Recent legislation significantly expanded many workers’ entitlement to paid sick leave and paid family leave. These new benefits take effect on April 1st. Our employment and benefits experts have described those requirements in a series of posts, including overviews here and here, and New York-specific considerations here. Federal government contractors should pay particular attention to these new benefits and the way they interact with other paid sick leave requirements.
Continue Reading New Paid Sick Leave Requirements Impact Government Contractors
The new year has already brought significant news for companies that do business with the U.S. government, and for those that trade in materials and technology that represent priorities for national security stakeholders. Our colleagues in the firm’s CFIUS practice thoughtfully analyzed the regulations implementing the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act, and other experts
The FAR Council released an Interim Rule in August implementing part of Section 889 of the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019. In this briefing, we highlight points where the Interim Rule provides clarity; definitional issues that remain unresolved; and new procedural requirements that government contractors should track.
The Interim
The House of Representatives passed its version of the FY2020 National Defense Authorization Act (“NDAA”) last week. The headline story was the remarkably close, party-line vote: in contrast to past years, the bill received no Republican votes, and eight Democratic Members voted against it.
Those partisan dynamics obscured the inclusion of two important amendments – one Republican and one Democratic – regarding bid protest policy that the House quietly adopted in its bill. The provisions are not yet law, since the House and Senate must still resolve differences in their respective NDAAs through the conference process. In this post, we summarize these provisions and encourage government contractors to watch them closely in the coming months.
Continue Reading House and Senate Will Debate Bid Protest Policy
The Department of Defense (“DoD” or “the Department”) released its annual report to Congress on the Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China (“PRC”) on May 2, 2019. This annual report details DoD’s assessment of Chinese security strategy and military strategy over the next 20 years, with a particular focus on China’s future course of military-technological developments. The Secretary of Defense sends both a classified and unclassified version of the report to Congress each year to fulfill the requirements of Section 1202 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year (“FY”) 2000, as amended by Section 1260 of the NDAA for FY 2019. Notably, the 2019 amendments refined the scope of the reporting requirements to include elements regarding emerging efforts by the PRC on espionage, technology transfer, economic pressure, political coercion, information operations, and predatory lending under its Belt and Road initiative.
The report highlights significant strategic challenges presented by Chinese foreign and military policy. Its tone underscores sharp differences with several recent policy decisions and comments that take a more accommodating view of Chinese policy. The UK defense minister, for example, was recently ousted over a leak concerning Britain’s proposed decision to allow Huawei to participate in certain parts of its 5G network. The DoD report, by contrast, describes serious threats from China’s coercive military-civilian strategy. China is taking major steps to modernize its military capabilities and can force cooperation under its laws from all potential sources of innovation within its borders.
Industry leaders in the United States should take note of this approach. As they engage with U.S. government leaders and policy makers, it will be important to look for ways to continue building on key innovation efforts in the United States, and with allies and partners, to harness dual-use emerging technologies for future capabilities. The report also makes clear that cybersecurity and counter-espionage protocols will be key to thwarting efforts of the Chinese government – acting either through governmental agencies or through Chinese companies – to gain insight into the military and industrial capabilities of the United States.
Continue Reading Department of Defense Releases Annual Report to Congress on the Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China
The Senate Armed Services Committee heard testimony last week from Acting Secretary of Defense Pat Shanahan, Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson, Marine General Joe Dunford (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), and Air Force General John Hyten (Commander of U.S. Strategic Command and the presumptive next Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs).
The witnesses presented unified support for the creation of the Space Force. Secretary Wilson, notably, voiced support for the proposal, which would put the new Space Force under the Air Force. That structure mimics the design of the Marine Corps and the Department of the Navy; Wilson acknowledged that she had previously been critical of proposals that would establish a new independent department for space. From the perspective of continuity, the key testimony came from General Hyten; both Wilson and Dunford are lame ducks, and Shanahan’s nomination for Secretary remains uncertain. Many of the Senators voiced concerns about the fundamental need for a Space Force and the significant bureaucratic expansion contemplated by the proposal.
It was clear from the hearing that the Administration and the Department still have much to do to market this Space Force proposal to the Congress. Given the reactions so far, it is extremely unlikely to be included as written in the Fiscal Year 2020 National Defense Authorization Act. While Congress continues to debate the proposal, now is the window to engage with the congressional defense committees with comments on the proposal and suggestions for how to modify it.
Continue Reading Senators Question the Administration’s Space Force Proposal
The Section 809 Panel recently concluded its monumental analysis of defense acquisition law and regulations and released its third volume of recommended changes. As we have written previously, the Panel’s work stands out from previous acquisition reform efforts with the appendices of detailed legislative and regulatory changes that accompany the commissioners’ analysis and recommendations.
Given the scope of the Panel’s work, few believe that Congress or the Department of Defense (“DoD”) will — or even could — simply adopt the recommendations in full. Legislative bandwidth for additional acquisition reform is finite, and some of the Panel’s recommendations will prompt robust debate. In this post, we analyze some of the recommendations that government contractors should follow most closely. We highlight key issues and address the political dynamics involved in enacting them.
Continue Reading After the Final Report: Expectations Following the Section 809 Panel’s Third Volume of Acquisition Policy Reforms
On February 12, 2019 the Department of Defense released a summary and supplementary fact sheet of its artificial intelligence strategy (“AI Strategy”). The AI Strategy has been a couple of years in the making as the Trump administration has scrutinized the relative investments and advancements in artificial intelligence by the United States, its allies and partners, and potential strategic competitors such as China and Russia. The animating concern was articulated in the Trump administration’s National Defense Strategy (“NDS”): strategic competitors such as China and Russia has made investments in technological modernization, including artificial intelligence, and conventional military capability that is eroding U.S. military advantage and changing how we think about conventional deterrence. As the NDS states, “[t]he reemergence of long-term strategic competition, rapid dispersion of technologies” such as “advanced computing, “big data” analytics, artificial intelligence” and others will be necessary to “ensure we will be able to fight and win the wars of the future.”
Continue Reading Defense Department Releases Artificial Intelligence Strategy