NNSA aims to balance modernization, asset protection amid Genesis Mission
As the Department of Energy spearheads the administration’s AI-fueled Genesis Mission, the nation’s nuclear weapons agency is working to both keep up with the private sector while ensuring security of its work.
During a panel at Amazon Web Services’ Washington, D.C., summit Tuesday, National Nuclear Security Administration head Brandon Williams said that while leaders like DOE’s Darío Gil work to get industry involved in the scientific discovery project, his own work at NNSA is “to run the dark side of that.”
Williams said he’s making sure the nuclear agency is protecting its assets and “always keeping pace” with the best tools in industry.
His comments came as the agency announced authorization of its first cloud environment, which will be used to support work for the Genesis Mission and to process secret and restricted data in collaboration with AWS. Per the agency, that development is a milestone.
“This is an important achievement for the NNSA because it is the first cloud environment to receive enterprise authorization to process this type of classified data — which is unique to our mission,” an NNSA spokesperson told FedScoop in an emailed statement.
While NNSA is no stranger to emerging technologies, Williams described AI during the panel as a “real challenge” for the agency.
Per Williams, the semi-autonomous agency has been the “primer customer” globally for high-performance computing for the past 30 years due to its work on thermonuclear detonation modeling. But with AI, industry’s investment in tech significantly outpaces the government, putting it on different footing.
“The U.S. government can no longer set the pace — set the terms,” Williams said. “We can no longer have a five- to seven-year procurement cycle; we just wouldn’t be able to keep up.”
When it comes to AI, particularly in the context of the Genesis Mission, Williams said he thinks of it like a river.
“In the middle of the river, where the current is fastest, is where industry will be, and you have to keep pace with industry,” he said.
Setting up silos will push organizations closer to the shore or to the backwaters, where the pace of technology is slower, he said. By the time the project is complete, it won’t be relevant and industry will have sailed on. Williams said that’s why agencies deploy cloud services.
“Everything basically keeps pace with industry in the cloud, and the same has to be true for AI,” he said.
