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NNSA starts to chip away at its technical debt

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5 months ago

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The National Nuclear Security Administration’s technology hasn’t kept pace with its mission demands.
This lack of investment has created a backlog of technology needs.

But now, the agency is trying to close its technology gap, said Jaime Wolff, the associate administrator for Information Management and chief information officer for NNSA.

Jaime Wolff is the CIO of the National Nuclear Security Administration.

“We should have been making many of these investments in technology over the past seven years, but we’re doing it today. That’s a huge differentiator,” Wolff said at the recent AFCEA Bethesda Energy, Infrastructure and Environment (EIE) Summit, an excerpt of which played on Ask the CIO. “We have to make those investments. Our systems and machines have to be supportive of the mission. As that mission expands, we have to be there to support them, and that’s we’re furious doing that right now. One of our top priorities is IT modernization, simply for that reason.”

Years of underinvestment by the NNSA has impacted not just technology but also buildings, roads and labs too.

For fiscal 2025, NNSA requested just under $25 billion, a 13% increase over 2024. As part of that increase, NNSA wanted $3.3 billion for infrastructure and operations, a 27% increase over 2024.

But with the full-year continuing resolution now in place, some of those investments remain in limbo.

Wolff, who spoke at the event before the Congress finalized the CR, said NNSA made some progress in 2024 and had big plans for 2025 and beyond.

“A lot of our sites are doing enterprise resource planning (ERP) modernization projects. Many of those ERPs were implemented about 25 years ago. So as we get into that, that’s just indicative of how the entire organization is. Unfortunately, I’d say the same holds true for most federal agencies,” he said. “We have this giant backlog of technology that needs refreshed, and we’re in it. We’re driving really hard. If you just look at the core infrastructure in the ground, you have incredible requirement to update that infrastructure. When we have a 10-gigabit connection to a site, that really needs to be 400 or 500 gigabits because, in a modern environment, we are cloud-based across all networks and we need to be able to move data efficiently from one site to the next,” Wolff said. “That’s just one simple area but it’s true across every function that we have.”

Innovation at Sandia

At Sandia National Lab, John Zepper, executive director for information and security engineering and CIO, is addressing a similar technical debt challenge by crowdsourcing ideas from staff members.

He said through an internal platform, Sandia received over 1,100 ideas to save money and go faster in less than a month.

“We started tracking those. We saved almost $47 million just by looking at those ideas. These are people who are so passionate about fixing something it’s not even theirs. So just getting this innovation, which I also credit Jamie and Steven [McAndrews, NNSA deputy CIO] around, we have to be more efficient,” Zepper said. “We have to do it faster. We have to do it less expensive. We just started tracking that, and it’s been fantastic just to see the dynamics that it changes.”

He said the best idea of the month receives a “championship belt” as a way to add some fun and friendly competition to the effort.

“They wear it over their shoulder, like a heavyweight boxer. These are the things that when you have leadership that’s willing to take some risk, to go faster and to save money, that’s just right,” Zepper said.

One example of an idea that came from staff members is a better way to fix satellites after they have been launched into space.

“What if you could put a protective barrier around that satellite that could be upgraded from the ground? Then you write a translator into the hardware of the satellite and now you can upgrade that for 20-30 years,” Zepper said. “The cost of that and the savings are phenomenal, because you can redo that protective barrier over and over and over again.”

Reducing cyber tools

Along with innovation, Zepper said another top priority is digital engineering.

He said the agency uses digital twins, which provide a master design that can be analyzed and refined for innovation.

“You can run analysis on that model. You can take subsets of that and send it to Kansas City to be built or prototyped. The savings there alone could be fantastic, but if you have an authoritative source and you’re using that for digital engineering, there’s many, many things that can go faster,” he said. “You can be more efficient. You can try more designs. You can use data analytics to look at tolerances around your where you’re drilling holes, and look at the whether or not you have structural issues there. We are investing heavily in that area. We we’re trying to come up with a new format that’s neutral, that you can share those particular analysis and designs.”

Unlike Sandia, Wolff’s focus remains on improving the legacy infrastructure.

He said around zero trust and cybersecurity, NNSA plans to consolidate and maximize the number of tools it’s using.

“Those tools are offered across NNSA. Some are mandatory and some of them are shared across other parts of Department of Energy. Those tools need optimized, and that is incredibly important,” Wolff said. “We need to fully deploy them and take advantage of all the capability within them. How do we best use those tools? That’s going to be a long, large project because we really are talking a massive portfolio, both from a money perspective, but the number of machines that it’s touching.”

NNSA currently has 15 cybersecurity tools and is spending over $100 million on them.

Outside of cyber, Wolff said two other big priorities are deploying business tools, such as case management for human resources and customer relationship management applications, and expanding their support for the use of artificial intelligence.

The post NNSA starts to chip away at its technical debt first appeared on Federal News Network.

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Former AOC Campaign Organizer Arrested Over Terror Threats Against Jewish High School

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21 hours ago

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August 10, 2025

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Photo: Ståle Grut NRKbeta

A former campaign organizer for Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been charged over alleged terror threats she made against a Jewish high school.

Iman Abdul, who previously worked as a youth organizer for AOC, was arrested on Friday for allegedly urging her 25,000 social media followers to “attack” the Leon M. Goldstein High School for the Sciences in Manhattan Beach.

“If anyone needs a public school in NYC to attack for whatever reason … Lexus driving Israhell (sic) loving Zionisits (sic) all attend here,” she wrote in a social media post, which has since been deleted.

“They’ve all gone on ‘Birthright,’” she added added, referencing a program that provides free 10-day trips to Israel for young Jews.

The post in question showed the location of the school on Google Maps so that her followers could locate it.

According to The New York Post, officers from the New York Police Department (NYPD) took Abdul into custody at her Brooklyn residence on Friday.

She was later charged with making her making terror threats, aggravated harassment, threatening mass harm, and endangering the welfare of children

In the summer of 2018, she was involved in the Democratic primary campaigns of progressive figures Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and state Senator Julia Salazar, even serving as a paid canvasser for Salazar.

Abdul’s post was first flagged by the online campaign group StopAntisemitsm, who said she should be “prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

She later messaged the group directly, where she denied having made physical threats of violence.

“I never called for an attack on the school in the sense of mass organization or not even individual people attacking individuals, that’s literally stupid,” she wrote.

“I called for an attack on the school, the Zionist institution funded by our public dollars … we have every right to verbally attack the school.”

She has since deleted all her social media accounts and is expected in court at a later date.

The post Former AOC Campaign Organizer Arrested Over Terror Threats Against Jewish High School appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

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Jimmy Kimmel Blames ‘Repulsive’ Liberal Activists For Trump’s Return to Power (VIDEO)

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21 hours ago

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August 10, 2025

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Late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel has blamed “repulsive” liberal activists for enabling President Donald Trump’s return to power.

During an appearance on the Sarah Silverman Podcast on Thursday, Kimmel said without a shred of irony that “loud voices” had scared people away from the Democratic Party.

“I’s not the party. It’s not the majority,” Kimmel insisted. “ It’s the loud voices that scare people from saying what they believe and make you think twice about a joke or whatever.”

“You know, a lot of their points are valid, but a lot of them are also just repulsive, in that they repel people,” he continued.

“They go like, ‘Oh, you’re no fun. I don’t want to be around you.’ And I think that if you had to boil it down to one thing, that’s kind of what it is.”

It is not the first time that Kimmel, who is himself a committed left-wing activist, has accused humorless liberals of costing the Democrats the 2024 election.

“I think a lot of the outrage is completely manufactured, and it’s like, a lot of these people who are angry aren’t really angry,” Kimmel said back in April.

”I think these liberals who’ve done such a good job of viciously attacking comedians are a big part of the reason why Trump is the president right now.”

So Close, Yet So Far: Jimmy Kimmel Actually Nails 1 Reason Trump’s Winning

Following Trump’s victory last November, Kimmel choked up on air as he moaned about the “hard-working immigrants” who might be deported under the administration.

Last month, Kimmel had a social media meltdown after his fellow late-night comedian Stephen Colbert was canned by CBS.

“Love you, Stephen. Fuck you and all your Sheldons CBS,” he wrote at the time.

President Trump, meanwhile, warned that Kimmel may well be next on the chopping block.

“I absolutely love that Colbert got fired,” Trump wrote after hearing the news of Colbert’s firing. “His talent was even less than his ratings.”

“I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert!” he continued.

The post Jimmy Kimmel Blames ‘Repulsive’ Liberal Activists For Trump’s Return to Power (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

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National Security Advisers From Europe and Ukraine Hold Meeting Today in England, Hosted by UK Foreign Secretary Lammy and US Vice President Vance

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22 hours ago

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August 10, 2025

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UK’s Lammy and US Vice-President Vance will host the European and Ukrainian ‘allies’ for a meeting today.

As we have reported previously, Vice President JD Vance’s holiday in the UK is actually filled with relevant work pushing President Donald J. Trump’s foreign policy.

Today, a meeting of National Security Advisers from the US, UK, as well as European ‘allies’ and Ukrainians, is being held, hosted by Foreign Secretary David Lammy and Vance.

The meeting is taking place at Chevening, Secretary Lammy’s ‘official country residence’ in Kent where Vance is staying during his days in the UK.

Daily Mail reported:

“The aim of the meeting is to bring together advisors from the US, Europe and Ukraine – it is understood to have been requested by the US.

A Downing Street spokesperson said that Keir Starmer and Volodymyr Zelensky agreed the meeting would be a ‘vital forum to discuss progress towards securing a just and lasting peace’.

‘Both leaders welcomed President Trump’s desire to bring this barbaric war to an end and agreed that we must keep up the pressure on Putin to end his illegal war,’ the spokesperson added.”

This meeting follows the news that Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold a peace summit in Alaska on August 15.

“’The highly anticipated meeting between myself, as President of the United States of America, and President Vladimir Putin, of Russia, will take place next Friday, August 15, 2025, in the Great State of Alaska,’ Trump wrote. ‘Further details to follow. Thank you for your attention to this matter!’”

This stay by Vance highlights that Foreign Secretary Lammy has somehow managed to become closer to the Trump administration, having previously called the president a ‘Neo-Nazi sympathizing sociopath’.

Read more:

VP Vance Warns UK Foreign Secretary Lammy: Do NOT Go Down ‘Very Dark Path’ of Censorship

The post National Security Advisers From Europe and Ukraine Hold Meeting Today in England, Hosted by UK Foreign Secretary Lammy and US Vice President Vance appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

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