The INSIDER daily digest -- Oct. 8, 2020

This Thursday INSIDER Daily Digest has the latest on the Defense Department’s approach to artificial intelligence, a legal challenge to a Navy ship yard effort and a key cybersecurity initiative.

The Defense Department wants to focus on data as the key to future operations:

New DOD strategy calls for treating ‘data as a weapon system’ to fuel advances in AI

A new Defense Department strategy underscores data as integral to all DOD operations, with one defense official calling on industry to recognize open standards and data sharing as pivotal to the future of warfare.

The Navy is encountering a delay as companies battle over an award for shipyard maintenance:

Two firms challenging work awarded for Navy’s new shipyard sustainment effort

Two firms have mounted legal challenges against the Navy’s effort to improve shipyard performance, delaying a new sustainment initiative.

Inside Cybersecurity has the latest on how new acquisition guidelines from the Defense Department will affect cybersecurity:

DOD to release cybersecurity guide for acquisition professionals detailing CMMC requirements

The Defense Department will issue a new policy as part of its Adaptive Acquisition Framework focused on cybersecurity to help program managers understand the processes and practices needed throughout the acquisition process, according to senior DOD officials.

And finally, the Defense Innovation Unit chief says the U.S. must change how it spends research and development funding to stay ahead of Chinese technological advancements over the next decade, Inside U.S. Trade reports:

Pentagon official: Trade only one part of response to China’s tech rise

Trade policy should only be one aspect of the U.S. government’s response to China’s technological rise, a senior Pentagon research official said this week, calling on the U.S. to focus more on investing in research and development if it hopes to maintain a strategic advantage over China in high-tech areas.