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 1. Overview The Department of Defense (DoD) and Anthropic demonstrated what a battle contract negotiations can be. Negotiations between the two blew up in a spectacular way on February 27, 2026, when Secretary of Defense Hegseth publicly labeled Anthropic a supply‑chain risk and ordered businesses in the DoD...
DoD just cancelled Anthropic, government style. To do so, it used a procurement law directed to the military to designate Anthropic a supply chain risk. [Here is The Defense Salon article discussing this.] That is not the only law permitting the federal government can cancel a contractor. The Federal Acquisition Supply Chain Security Act (FASCSA)...
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 Sales (FMS) Reforming Technology Transfer and Foreign...
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...
Part 2 of our FY26 NDAA reviews shifts from industrial base investment to changes the Department of Defense’s (DoD) acquisition process, organized into five subcategories: When Cost Accounting Standards (CAS) Apply Truth in Negotiations Act (TINA) Threshold Changes Compliance Exemptions for Nontraditional Defense Contractors Encouraging Commercial Purchases Cybersecurity and Industrial Security Requirements Bottom Line: The...
We are going to unpack some parts of the FY26 NDAA most relevant to defense contractors and their advisors. This installment covers Industrial Base Investment and Opportunities, organized into five subcategories: Industrial Base Fund & capacity investments; Domestic sUAS and IndoPacific cooperation; Portfolio Acquisition Executive (PAE) and centralized acquisition; Requirements process and commercial first approach;...
The SBA announced yesterday in a news release that it has suspended “over 1,000 contractors” from participating in the 8(a) Program because they did not turn in the documents the SBA demanded that the produce by the deadline of January 19, 2025. This announcement, is actually buried in the news release so too find this...
On January 7, an Executive Order titled “Prioritizing the Warfighter in Defense Contracting” was issued. Its message to the defense industrial base is clear: get your act together – start performing defense contracts and delivering on time—or else. The “or else” is significant. If the Secretary of Defense, at his sole discretion, determines that a contractor has...
