The pace of change is accelerating in the market, which means we can always take a step back to understand where those changes have come from and how that drives business activities.

Bill Wright, head of global government affairs at Elastic, joins for this episode to explain how the fundamentals of the Trump administration’s approach to artificial intelligence and cybersecurity line up with those from the Biden Administration.

Yes many things are different, but several others are not as well. For Wright, this shows just how critical cyber and AI are to the federal government. As he tells Editor Nick Wakeman, the Trump administration is looking to expand the government's AI and cyber strategy with a greater emphasis on commercial technology.

And of course, speed and efficiency are key points Wright addresses too. As he explains, understanding where customers have come from and where they want to go is step one in finding growth opportunities across today’s market.

Here are the tech takeaways from Trump’s budget proposal

‘Just wait’ to see how CISA reforms play out, DHS head tells cyber community

Industry awaits how OMB AI guidance on paper will be implemented in practice

What the federal workforce could look like with AI government employees

In typical times, there is no going back after an agency tells a company their contract is being terminated for convenience of the government, which starts a settlement process cycle.

But this episode featuring Jeff Shapiro, government contracting advisory and regulatory assurance partner at CohnReznick, serves as a reminder that these are not typical times in GovCon.

As Shapiro explains to our Ross Wilkers, contractors have a Yes/No question of whether or not to go back to work after a termination reversal. If the answer is Yes, a new cycle begins that Shapiro talks through in detail.

The General Services Administration’s push to centralize much of civilian procurement under its roof features in part two of their discussion.

Trump orders structural changes to rules covering $1T in federal spending

GSA to ‘quadruple' in size to centralize procurement across the government

Proactive responses to termination for convenience or stop-work orders

Your contract termination has been reversed. Now what?

Google set off quite the reaction when the tech giant’s offer to discount its cloud-based productivity suite at 71% for all federal agencies was accepted by the General Services Administration, on behalf of those agencies.

Frank Konkel, editor-in-chief for all GovExec publications including WT, went under the hood of that agreement and joins our Ross Wilkers for this episode to take listeners there as well.

As Frank explains: this pact unique because it essentially treats the federal government as a single whole customer. The agreement also foreshadows more like it to make certain commercial technologies more accessible for federal agencies.

Naturally, Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency also feature in the conversation between Frank and Ross.

The nature of mergers and acquisitions in the government market is changing and our 2024 roundup of closed transactions further illustrates that evolution toward technology-enabled capabilities, which are largely driven by software.

Jean Stack and John Song, co-managing directors of the defense and government practice at the investment bank Baird & Co., join for this episode to discuss what drove transactions over the past year and what they expect in the year ahead.

A new administration in the White House means there is plenty of change and uncertainty in the market.

But as Stack and Song told Editor Nick Wakeman, these fundamentals of M&A activity will not change:

• Artificial intelligence, cloud and software-defined solutions are in hot demand
• Private equity buyers will continue to drive volume
• Strategic buyers, including the public companies, will remain picky

Also listen out for their predictions on how the coming year will shake out.

Public company acquirers (unicorns) certainly get everyone’s attention, but our 2024 M&A Roundup shows how the private equity collective continues to be the majority buyer and builder of midsized GovCon businesses over the years.

Greg Nossaman and Greg Woodford, co-founders and managing directors at their investment bank G Squared Capital Partners, join this episode to review PE’s past and present activity in the market.

The Gregs’ conversation with our Ross Wilkers then shifts to the future of private equity in GovCon and the questions on many business leaders’ minds highlighted by these two:

How do I go about searching for a PE firm to back my company? What does PE look for in its investments?

Few companies have closed as many acquisitions as CACI International.

CACI has three acquisitions on our 2024 M&A Roundup: Azure Technologies, Applied Insight and Quandrint. Those moves brought to CACI a suite of offerings in cloud migration, radio frequency and electronic warfare, and digital application modernization.

In this episode, CACI's chief financial officer Jeff MacLauchlan explains how the company’s strategy focuses on gaps. These gaps can include capabilities, customer footprint, technology, past performance, or some combination of the above.

“We don’t buy scale or to bulk up,” he told WT Editor Nick Wakeman.

CACI views acquisitions as a critical part of its philosophy to invest ahead of customer needs. That also includes partnering, internal research and holding demonstrations.

The change in administration has brought some uncertainty to the market and caused a slowdown in deals, but he adds that “opportunities will come."

How CACI's $1.2B Azure Summit acquisition expands its overseas strategy

CACI acquires Applied Insight to build up cloud migration offerings

CACI's international push is a slow and steady race

Better tools for analysts drove CACI to buy Bluestone Analytics

CACI to acquire laser communication tech maker for $275M

In each year from 2004 and onward, WT publishes a report and augmenting analysis that catalogs merger-and-acquisition activity in the government market as a way to trace the history of GovCon and the companies in it.

Nick and Ross begin this two-folded episode by going over the 2024 edition of that report and their highlights from it, both in terms of what we can gauge about the individual companies and the overall market at-large.

Part two shifts the discussion to all that is going on with President Trump’s return to office and the related transition activities, which are roughly 11 weeks in. Contractors are still left guessing a lot in terms of how the new administration wants to achieve its agenda and what is expected from industry.

Our 2024 M&A roundup is now available

Defense tech, digital modernization drive GovCon M&A in 2024

How consulting firms acquire to iterate, and sometimes reinvent themselves

The public company acquirer remains a unicorn in the M&A action

Venture investing is part of the M&A conversation too

ANALYSIS: Federal contractors navigate Trump administration uncertainty

Trump’s ‘pincer maneuver’ reshapes federal contracting landscape

Billions are on the line as DOGE, GSA increase scrutiny

COMMENTARY: The chainsaw approach to cutting government promises more damage than results

Trump administration asks agencies to cull consultants

Pentagon launches consulting contract review process

FAR overhaul: The challenges in tackling federal procurement’s 5,000-page beast

Centralized federal procurements bring plenty of risks, potential rewards

Even in a period of unprecedented change across the GovCon ecosystem, industry observers across-the-board remain certain that agencies and contractors alike will have more supply chain security requirements to navigate.

Leo Alvarez, a principal in Baker Tilly’s government contractor solutions practice, joins for this episode to go over the industrial side of that equation and how contractors can approach supply chain risk management as a partnership with their government customers.

As Alvarez tells our Ross Wilkers, contractors increasingly must detail their supply chain risk management frameworks to agencies in proposals to win the contracts. Putting those frameworks into repeated practice is also a business strategy that goes beyond just complying with regulations.

The CMMC cyber and supply chain standard for the industrial base also features throughout their conversation, given its finalization is an inevitability. Alvarez also explains how CMMC is part of the whole in the supply chain conversation, as opposed to being the whole.

Thales North America has a significant U.S. presence with thousands of employees and customers ranging from the Defense Department to NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration.

But the subsidiary has kept a relatively low-profile compared to competitors. For this episode, Editor Nick Wakeman sits down with Thales North America CEO Alan Pellegrini to talk strategy and tends in the market.

Item number one on the agenda is a discussion of what the company offers to its customers across space, defense, aviation and cybersecurity. Pellegrini explains how those areas line up with the priorities of its parent, the Paris-headquartered Thales Group.

From there, the conversation moves to upcoming opportunities and how Pellegrini sees the market evolving with more demands for dual-use technologies and digital solutions around data encryption, application security and identity and access management.

Pellegrini predicts a growing market for Thales, both in America and around the world defense spending everywhere changes due the Trump administration's push for shifting U.S. priorities.

Private capital is a broad umbrella term for several different types of investment and ownership models in business, but private equity is the one that looms the largest over GovCon and tech-centric companies there.

Tiffanny Gates has a front row seat to that as an operating partner at Capitol Meridian Partners, an investor that touts itself as at the nexus of government and commercial markets. Gates joins our Ross Wilkers in this episode to go over the unique role of private equity in bringing innovations to the public sector ecosystem.

Also on the agenda for their conversation: the U.S. government’s data problems and solutions from them, sorting artificial intelligence hype and substance, and workforce trends across the market.