asset seizures, and the dismantling of facilitation networks. Particular scrutiny must be directed toward digital payment systems, informal charities, and micro-donation models that exploit regulatory blind spots. Western governments should also coordinate more closely to monitor cross-border flows linked to high-risk jurisdictions, ensuring that Pakistan’s reforms translate into measurable disruption rather than rhetorical reassurance.

Conclusion: Choosing Substance Over Stability Theater

Pakistan will argue that renewed scrutiny risks destabilizing a fragile state. That argument has been persuasive before, and it has failed before. Stability built on tolerated militancy is not stability at all; it is deferred risk. Western capitals should therefore anchor their engagement around two imperatives.

First, international partners should move beyond accepting legislative reforms and instead condition high-level diplomatic, security, and economic engagement with Pakistan on verifiable enforcement outcomes. This means tying cooperation to demonstrable actions such as sustained terrorist-financing prosecutions, asset freezes against UN- and US-designated individuals, and the disruption of digital fundraising networks linked to groups like JeM and LeT.

Second, Washington and Brussels should treat Pakistan-linked terrorist financing as a transnational financial integrity threat, not a regional security issue. This requires enhanced monitoring of fintech platforms, mobile wallets, charities, and micro-donation systems used by diaspora-linked networks in Europe and North America. FATF has repeatedly warned that terrorist groups increasingly exploit digital payments and new financial technologies to evade traditional controls. The EU and US should expand joint typology sharing, require higher due-diligence thresholds for transactions linked to high-risk jurisdictions, and protect activists and journalists targeted by transnational repression tied to Pakistan’s security apparatus.

In Mexico City, Pakistan will speak in the language of compliance and reform. Beyond the conference halls, the true test will be whether the networks that finance violence are finally dismantled or quietly allowed to endure. If Western governments choose substance over symbolism, this moment can mark a turning point. If not, the paperwork will pass, and the risks will return—more adaptive, more opaque, and more dangerous than before.

The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.

Have a perspective to share based on your experience in the national security field? Send it to Editor@thecipherbrief.com for publication consideration.

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Kanye West has denied he is a Nazi and taken out a full-page advert in the Wall Street Journal to apologise for antisemitic comments. 

Footage from a hospital in Tehran shows at least 31 bodies piled inside and seven body bags outside.

The discovery of a crack on the Madrid-Barcelona line follows two recent deadly crashes in the country.

 

• A top House Republican is calling on Department of Homeland Security officials to testify in front of Congress. Homeland Security Committee Chairman Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.) formally requested testimony from the heads of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Garbarino said he wants to make sure those agencies are effectively using their resources. His letter comes in the aftermath of another deadly shooting by a federal agent in Minnesota as part of the Trump administration's immigration crackdown.
  (Garbarino requests ICE, CBP, USCIS testimony for upcoming oversight hearing - House Homeland Security Committee )
• A government watchdog has found that telework is not a main contributor to declines in agency customer service. Across three agencies used as case studies, a new report from the Government Accountability Office found that each had declines in customer service due to factors like staffing shortages or funding issues, not telework. Each agency that GAO researched also faced at least some level of recruitment challenges, where employees either left or considered leaving for a job with more telework flexibility. The report comes about a year after President Donald Trump ordered all federal employees to work in the office full-time.
  (Report on federal telework - Government Accountability Office)
• The Defense Department’s long-awaited National Defense Strategy is a sharp departure from the first Trump administration’s strategy that focused on deterring China as the country’s top priority. The new strategy, unusually political for a military document, shifts its focus toward defending the U.S. homeland and prioritizing dominance in the Western Hemisphere. It calls for securing U.S. borders, maritime approaches and airspace, including through the Golden Dome for America initiative and a renewed focus on countering unmanned aerial threats. U.S. allies and partners, the document said, will “have an essential role to play but not as the dependencies of the last generation.”
  (DoD’s long-awaited National Defense Strategy focuses on homeland - Defense Department)
• The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is helping agencies get ready for a post-quantum world. CISA has released a list of product categories that use post-quantum cryptography standards. The list shows that some hardware and software products, like cloud services and collaboration software, have adopted partially post-quantum encryption standards. Many other technology products are just starting the transition. CISA’s release of the list is an important step as agencies plan out their migration to the new cryptographic standards. Cybersecurity officials are concerned that a quantum computer in the not too distant future will be able to break traditional encryption methods.
  (CISA releases product categories list to propel post-quantum cryptography adoption - Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency)
• The federal agencies that saw the most employees leave in 2025, either voluntarily or involuntarily, were large departments like Defense and Agriculture. But according to data from the Office of Personnel Management, when looking at employee separations as a percentage of their total workforce size, USAID, the Office of the National Cyber Director and the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service top the list.
  (The federal workforce changed drastically in 2025. Here’s how. - Federal News Network)
• The Army signed another enterprisewide software agreement directly with a software provider. The Army added Appian to its growing list of enterprisewide software contracts with original equipment manufacturers, or OEMs. The service agreed to a 10-year deal with the low-code, no-code platform provider that has a $500 million ceiling. The contract consolidates six existing contracts for Appian tools. The new deal includes any new software licenses, maintenance, support services and cloud services task orders. This contract comes four months after the Army signed a similar enterprisewide 10-year deal with Palantir that has a $10 billion ceiling.
  (Army consolidates contracts, signs deal with low-code, no-code provider - SAM.gov)
• Congress is once again raising concerns about rising costs, staffing levels and an expanding mission at the Pentagon’s cost assessment and program evaluation office. CAPE has faced scrutiny over the years for taking on an advocacy rather than advisory role. The House Armed Services Committee even proposed eliminating the office altogether. While Congress stopped short of shutting down the office, the fiscal 2024 defense policy bill required the Defense Department to overhaul how it operates. Now, lawmakers want Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to submit a detailed plan on how the department plans to streamline and optimize CAPE while reducing the number of contracted personnel within the office. Lawmakers said any effort to shrink the office cannot come at the expense of its core cost assessment functions.
  (Congress presses DoD to rein in growing costs, contractor reliance at CAPE - House.gov)
• NASA SEWP is implementing key sections of the Federal Acquisition Regulation rewrite to let users set up blanket purchase agreements or BPAs on top of the governmentwide acquisition contract. The program office said under the new FAR Part 8, agency customers can create the BPAs for recurring purchases from one or more suppliers for pre-defined products and services. NASA said the benefits of establishing a BPA include streamlined ordering and cost savings through quantity discounts and reduced administrative requirements.
  (NASA now allows BPAs on SEWP V - NASA SEWP)

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Interview transcript

Terry Gerton We’re going to talk about drones. The analyst market predicts a $355 billion drone market by 2026. That’s amazing. What is driving that massive increase?

James McDanolds I think the drive behind that massive increase is the fact that we are now getting to a point where the FAA rules for what’s called Part 108 is supposedly going to be released this year. And what that does is changes the scale and the way that drones are operated. In short, it allows drones to be operated beyond the pilot’s visual line of sight, and it allows multiple drones to operate by one operator or pilot. So what does that do? Well, with our current rules and regulations, you always have to have the pilot have eyes on the aircraft, unless you have a beyond visual line of site waiver. Now those are and far between. Now with standard rules to be able to fly beyond visual line of sight. Instead of me having to fly all the way out to, say, Scott City, Kansas to do wind turbine inspections, we could have a drone parked out there at the wind turbine farm. I could wake up from my bed, walk over to my computer, connect to the drone over the internet, and fly it from my home instead. But not just the drone at that one farm, it could be drones across multiple farms across multiple states. Now you don’t need to have a qualified operator be on location for every wind turbine inspection. You can have them be remote and operating multiple drones, making the operation more efficient. And not just one drone at a time, I could be flying maybe four or five, even 10, maybe even a hundred, doing turbine inspections all at once, which if you think about it, decreases the overall cost of operation.

Terry Gerton It seems like a recipe for attention deficit.

James McDanolds Well it does kind of transform in the past. I’ve been able to fly under a waiver that allowed one pilot to fly up to 10 aircraft at once. It does transition the mentality of a drone operator from just monitoring the aircraft and making sure everything’s working properly and being active, if need to, to being more of like an air traffic controller, but for drones instead of live aircraft and for the drones under your control, not necessarily for all the drones in the airspace. So it definitely changes the mentality a bit and it does take a lot of attention and a bit of multitasking for sure.

Terry Gerton And that’s different from the way we operate today because it’s one pilot per drone and mostly within a visual line of sight.

James McDanolds Correct.

Terry Gerton So this kind of opens up this concept of drones as a service. We’ve talked about software as a surface, but now people could buy drones as service. What would that mean in practice?

James McDanolds So it can mean different things. There’s different profiles that some companies are already working with under what we call a beyond visual line of sight or multi on-crewed aircraft systems waiver. And that means that you can now, say if someone wants to have a drone on a construction site and have that drone do a, what we call, project update photos and it takes photos and images once a week or maybe multiple times a week at that location. Well instead of having to have the operator come with it, you could have what’s called a drone in a box system. So there’s systems out there like a DJI dock or Percepto docking station or Skydio docks. So, essentially it’s this box that you power, you put a power connector to it or provide power to it. You plug in the ethernet or you have an internet wireless modem connected to it and it provides the ability for it to stay powered on 24/7. And you can connect to it over the internet at any time as needed. So instead of having the operator come out with the drone and all the equipment each time they need to do a flight at that location to the service provider, they could set the drone in a box at a location, set it, forget it, and then have the operator connect to that aircraft, fly the aircraft, collect all the needed data, and then provide that data to whoever is purchasing the use of that aircraft as a service.

Terry Gerton I’m speaking with James McDanold’s. He’s the director of uncrewed technology programs at the Sonoran Desert Institute. So there are some countries that are already kind of modeling this approach. What should we learn from them in their early adoption?

James McDanolds There’s a lot of things to learn. We are in somewhat different environments for the countries that have adapted this faster than we have. And that is in cases like, Zipline is a good company. They are a drone delivery company and they have nationwide operations in a multitude of countries outside of the United States. They have some operations here in the United states that are under waiver that they’re conducting operations for but it’s not at the same scale. Now companies like those and others that have learned how to operate those drones at scale and beyond visual line of sight and multiple at once can take all those lessons learned and safety lessons learned, because now it’s not just one to one, it’s one to many, and it’s at a larger scale and it is in an airspace system that is now more complicated than the countries that they’ve operated in beforehand because countries that may have operated in maybe have two, three, four international flights with maybe some general aviation aircraft here and there. Now in the United States we have thousands of flights every day in the airspace as well as a lot of general aviation and hobbyist pilots out there. So that’s the reason the FAA has had to collect all this data and I think that is one challenge that will still be left is saying okay we’re going to integrate this as best we know with the data we have. We may need to make further increases in safety changes to make sure that we’re meeting that environmental change in comparison to where it’s been done overseas.

Terry Gerton It sounds like it increases security risks as well. Drones, unauthorized drones could be in different kinds of airspaces or for mega events. You may have drones all over the place and how will the FAA know which ones are supposed to be there and which ones aren’t?

James McDanolds So, I love that question, very good question. Right now, the FAA has what’s called Remote ID, and Remote ID is required for all drones, even ones that are not flying commercially under part 107. And what Remote ID does is put a small module on a drone that broadcasts the aircraft’s name, type, altitude, and location. And if a drone does not have that on board and it’s outside of what’s called a free zone, it’s an area where hobbyists can go that it’s pre-approved to fly out, most likely your aviation models, aeronautics club areas that are made for our radio controlled aircraft line as a hobby. If it’s not within that zone and it doesn’t have remote ID on it, it should not be there at all. It should not be allowed to fly at all, so that’s an identifier. There’s apps that you can see the remote IDs that are being broadcasted by drones. So that’s how currently both the public and the FAA can know who’s supposed to be there and who’s not.

Terry Gerton One thing to be able to identify them, it’s another to be able to eliminate them.

James McDanolds Yes, that is true. And that gets challenging as we’ve seen in conflicts over in Ukraine because both sides have been combating with, you know, frequency jamming and other things as well, but … now everyone’s referred to fiber optic lines and fiber optic cables that can be used to control these without necessarily jamming them. Well, when that becomes the case, the only other option is some form of kinetic or even — there’s individuals and companies that have created drones with netting capture systems where another drone will go up, track this other aircraft and deploy a net to capture it and then it’s hanging from this other drone and it brings that drone back. So there’s been some creative solutions that are coming out for those kinds of aircraft that aren’t supposed to be there. In a situation where obviously you don’t want them to be.

Terry Gerton You talked early on about part 108, the regulatory change that’s coming from the FAA. Are there other regulations that will need to go along with that or other processes to implement it that you’ll be watching for?

James McDanolds Yes, and one of them was just released near the end of last year, and that is the process for drone delivery companies when they want to start up a new operations area. They have to do essentially a site survey, a large-scale site survey to say, okay, what’s our airspace? What’s our ground environment look like? What’s the air traffic around the area? What are the obstacles that we have to contend with, both man-made and natural? That we have to evaluate for safety and then submit as a application almost, if you will, to the FAA to say, okay, we want to start operations here. Here’s the due diligence that we’ve done in order to start operation in that area. So even before anything, even before ground is broken, a safety evaluation must be done for the flight operation that they plan to conduct at scale under Part 108.

Terry Gerton You have said, though, that the real constraint here isn’t regulation, it’s talent. Tell us about what Sonoran Desert Institute is doing to train the folks who may be having to do these kinds of multi-drone controllers or other sorts of new technology management.

James McDanolds Well, certainly. So one of the things that we’re doing, and it’s not just about multi UAS controller beyond visual line of sight, recently on December 23, the Federal Communications Commission actually banned foreign-made drones from being sold in the United States. So now it’s not just about having competent pilots to expand to meet this new commercial need that’s coming into place because of part 108. It’s also more individuals who can build, design, flight test, and validate aircraft that are now going to have to be more built in the Unites States and for manufacturers in the Untied States. So that’s one of the key things we focus on is not just operations of, you know, visual line of sight, but operations and control for multitude of aircraft at once, how to handle that, how does that operation mindset look differently? And then even more importantly, how does one get into developing, validating, and producing on crewed aircraft systems? Because that is definitely a need that we have right now in the industry and we’ve had beforehand because there’s not a lot of suppliers out there or creators out there and it’s not just the drones themselves. It’s the components that go into the drones. Drones are like a cool little puzzle that have a ton of electronics and a ton of software that all come together to make these things fly and usable for different industries. So we try to train on that, not just for the drone itself, but also for those individual components and softwares as well.

The post The drone economy is about to take off fast, a $355B market and a new rule could make Drones-as-a-Service the next big thing first appeared on Federal News Network.

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OPINION — The United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine reported that 14,383 civilians were killed in Ukraine, 673 of them children, as of late 2025. Russia has intensified attacks on Ukraine’s power grid, generating facilities, and heating infrastructure, in efforts to disrupt electricity, heat, and water services – especially in winter. Clearly, Russia is targeting Ukraine’s civilian population.

The mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, recently told Reuters that Kyiv, with a population of 3.6 million people, has only about half the electricity that it needs as it faces its most severe wartime energy crisis, following waves of Russian attacks on its infrastructure.

As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine enters its fourth year, Ukrainian casualties are estimated at around 400,000, with civilian casualties rising, according to the United Nations.

The Laws of War are clear: intentionally targeting civilians is prohibited; civilians should never be the objective of an attack. Even more specifically, a combatant should avoid or reduce harm to civilian infrastructure.

The Cipher Brief brings expert-level context to national and global security stories. It’s never been more important to understand what’s happening in the world. Upgrade your access to exclusive content by becoming a subscriber.

The International Criminal Court has accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of war crimes for the unlawful deportation and transfer of Ukrainian children from occupied territories to Russia, while a few UN entities, and other civilian organizations monitoring the war in Ukraine, maintain that Mr. Putin is also guilty of the indiscriminate bombing of civilian infrastructure.

It’s clear: Russia has repeatedly targeted Ukraine’s power grid, generation facilities, and heating infrastructure, aiming to disrupt electricity, heat, and water services – especially in winter. These attacks are not isolated to the Kyiv, but, rather, part of a large, coordinated plan to target all regions in Ukraine.

Ukraine has reported tens of thousands of energy infrastructure facilities have been damaged since 2022, damaging generation plants, substations, heating plants, and transmission lines. And at least 18 major combined heat and power plants have been destroyed or seriously damaged, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Russian strikes have left hundreds of thousands of people with no central heating during sub-zero weather, a widespread development throughout Ukraine. Indeed, officials and humanitarian groups are warning that millions of Ukrainians are at heightened risk this winter due to lack of heat, electricity, and water amid the intense cold. UN officials described the situation as a worsening humanitarian crisis.

Russia has systematically targeted civilian energy and heating infrastructure, not just military sites, with repeated missile and drone strikes aimed at power plants, grids, and heating systems, affecting thousands of facilities. The result is widespread blackouts and heating loss for civilians, especially during harsh winter with sub-zero temperatures, creating a serious humanitarian situation.

Mr. Putin’s strategy is to target civilians with the intensification of bombings against Ukraine’s infrastructure that provides heat, water, and electricity to the Ukrainian people. These are violations of the Laws of War, and the International Criminal Court should immediately commence with hearings on Russia’s indiscriminate bombing of civilian infrastructure, resulting in the death of thousands of Ukrainian civilians. Clearly, Mr. Putin is targeting Ukraine’s civilian population, a war crime.

Joseph R. DeTrani

The author is the former associate director of national intelligence. All statements of fact, opinion or analysis expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official positions or views of the U.S. government. Nothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying U.S. government authentication of information or endorsement of the author’s views.

This column by Cipher Brief Expert Ambassador Joseph DeTrani was first published in The Washington Times

Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief because National Security is Everyone’s Business.

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Interview transcript

Terry Gerton Mitchell, it’s great to see you face to face. We’re recording from your office on the Capitol today.

Mitchell Miller That’s right, we are squeezed into my little booth here on the House side. We’re three stories up, but we look down on the National Mall if you’ve just walked down the hall. So it’s great to have you here.

Terry Gerton Thanks for the invitation. It’s kind of quiet up on the Hill today, but there’s a lot to talk about that happened last week. Let’s start with the House completing all their spending bills. I guess the biggest surprise was that they got the DHS bill through. What did it take to get agreement on that?

Mitchell Miller You know, it was really interesting, I think, because they were so close to the finish line that they decided, even though there are a lot of reservations on the Democratic side, there were these seven Democrats that said, we are going to vote for this regardless. And that was really the key. And there was also a lot discussion, as you know, about Republicans, about whether they would have enough people, because we’ve had absences. The margin is always super tight. But I think they were confident enough that that was actually the first bill of a series of bills that they took up. So it seems like House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) finally knew that he was going to have the votes on that, which is not always the case. And then they were made able to move on to the omnibus with the package of defense and transportation, education, etc. So that final omnibus, so that they could get out of town basically before the weather hit.

Terry Gerton And do you think those agreements that they finally got through on the House side will carry over into the Senate?

Mitchell Miller I think for the most part they will. There are a few items in the overall omnibus that could give pause to some members of the Senate, both Republicans and Democrats. On the Democratic side, we’re still going to have the issue with DHS and whether or not they’re going to go ahead with ICE. A lot of Democrats have said they will just not support it no matter what. The other interesting issue, which was kind of a surprise last week was the House effectively jammed the Senate by approving this provision that says, basically they cannot allow for the suing of the government in connection with these calls that were monitored during the Jan. 6 investigation. Senators were really upset about it, particularly, obviously Republican senators. And so they had included that provision earlier. The Republicans in the House actually went along with Democrats and reversed it. So. They would have to take that out of the omnibus if they are going to pass it. So I think it’s going to stay in there and there will be some grumbling among Republican senators, but I think that’s going stay in the legislation.

Terry Gerton Well, the president said last week he’s anticipating a shutdown again. Does that seem practical?

Mitchell Miller That was also kind of a surprise to a lot of people because there has been a little bit of a chest beating here in the House, particularly about the fact that they actually got all these 12 appropriations bills done. Now, granted, they were supposed to be done by Oct. 1, so let’s not praise ourselves too much. But nonetheless, the fact that happened, there was a lot confidence moving forward. And so when the president said that he thought that there might be a shutdown, I think a lot of people read that as basically an effort, another effort to ding the Democrats to say, if anything bad happens, it’s going to be the Democrats’ fault. So he’s kind of setting the stage just in case that happens. But I don’t think, barring some really surprising developments, that we are looking at a partial government shutdown.

Terry Gerton That’s good to hear. Just sort of one other question while we’re on this topic. The Senate was out on recess last week. This giant storm has really snarled travel. Do they have enough days left to get through the remaining bills, get them approved, get them to the president to get signed in time.

Mitchell Miller Well, as much as the senators have a lot of a pull, they can’t really do anything about the weather, right? So they are dealing with all of these issues that every American across the country is dealing with. I think what will happen though, is the Senate, as you know, can essentially create its own rules. So if they go by the book and they go through everything like they would normally do, they would not have the time to do this. But I think they are going to get these agreements during this week. Where they can speed things up and eventually get this done. Even if it weren’t to be done by Jan. 30, I think it’s going to be within a day or two.

Terry Gerton That’s good to hear. I’m speaking with Mitchell Miller. He’s Capitol Hill correspondent for WTOP. Mitchell, beyond appropriations, there were other things that happened last week. Let’s talk about health insurance executives who testified on the Hill. What does that mean for future agreements around healthcare policy and the ACA subsidies?

Mitchell Miller Well, that was a really interesting hearing last week because you had Republicans and Democrats kind of in reverse roles in this case, Republicans were going after health executives and saying, why are you increasing these rates? Why is everything going so, so expensively? And then on the Democratic side, they were actually defending a lot of the CEOs and these people that are high up in the health industry saying that they are doing the best that they can, they want to move this forward. And I think part of that is because democrats are still trying to keep things somewhat status quo and get this extension of these ACA subsidies. However, I really don’t think that these ACS subsidies, at least the three-year plan that the Democrats want, is going to move forward. It seems like after we had a lot of really positive developments over the last few weeks, it got kind of bogged down again. So we’re, you know, again, debating issues about health savings accounts. Whether or not the middleman can be taken out with pharmaceuticals, that type of thing. So I think that’s going to take longer than people anticipate.

Terry Gerton There was another, maybe some progress last week on crypto that got sidelined for a while and came back. Tell us about what’s going on there.

Mitchell Miller Yeah, there’s a couple of things related to crypto in the agriculture department, which actually has some of the regulatory oversight related to it. They did advance things and they are moving forward and feel pretty good about it. However, on the flip side in the banking committee, which has done a lot of work related to regulatory issues, especially how much sway should the SEC, for example, have in regulating crypto? Things have bogged down a little bit over there. So, it looks like that this week, the Agriculture Committee is actually going to advance some of the legislation that they’ve been working on. However, in the Senate Banking Committee, which is more of a broader regulatory look at things, that one’s going to take longer, and we’re hearing that may not really get taken up until February or March.

Terry Gerton Are the folks behind these bills integrating the provisions to make sure that they make sense when they finally pass together?

Mitchell Miller I think they are. Right now, I think we’re kind of in that, you know, sausage making stage where they have to kind of reconcile everything once they get out. But as you know there’s been a big push to get crypto legislation and we keep hearing every few months that they’re right on the precipice and then something comes up. There was a big crypto company actually recently that had some reservations about it. So I think a lot of lobbyists in connection with crypto are trying to work things into the legislation some more over the next few weeks.

Terry Gerton Well, there’s new talk starting really just last week about another giant reconciliation bill. You can only have one a year, so they’re starting to talk about one for 2026. What might we see if that effort moves forward?

Mitchell Miller Well, as you know, Republicans are really concerned about affordability issues, despite what the president says sometimes about it being a hoax. He’s been out there trying to speak about it and Republicans on Capitol Hill are really nervous about that right now. So they, they want to include things that will lower the costs of living for people, address housing is one that you hear a lot about, they really want to do something with that, but there is a little bit of a division within the GOP. Some people just think that there’s just not enough energy to get things passed again after the Big, Beautiful Bill from this past year. On the other hand, a lot of Republicans are worried that what will happen to them is what happened earlier with the Democrats when the Democrats passed their large piece of legislation. And that is this whole idea that, oh, if we just get out there and we sell the bill and tell people what’s in it and let them know that we extended these tax cuts, all of these things, that they’ll magically start thinking, oh, well, I’m going to vote Republican again, or I’m gonna vote against Democrats. And I think there is some skepticism about whether that will work politically. And that’s why you hear about this big push for another reconciliation bill. And in fact, OMB head Russ Vought was actually speaking with Republicans recently about that, saying they really need to try to do something. So it’s really going to be interesting to see what happens over the next few months whether they can get some momentum for that.

Terry Gerton So two questions to follow on. One, are there enough specific proposals that would actually address affordability to make a bill? And second, timing. That would come out just before the midterm. So how does it all fit together?

Mitchell Miller Right. I think there is a bit of skepticism about whether or not there is enough specifically to get into a big bill. You know, if you’re going to try to sell another huge piece of legislation, but you only have a handful of things that are in it, you know, maybe there are some ones specific to housing that a lot of people could get behind, but beyond some of these other issues, it looks like it’s a little bit vague. And then to your point about the timing, You know, Congress in this coming year is going to be out a lot because it’s a midterm election year. People are going to be on the road. We’ve already had one of the members of the House who has not voted more than two dozen times because he’s campaigning in Texas. So that type of dynamic is going make it very, very hard, I think, even with the Republicans still in power to try to get some kind of reconciliation legislation passed.

The post With House spending bills done, focus turns to the Senate where work is expected to wrap up this week, ahead of the Jan. 30 deadline first appeared on Federal News Network.

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The UK has lost its measles elimination status from the World Health Organisation (WHO) after vaccination coverage plateaued and cases surged.

The British operations of Claire's, the accessories retailer, have collapsed into administration just four months after their last brush with insolvency, putting more than 1,000 high street jobs at risk.

Facial recognition technology is to be rolled out to every police force in the country, under sweeping reforms announced by the home secretary.

The Office of Personnel Management’s launch of a new data website earlier this month offered plenty more specifics on how the Trump administration reshaped the federal workforce over the last year.

OPM’s website depicts information and graphics on various changes the federal government saw throughout 2025, such as trends in overall staffing size, telework hours and much more.

But beyond that, the information OPM published contains further trends related to the federal workforce. The data, available through November 2025, provides even more insights into what exactly changed for agencies since President Donald Trump took office.

By total numbers, the agencies that saw the most employees leave their workforce — either voluntarily or involuntarily — were large departments like Defense and Agriculture.

With further analysis of OPM’s data, though, the trends show just how deeply federal employee separations impacted agencies. When broken down by how many employees left as a percentage of the total agency workforce, other agencies’ names emerge at the top of the list.

Notably, agencies that the Trump administration targeted throughout 2025, like USAID and the Education Department, saw much steeper levels of employees leaving, compared with some of the larger government departments. Although the federal employee separations were lower in number for these agencies, they represent much larger portions of their total workforce.

OPM’s data on federal employee separations covers those who quit their jobs, who were subject to a reduction in force (RIF), or who retired, as well as employees who transferred out of an agency, or who had a temporary position that expired sometime last year.

Regardless of the separation method, virtually all agencies saw significant federal employee separations throughout 2025, including all 24 CFO Act agencies.

Federal employee separations over the course of the year also varied from month to month. Depending on the time of year that employees officially separated from their jobs, clearer trends begin to emerge.

September was by far the highest month for federal workforce separations. More than 125,000 federal employees left their jobs in that month alone, coinciding with most agencies’ deadline for the deferred resignation program (DRP). Some agencies delayed their official DRP deadline to the end of December, but OPM data for that month is not yet available.

The types of jobs that saw the biggest numbers of employees leaving throughout 2025 also reveal key trends in the federal workforce data. Notably, governmentwide job series such as IT managers and HR managers are within the top 10 positions that saw employees exiting their jobs, according to OPM’s data.

Other job series like contact representatives also faced significant employee separations throughout the year, most notably at the IRS.

The post The federal workforce changed drastically in 2025. Here’s how. first appeared on Federal News Network.

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U.S. service members and their Italian counterparts gathered for the 82nd anniversary commemoration of Operation Shingle at the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery in Nettuno, Italy.