By: Margaret M. Cassidy & Andrew Swick The first stage of the FY2027 Appropriations process has essentially wrapped, with congressional member’s offices now processing request submissions from constituents and stakeholders before moving them to subcommittee staff for bill drafting and markup. Coming out of this, it is helpful to reflect on some key takeaways and...
By: Margaret M. Cassidy & Andrew Swick The Anthropic-Department of Defense (DoD) conflict raises compelling legal and policy issues, but these debates don’t help a business make payroll. [Click here for The Defense Salon article with detailed background on this conflict and here for an update on the court cases.] For federal government contractors, businesses...
By: Margaret M. Cassidy & Jelena Tasic Background The Anthropic-Department of Defense (DoD) battle started earlier this year when, over social media, DoD designated Anthropic a “supply chain risk” and along with the White House restricted the use of Anthropic products, particularly its Claude AI models, initially across the whole federal government. DoD and the...
Before a business can pursue federal government contracts it must register in SAM. Here are the basics on what that means and where founders and PE-backed businesses get tripped up. Register in SAM.gov — It’s Free SAM, the System for Award Management is the federal government’s vendor management database and every entity pursuing a prime...
Who Am I? A philosophical question that people have asked themselves for centuries is, “Who am I?” A big question that arguably we spend our lives trying to answer but never really get there. A question that is closely related to “Who am I” that you may be asking of your business is, “Am I...
By: Margaret M. Cassidy & Andrew Swick I. Overview The federal government wields immense power – it can tax us, lock us up on jail, take our property, close down businesses and more. It exercised this power against Anthropic when contract negotiations between the Department of Defense (DoD) and Anthropic blew up in a spectacular...
By: Margaret M. Cassidy & Andrew Swick The final part of our FY26 NDAA review examines changes related to how the U.S. defense ecosystem operates globally while protecting sensitive U.S. technologies and mitigating the risk of adversaries impacting U.S. national security. We organized our review into five subcategories: ITAR AUKUS Exemption Implications Streamlining Foreign Military...
Businesses new to federal government contracting understand that the government requires some type of background check on its leaders or others in the business. Beyond that, their understanding gets a bit murky. As a result, those new to federal government contracting worry about what will bubble up during the required background check. There is reason...
