Executive Orders & Policy Actions

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In every crisis, half the room runs in circles while the other half picks up a clipboard and starts taking stock. The Anthropic-Pentagon dispute is that crisis, and defense contractors are deciding which half they want to be in.

The short version: The government designated a FedRAMP-authorized, facility-cleared American AI company a national security supply chain threat, via social media, after the company refused to remove safety restrictions on autonomous weapons and mass surveillance. Anthropic sued days later, with the Pentagon’s own officials on the record stating the designation was “ideologically driven” with “no evidence of supply chain risk.”Continue Reading Don’t Panic! How Federal Contractors Should Navigate the Anthropic Designation

New rules for grants requiring a convenience termination
And limiting costs for facilities and administration
And if you want these kind of dreams, it’s Contractification[1]

In its continuous drive to alter business as usual, the federal government has made many changes this year to the way it manages financial assistance (grants and cooperative agreements). Executive Order 14332, “Improving Oversight of Federal Grantmaking” (the EO), issued on August 7, 2025, is the latest expression of this new effort and evidences the government’s intent to exert more control over grants and cooperative agreements. As summarized below, the changes generally fall within the inherently flexible framework the government has over such awards, but taken as a whole—and given the framing and rhetoric of the EO—the government’s approach, whether intentional or not, resembles “contractification,” that is, to remake the administration of grants and cooperative agreements to be more like procurement contracts.Continue Reading Viva ‘Contractification’: New Executive Order Promises Changes to Grant Oversight