Compliance

Why a clean name-match screen is no longer enough, and why the diligence meant to find hidden China exposure can create risk on the other side of the Pacific.

Picture the boardwalk version of supply-chain compliance. It’s August. Fingers are that odd combination of french fry-greasy and ice cream-sticky The arcade is humming. Someone hands you the mallet. The first mole pops up with a familiar name: Huawei. Easy. Then SMIC. Fine. Then a listed Chinese military company. Also easy. You swing, you hit the obvious targets, and for a moment the game looks like it’s under control.

Then the real game starts.

Continue Reading China Supply Chain Compliance Is Becoming Whack-a-Mole

What Federal Contractors Should Be Watching This Summer

Summer 2026 has arrived with a new wave of artificial intelligence (AI) policy from the White House. On June 2, 2026, President Trump signed an Executive Order titled “Promoting Advanced Artificial Intelligence Innovation and Security” (the Order). The Order directs federal agencies—on aggressive 30‑ and 60‑day timelines, with key deliverables due by July 2, 2026 and August 1, 2026—to harden federal information systems with AI‑enabled defenses, establish a voluntary framework for pre‑release federal access to so‑called “covered frontier models,” and prioritize criminal enforcement against malicious AI‑enabled cyber activity. Although the Order is framed as innovation‑and‑security policy and expressly disclaims any “mandatory governmental licensing, preclearance, or permitting requirement” for new AI models, it will have immediate operational consequences for federal information‑technology and cyber contractors, AI developers, critical‑infrastructure operators, and their service providers.

Continue Reading AI Heats Up: New Executive Order on Promoting Advanced Artificial Intelligence Innovation and Security

In a sharply worded order issued May 18, 2026, the Office of Hearings and Appeals (OHA) of the US Small Business Administration (SBA) remanded the agency’s suspension of ATI Government Solutions, LLC, from the 8(a) Business Development (BD) Program, finding the administrative record so deficient that it could not meaningfully review whether the suspension rested on adequate evidence. The case is Matter of ATI Government Solutions, LLC, SBA No. BDPT-728 (2026), and the decision is a forceful reaffirmation of two bedrock principles of administrative law in the 8(a) suspension context: An agency must articulate its reasoning at the time it acts, and the record it submits on appeal must actually contain the materials the decision-maker relied on. It also arrives at a uniquely fraught moment for 8(a) firms—and ATI, a tribally owned participant suspended on the strength of a hidden-camera video, illustrates exactly the kind of fast, thinly supported enforcement action that seems to have become business as usual for the SBA in recent months.

Continue Reading OHA Remands 8(a) Suspension Built on Hidden-Camera Video

Given the slew of Executive Orders (EOs) last year focusing on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and roiling the funding and operations of recipients of federal financial assistance such as universities and nonprofits, recipients may be forgiven for passing over EO 14398, dated March 26, 2026. As we’ve been covering (here and here), EO 14398 marks a second phase of the administration’s focus on “racially discriminatory DEI activities.” Where EOs from 2025 focused on broad policy shifts and internal agency operations, 2026 EOs seek prospective operationalization of the administration’s policy preferences by baking restrictions on DEI activities into federal contracts.

Continue Reading Recipients of Federal Financial Assistance Can Look to the New DEI Clause to Prepare for Potential Increased Scrutiny of Their Own Awards

The Department of Defense’s proposed rule implementing Section 847 of the FY 2020 NDAA could fundamentally reshape how foreign ownership, control, or influence (FOCI) is monitored across the defense industrial base. Through proposed DFARS Part 240, the rule would extend recurring FOCI disclosure, National Industrial Security System (NISS) reporting, and Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA) oversight far beyond the traditional facility-clearance context and into ordinary government contracting. For foreign-owned contractors, allied-country suppliers, private equity sponsors, and federal subcontractors, the proposal signals the emergence of a permanent compliance regime built around continuous visibility rather than one-time vetting.

Friends, Romans, contractors, lend me your ears;
I come to disclose your owners, not to debar them.
The FOCI that contractors do is oft assessed;
The clearances are oft interred with their bones.
So let it be with allies. The honorable rule
Hath told you that we treat all foreigners alike;
If it be so, it is a grievous form,
And grievously hath the SF-328 answered it.

The speech may be a little ridiculous, but in its way, it’s also a little accurate. The proposed DFARS rule implementing Section 847 of the FY 2020 NDAA is not unkind to allies. It is, as was Mark Antony, scrupulously polite to them, right up to the moment it asks them to register as suspects.

Continue Reading Section 847 and the New Era of DOD Continuous FOCI Monitoring

If your supply chain crosses a border, your FAR 52.222-90 flowdown is probably already wrong. Either it overpromises in ways an EU, UK, or South African supplier cannot sign without violating local law, or it underpromises and creates False Claims Act (FCA) exposure on the US side. Both versions of the problem land on the same desk, and they land on a clock.

As we covered in a prior post, FAR 52.222-90 is not a routine flowdown. It reaches subcontract administration, records access, reporting obligations, bilateral modifications, suspension and debarment, and FCA materiality. In cross-border scenarios, those same hooks meet a thicket of foreign equality, pay-transparency, sustainability, human-rights, privacy, and disclosure-blocking regimes. The result is predictable confusion, and confusion in this clause is expensive.

Continue Reading FAR 52.222-90 Goes Global: Cross-Border Supply Chains and the Limits of a US Flowdown

Clear and precise recognition and treatment of intellectual property (IP) are critical in government contracting because the ownership and use of preexisting IP, so-called “Background IP,” turn on the timing of, and funding sources for, the development of the IP. Therefore, internal documentation and standardized procedures for tracking and marking IP are crucial in the event of a dispute regarding the development, use, or ownership of IP before, during, and after performance on a government contract.

Continue Reading Don’t Put Your Background IP into It: Protecting What’s Yours

Organizations across industries are incorporating or evaluating AI to improve workflow, increase productivity, and reduce costs. The Federal Government is doing the same. The Department of Defense has taken an especially assertive approach, issuing an AI Strategy earlier this year that outlines seven “Pace-Setting Projects” to accelerate AI development and deployment in support of DoD missions.

Continue Reading Feature Comment: Flag on the Field: Artificial Intelligence and the State of Play in Federal Contracting

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

“I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.”

When Obi-Wan Kenobi says this in Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope, he senses that something profound just changed in the galaxy. A powerful presence has vanished. The balance of power shifting in ways that will ripple far beyond the immediate moment. As Yoda later describes the Force: “Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us, binds us.” In this way, artificial intelligence (AI) is beginning to play a role for the US Defense Industrial Base (DIB) not unlike the Force itself—quietly enhancing the capabilities of engineers, analysts, and compliance professionals across thousands of organizations supporting national defense programs.

So what could happen if a major AI player suddenly disappears from the board?

Continue Reading Orbiting A.I.-deraan? A Disturbance in the Force for the Defense Industrial Base