Author Archive

Frank Konkel

Vice President, Editorial

Frank Konkel
Frank Konkel is vice president of editorial and an editor at large for Nextgov/FCW. He writes about the intersection of government and technology. Frank began covering tech in 2013 upon moving to the Washington, D.C., area after getting his start in journalism working at local and state issues at daily newspapers in his home state of Michigan. Frank was born and raised on a dairy farm and graduated from Michigan State University.
Threats

Pentagon UFO Chief: ‘No Credible Evidence’ of Aliens, Yet

Sean Kirkpatrick, who heads the Defense Department’s All-Domain Anomaly Office, briefed the Senate Wednesday.

Policy

Lawmakers Introduce Bill to Ban TikTok, Citing National Security

Bipartisan bill follows FBI warnings about Beijing's sway over the world's largest social-media platform.

Business

Pentagon Splits $9B Cloud Effort Among Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Oracle

All four had been shortlisted for JWCC, DOD's do-over of its giant JEDI cloud contract effort.

Policy

Biden Invokes Defense Production Act to Boost Clean Energy Manufacturing

“Reducing America’s dependence on gas and oil is critical to U.S. national security,” DepSecDef Hicks said.

Threats

Iran-Linked Hackers Probing US Networks, Intel Agencies Warn

Active “cyber operations against government and commercial networks” may seek to take advantage of defenders' focus on Russia.

Threats

Biden ‘Prepared to Respond’ If Russia Cyberattacks US

The White House also announced sanctions to limit Russia’s access to cutting-edge technologies.

Threats

US Spy Chief Warns Government Is Classifying Too Much Data

As the amount of data soars, so does the burden of reviewing classified data for its eventual declassification.

Business

Amazon Offers 2nd Air-Gapped Cloud For Top-Secret Data

The new cloud's data centers are "more than 1,000 miles" away from the northern-Virginia complex that serves U.S. intelligence and defense agencies.

Policy

NSA Awards Secret Up-to-$10B Contract to Amazon

A Microsoft protest of the decision has revealed some details about the U.S. intelligence community's second multi-billion dollar cloud award of the year.

Business

Pentagon Cancels JEDI Cloud Contract

The Defense Department will opt for a new multibillion-dollar, multi-vendor contract.

Policy

Court to Explore Whether Trump Officials Interfered in JEDI Contract

The Defense Department previously said lengthy litigation could threaten the contract’s future.

Business

Pentagon Awards JEDI Cloud Contract to Microsoft, Again

The decision follows a months-long legal challenge filed by Amazon Web Services.

Threats

The Pandemic is Pushing the Pentagon Toward Classified Telework

The risk-averse agency has cracked small-scale remote handling of secret and top-secret information. The challenge is doing it at scale.

Science & Tech

Pentagon Wants More Time to Review JEDI Cloud Contract Bids

The Defense Department says it wants to further discuss Microsoft’s and Amazon Web Services’ pricing.

Threats

FBI Opens a China-Related Counterintelligence Investigation Every 10 Hours

FBI Director Chris Wray says China is increasing its illegal activity to subvert the U.S. during the pandemic.

Science & Tech

Navy's $70 Billion Financial System Now in the Cloud

Just "one database contained more than 13 terabytes of data." Amazon moved the entire system in 10 months, eight ahead of schedule.

Science & Tech

Bipartisan Senate Bill Seeks to Boost Pentagon AI Talent

Step one: teach the Defense Department's HR staff to find and hire experts in artificial intelligence.

Science & Tech

Pentagon Wants Help With Its Predictive Aircraft Maintenance AI

Among other things, the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center needs someone to format data about H-60 helicopters in a way that an AI can learn from it.

Business

Amazon Files Another Protest Over JEDI Contract

In response, Microsoft blasts Amazon Web Services for trying to force a do-over for the multibillion-dollar cloud contract.

Policy

Pentagon IG: We Can’t Rule Out White House Influence on JEDI Award

A 300-page investigation reveals multiple ethics violations and a refusal by Defense Department General Counsel to let senior officials comment on communications with the White House.