Today is Friday, 7 March 2025. Federal agencies in the Washington, DC area are Open. Employees are expected to begin the workday on time. Normal operating procedures are in effect. Mostly sunny, with a high near 53. West wind 8 to 18 mph, with gusts as high as 30 mph.

Govcon

"State Dept. to use AI to revoke visas of foreign students who appear "pro-Hamas," Axios

"The effort — which includes AI-assisted reviews of tens of thousands of student visa holders' social media accounts — marks a dramatic escalation in the U.S. government's policing of foreign nationals' conduct and speech."

"They say they're also checking news reports of anti-Israel demonstrations and Jewish students' lawsuits that highlight foreign nationals allegedly engaged in antisemitic activity without consequence."

"Lawmakers push back on VA’s ‘reckless’ plan to cut about 80,000 positions," Federal News Network

"Top Democrats on the House and Senate VA Committees told reporters in a call Thursday that VA’s plan to cut about 80,000 positions later this year would compromise its ability to serve veterans and keep up with an increasing workload."

"Republican VA committee leaders have also raised questions about the proposed workforce cuts.

"Senate VA Committee Chairman Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) said in a statement that the VA 'must provide veterans, their family members and survivors the health care and benefits that they have earned'."

"C.I.A. Begins Firing Recently Hired Officers," New York Times

"Some officers hired in the last two years have been summoned to a location away from the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Va., and asked to surrender their credentials to security personnel, according to three people briefed on the firings."

"The firings come just days after a federal judge cleared the way for the C.I.A. director, John Ratcliffe, to fire employees at will. ... Judge Trenga said Mr. Ratcliffe had the power to remove any C.I.A. officer for any reason without a right of appeal, rejecting arguments that the officers’ 14th Amendment due process rights or First Amendment speech rights were violated."

"DOD releases new guidance on ‘situational telework’," Defense Scoop

"This guidance comes as organizations across the federal government move to comply with the Trump administration’s far-reaching mandate to terminate all formerly-approved work arrangements that enabled certain employees to operate on-the-clock from outside of approved physical office spaces."

"Selnick stated that situational telework options 'may not be abused or used as a work around to Secretary of Defense Memorandum, Initial Department of Defense Implementation Guidance, Return to In-Person Work, January 31, 2025.' He also emphasised that situational teleworking 'should be intermittent and not authorized as a substitute for routine or recurring telework.' DOD will continue to use DD Form 2946 to review and authorize situational telework on a case-by-case basis, according to the March 4 memo."

"‘Extremely lean’ Space Force acquisition units brace for Trump’s workforce cuts," Defense One

"The office has a small number of probationary employees, none of whom have been fired yet, but other space-acquisition arms, such as Space Systems Command and Space Development Agency, have a 'fairly large number,' Hammett said. 

"'The workforce cuts, coupled with the potential for a year-long continuing resolution instead of a real budget, is “incredibly challenging,' he said. ... To mitigate the effects, SSC has already started planning to shift those employees’ work to others in the command, Garrant said." 

"‘Golden Dome’ success will require national buy-in, official says," Defense News

"Experts and officials have pointed out the technical challenges the Golden Dome presents — particularly when it comes to space-based interceptors. But speaking this week at the National Security Innovation Base conference in Washington, D.C., Guetlein said he thinks the biggest hurdles will be collaboration among the various organizations tasked with contributing to the project.

"'Without a doubt, the biggest challenge is going to be organizational behavior and culture,' he said."

"Space Force Takes New Approach to Ground Systems," Air & Space Forces Magazine

"More rapid, modular development for the software used to command and control missile warning and orbital warfare follows modern commercial best practice, but concerns remain over how fast USSF can change its approach and how well it can integrate disparate systems. 

“'Ground isn’t equally important to [space components]—I think it’s more important,' said Col. Robert Davis, program executive officer of SSC’s space sensing directorate."

"Weld, baby, weld: White House to create an ‘office of shipbuilding’," Defense One

"'To boost our defense industrial base, we are also going to resurrect the American shipbuilding industry, including commercial ship building and military shipbuilding,' Trump said during his nearly two-hour speech to Congress. 'I'm announcing tonight that we will create a new office of shipbuilding in the White House and offer special tax incentives to bring this industry home to America, where it belongs. We used to make so many ships. We don't make them anymore very much, but we're going to make them very fast, very soon. It will have a huge impact.'"

"Trump is hardly alone in his concern. Navalists have been sounding alarms for years, but the issue leapt to the fore in summer 2023, when a briefing slide prepared by the Office of Naval Intelligence reported that China’s shipyards can build around 232 times more tonnage than their U.S. counterparts."

"D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser Suggests Black Lives Matter Plaza Will Be Painted Over," New York Times

"The announcement from the mayor, Muriel E. Bowser, about “the evolution of Black Lives Matter Plaza” came just a day after Andrew Clyde, a Republican congressman from Georgia, introduced legislation threatening to withhold millions in federal funds from the city unless the giant yellow words were removed from the street and the plaza renamed."

Editor's note: Regardless of what the pavement reads, in DC and around the world, Black lives matter.

Travel

"The World's Most Popular Flight Tracker is Fighting An Ongoing DDoS Cyber Attack," Paddle Your Own Kanoo

"The world’s most popular flight-tracking website and app is facing an ongoing cyber attack that has affected the ability of millions of users to look up flights and other aviation stats."

"Pn Wednesday, Flight Radar 24 announced that it was fighting a so-called ‘Distributed Denial-of-Service’ (DDoS) attack in which cyber criminals deliberately flood their target with fake traffic in a bid to slow the website down or cause it to crash altogether."

"On a Collision Course: Unveiling Wireless Attacks to the Aircraft Traffic Collision Avoidance System (TCAS)," Giacomo Longo, DIBRIS, University of Genova et al.

"Despite this safety record, TCAS was not designed with security in mind, even in its newest versions. With the rise of software-defined radios, security researchers have shown many wireless technologies in aviation and critical infrastructures to be insecure against radio frequency (RF) attacks. However, while similar attacks have been postulated for TCAS with its built-in distance measurement, all attempts to execute them have failed so far. In this paper, we present the first working RF attacks on TCAS."