Honoring our Veterans who protect our Nation’s security, ROC is raising awareness about the importance of securing the overall supply chain for our nation’s most sensitive IT systems. As the most trusted provider of facial recognition algorithms to U.S. military, law enforcement, and commercial organizations, ROC points to the fact that the U.S. is quickly developing trusted, domestic suppliers of Machine Learning algorithms. This comes as the U.S. is facing increased foreign attacks that exploit many of the legacy, foreign-developed algorithms. To mitigate these threats, the U.S. needs to support domestic suppliers of software that has “American nascency.”
Earlier this year, President Biden issued Executive Order, “Ensuring the Future is Made in All of America by All of America’s Workers” that questions whether the current economic and national security environment calls for the end to the 15-year exemption to the Buy American Act for commercial IT products. Removing this exemption would send a clear message that our national security infrastructure is taking these foreign threats seriously and is committed to developing our domestic AI/ML capabilities.
“Due to the gravity of potential harm that could arise from Artificial Intelligence-based attacks by foreign adversaries, trusted U.S. technology providers should be strongly preferred by federal government customers and domestic companies who take IT security risks seriously,” according to ROC General Counsel and Chief Operating Officer David Ray. “We frame the situation as follows and invite anyone interested in joining this conversation, to contact us.”
- Technology in today’s world is taking on a strategic focus due to IT security risks posed by foreign adversaries.
- Machine Learning algorithms are particularly prone to risks from “Poison AI” models that intentionally introduce untraceable security vulnerabilities into critical government systems.
- Billions of dollars and unrestricted access to data are being provided by foreign adversaries to foreign companies with a goal of winning the technology race and thereby strategically positioning security vulnerabilities at the heart of the American economy and federal government.
- To the extent that the exemption to the Buy American Act for commercial information technology was justified when introduced 15 years ago, that justification is no longer appropriate to today’s national interests and global technology landscape.
- The exemption should be removed at minimum with respect to software such as facial recognition that powers critical government applications, and federal procurement should emphasize a strong bias in favor of using trusted, U.S.-made software solutions.