Field notes
Research we publish
Notes from building the firm: federal contracting, technology, defense, and the markets we operate in. Written by the founders. Every claim cited to a primary source.
The CMMC pause is breathing room, not amnesty
The Pentagon suspended CMMC Phase 2 and gave a task force 60 days to fix the program. Every underlying obligation survived. What a small defense contractor should do with the window.
Why Washington should be a technology capital, not just the political one
New York is the financial capital. The Bay Area is the tech capital. Washington's shorthand is still politics, and the shorthand no longer matches the economy around it.
GenAI.mil commoditized the chatbot. The market moved up a layer.
ChatGPT is now live for 3 million DoD users at Impact Level 5, alongside Gemini on the Pentagon's own platform. Small AI vendors pitching standalone chat are selling what the government already owns.
The breach pattern of 2026 gets your own staff to authorize the attacker
ShinyHunters' vishing-plus-OAuth playbook has breached 40+ organizations this year without breaking MFA. The controls that stop it are governance settings, not products, deployable by a mid-market Salesforce shop in a week.
The Pentagon's new drone office just moved your customer
DRPM-UxS consolidates nearly all unmanned-systems buying under one office reporting to the Deputy Secretary. For small autonomy vendors, the program offices you spent years courting may no longer control the money.
Cheaper agent models aren't cheaper until you benchmark the task
Claude Sonnet 5 cut sticker prices for agent workloads and changed the tokenizer. The only number that matters to a buyer is cost per completed task. Here is how to measure it before you standardize.
Every federal registration you need is free. Anyone who charges you is marking up a $0 form.
SAM.gov, the UEI, the EIN, SBA VetCert, DSBS, APEX counseling: all $0 by design. How the paid-registration scam works, and the exact order we are running the free path as a new Virginia SDVOSB-track LLC.
The 51/49 problem: how a veteran-owned firm loses SDVOSB eligibility inside its own operating agreement
Why 51% ownership is not enough under 13 CFR 128.203: negative control, the extraordinary-action safe list, the bank-signature trap, and the OHA Blue Skye Foods decision. Written by a 51/49 firm drafting its own agreement to survive the rule.
Sell to the VA first: where SDVOSB priority is written into statute
Why a new SDVOSB should aim its first federal business development at the Department of Veterans Affairs: the Vets First statute, the 23% vs 5% gap, the certification gate, and how sole-source awards actually happen.
The one-page rule: why we only sell fixed-scope work
Why a two-person senior firm sells fixed-scope, fixed-price engagements instead of open-ended retainers, and the tradeoffs that model forces on both sides.