The Week Ahead: NCD Cairncross headlines USTelecom summit; FDD critical infrastructure event

Cairncross participates in a fireside chat Tuesday with USTelecom president and CEO Jonathan Spalter at a summit hosted by the trade association. The summit also features a panel with Rich Baich, senior vice president and chief information security officer at AT&T; Jim Fowler, executive vice president and chief technology and product officer at Lumen; Mark Clancy, senior vice president of cybersecurity at T-Mobile; and Verizon CISO Jason Lish. Cairncross is also speaking at an AI summit on Thursday hosted by the Washington Post .

Other speakers include Sen. Todd Young (R-IN) and Rep. Jennifer McClellan (D-VA).

FDD hosts an event today to discuss the challenges and solutions to secure NATO’s critical infrastructure. Speakers include Tom Goffus, FDD adjunct fellow and former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for European and NATO policy; Mark Montgomery, senior director of FDD’s Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation; and FDD CCTI senior policy analyst Jiwon Ma. The event coincides with the release of a new report from the Cyberspace Solarium Commission 2.0 on securing the civilian digital systems and critical infrastructure that enables military transportation for NATO allies.

C2C 2.0 is housed at FDD and led by Montgomery. FDD is hosting a separate event on Thursday centered around diffusing artificial intelligence capabilities across the U.S. military on Thursday. The agenda features Montgomery; FDD visiting military analyst Megan Hainline; Isaac Harris, executive director of the Frontier Security Institute; and FDD AI research fellow Leah Siskind.

On Capitol Hill, the Senate Homeland Security disaster management, District of Columbia and census subcommittee hosts a Wednesday hearing on securing the homeland against agentic AI attacks. The witnesses are Chris Painter, president at Model Evaluation and Threat Research; Apollo Research CEO Marius Hobbhahn; Dragos senior vice president Kurt Gaudette; Daniel Kokotajlo, executive director at the AI Futures Project; and Georgetown law professor Paul Ohm. The National Institute of Standards and Technology is putting on a Tuesday webinar to review a publication on supply chain traceability principles developed through the National Cybersecurity Center for Excellence.

The publication, NIST Internal Report 8536 , was finalized on Sept. 9. The webinar will explore the challenges of supply chain traceability, core principles for supply chain risk management support, architectural mechanics and data privacy, according to the NIST agenda.

The Federal Communications Commission’s Technological Advisory Council meets on Thursday . CISA acting cyber chief Chris Butera is among the speakers at a two-day event hosted by Federal News Network. Butera is speaking on Thursday, along with Andrew McClure, director of the Energy Department’s Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response.

The Friday agenda features ONCD cyber workforce lead Brandon Dues, CISA acting cyber training branch chief Michael Harpin and Brian Evans, commanding officer of the Navy Cyber Defense Operations Command.