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The CyberCorps scholarship program, a recruitment pipeline designed to move qualifying students into government cybersecurity jobs, is overhauling recruitment standards to require that applicants demonstrate skills at the intersection of AI and cybersecurity, according to an email obtained by Nextgov/FCW.
New scholars will no longer be accepted into a legacy version of the CyberCorps program without “a description on how they will develop competencies at the intersection of cybersecurity and AI,” according to an email sent Wednesday by the Office of Personnel Management and the National Science Foundation, which says the changes are “effective immediately.”
The directive is informed by a February solicitation from NSF that restructured the program to center on artificial intelligence and cybersecurity integration. The email warns that students enrolled today “will not be employable when they graduate in 2-3 years without significant AI background.”
There is no single cutoff date for the shift. While the National Science Foundation typically rolls out program changes through new grant cycles, the email’s “effective immediately” directive is significant because it forces that change sooner by applying AI-focused standards to new students entering the pipeline now.
Any student in the new program “must be proficient in using AI in cybersecurity or providing security and resilience for AI systems. Therefore, new students in the legacy CyberCorps program must learn to acquire AI expertise to augment their cybersecurity expertise,” the email also says.
The revamp comes as companies like Anthropic — which recently unveiled its cyber-focused Mythos model — and OpenAI roll out increasingly advanced AI systems with cybersecurity applications that have caught the attention of the federal government’s cyber and tech leaders.
Nextgov/FCW has asked OPM and NSF for comment.
The White House has been meeting with technology trade groups and executives in recent weeks to get a better grasp of AI-cyber risks, and has also solicited questions from industry about the topic. And on Friday, the Pentagon announced new agreements with seven leading AI developers to support classified workflows in military operations.
The Trump administration is also crafting guidance to let agencies bypass a supply chain risk designation on Anthropic, potentially clearing the way for government use of its tools and signaling a softening stance after the Defense Department labeled the firm a risk and the White House ordered a phaseout earlier this year. The move came when the company declined to ease restrictions on its products being used for domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons.
The new recruitment standards highlight the growing convergence of artificial intelligence and cybersecurity and the federal government’s push to bake that overlap into its workforce pipeline.
“Al is considered a main contributor to the decline of Computer Science enrollments in academia, and record-breaking layoffs across the software sector in industry. With the emergence of cybersecurity-focused frontier Al models, Al has transitioned from a supplemental tool to a primary driver of technical execution,” the Wednesday email reads.
“We must prepare our students for this moving landscape: the future cybersecurity professional will need to collaborate or manage (semi-)autonomous Al agents operating 24/7 and executing complex defensive and offensive tasks at machine speed,” it adds.
The CyberCorps: Scholarship for Service program provides college tuition and a stipend to awardees, who, in return, commit to working in a government cybersecurity role upon graduation.
Over the last year, the longstanding pipeline was hampered by broader Trump-era moves to reduce the size and scope of the federal workforce. Many hiring and internship onboarding programs did not take place as expected, leaving scholars without work and under a looming deadline to fulfill program requirements or risk having to pay back their scholarships.
Under longstanding expectations, about 70% of recipients were intended to enter federal roles, with the remainder split between state, local and academic positions. But the email acknowledges that benchmark is not viable in the near term, and that a moratorium has been placed on such quotas for now.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the nation’s main civilian cyberdefense office, made plans to onboard summer interns as part of the program, but recently walked back the decision amid a DHS shutdown that was just alleviated Thursday. It’s possible that CISA may reverse its initial decision, now that it has access to funding.
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