Conference:  Defcon 31

Authors: Dr. Craig Martell Chief Digital and AI Officer at the Department of Defense

2023-08-01

In 1979, NORAD was duped by a simulation that caused NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense) to believe a full-scale Soviet nuclear attack was underway. This only legitimized the plot in the 1983 classic, War Games, of the possibility of a computer making unstoppable, life-altering decisions. On the 40th anniversary of the movie that predicted the potential role of AI in military systems, LLMs have become a sensation and increasingly, synonymous with AI. This is a dangerous detour in AI’s development, one that humankind can’t afford to take. Join Dr. Martell for an off-the-cuff discussion on what’s at stake as the Department of Defense presses forward to balance agility with accountability and the role hackers play in ensuring the responsible and secure use of AI from the boardroom to the battlefield.

Conference:  KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2022

Authors: Chip Zoller, Brandt Keller

2022-10-27

Getting an environment approved for production can be a painful process, case in point government and Department of Defense (DoD) which require the strictest of controls be met, however this is true for other highly-regulated industries. Engineering and security teams must validate that the security controls are satisfied while continuing to audit, except these are often siloed teams. Reviewing these standards is still an archaic and painful process of managing a spreadsheet or checking text boxes. In this talk, we will share how the Department of Defense is solving this by ensuring compliance through policy in order to capitalize on the promise of DevSecOps. Using Big Bang, a tool for providing secure-by-default environments with pre-integrated tools, and Iron Bank, a DoD repository of signed and hardened application images, along with Kyverno, a Kubernetes-native policy engine, teams are able to get compliant faster and reach mission-ready status sooner.

Conference:  Transform X 2022

Authors: Emily Harding, Stephanie Halcrow, Paul Lekas, John Dulin, Lee Hudson

2022-10-19

The Department of Defense needs to become an attractive market for commercial companies and startups to apply innovative products and services in a meaningful way. Many potential technology providers believe the barriers to working with the DoD are too high. Congress and the department have created several initiatives and organizational structures to lower those barriers, but the DoD still struggles with transitioning innovation into production programs.With so few examples of new technology companies gaining footholds in the DoD, many perceive that the department is engaged in “innovation theater” by pursuing the appearance of innovation while maintaining institutional resistance to the concept. Without a real culture of innovation, the DoD risks losing ground to other entities willing to leverage commercial technology.This panel will discuss how maintaining political reputations and the fear of failure holds back innovation. They also will cover practical approaches for how the DoD can adopt pioneering technology more quickly, including revising the consortium model, providing better education about how AI and other advanced technologies work, and simplifying the procurement process to attract more private-sector technology companies.

Conference:  Transform X 2021

Authors: Michael “Rabbi” Harasimowicz, Rachael Martin

2021-10-07

Scale’s Head of Federal, Mark Valentine, will explore AI and ML applications for DoD and the IC with Lockheed Martin’s Mike Harasimowicz and Rachel Martin from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. The panel will discuss the problem sets the Government seeks to use AI/ML to solve, review the current state of government use of AI/ML, set a vision for the future, and examine the path to achieve it.