In November 2020, Chinese state-sponsored hackers known as the Hafnium group used a zero-day exploit to target flaws in Microsoft's Exchange Server software. This enabled them unauthorized access to infiltrate Covington's network, potentially viewing or exfiltrating the data of up to 298 public company clients.
The SEC demanded the names of all affected clients to investigate potential insider trading and to ensure that the impacted public companies had properly disclosed the security breach to investors but Covington pushed back.
Covingtonโs legal team at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher has said the 2020 hack was aimed at a small group of lawyers and advisors to glean information about the incoming Biden administrationโs policies on China.
Joe Biden had officially selected Covington & Burling as his presidential campaign counsel in July 2019.
Under Biden, Covington & Burling LLP began advising and publishing legal analysis on UAP in January 2024. Their advisement followed the enactment of the FY 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which was signed into law on December 22, 2023.
Stephanie Barna who Covington hired in fall 2022, wrote a newsletter published on Jan 9, 2024 stating that "given the national security exception built into the law, as well as the long lead-time for disclosure, many contractors may have good arguments to support โpostponingโ the release of information they believe to be sensitive or protected."
Advanced Technology International (ATI) is a public-service nonprofit that manages research and development (R&D) collaborations for the federal government.
Instead of typical federal procurement, ATI handles billions in flexible, collaborative contracts to fast-track innovation for national security. ATI serves as the single-point prime contractor for large "enterprises" where hundreds of small businesses, academic institutions, and non-traditional defense entities team up, bypassing heavy Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) restrictions.
"ATI builds collaborations between industry, academia, and the Department of Defense (DoD) to facilitate rapid contracting (often via Other Transaction Agreements) to help the government acquire novel technologies quickly."
ATI also manage numerous consortia for the DoD, focusing on tech like high-energy lasers, precision navigation, armaments, and directed energy. These include:
โข Aviation and Missile Technology Consortium (AMTC): Focused on next-generation flight tech, including the Army's Future Tactical Unmanned Aircraft System.
โข Medical CBRN Defense Consortium (MCDC): Developed to counter chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear threats.
And contracts include:
โข Space and Missile Systems ($500 Million): A prototype contract vehicle designed to minimize entry barriers for small vendors deploying space technologies
โข Health Innovation (ARPA-H Hub): Selected to run the Customer Experience Hub, driving fast-tracked biomedical science and clinical trial capabilities.
In 2026, the U.S. Army tapped ATI to manage a project called GUARD. This program specifically analyzes "unpredictable" and autonomous aerial behaviors to see if they pose military risks.
Aerospace defense analysts point out that if the government wanted to hide highly sensitive, legacy aerospace programs from broad Congressional view, utilizing a private, non-profit consortium manager like ATI would be the ideal mechanism to distribute pieces of the project across hundreds of private subcontractors.
Also interesting - Guidehouse is an explicit member company of the National Armaments Consortium (NAC), which works directly in tandem with the DoD Ordnance Technology Consortium (DOTC) managed by ATI.
While Guidehouse manages global public health supply chains (such as a 10-year, $2.2 Billion USAID contract), ATI manages the domestic Defense Industrial Base Consortium (DIBC) to secure military supply chains. They routinely coordinate on industrial base data tracking.
Because both firms operate deeply in the Washington D.C. public sector space, corporate talent frequently shifts between them. For instance, senior personnel and management consultants regularly transition from specialized roles at Guidehouse into senior advisory and research analyst positions within ATI.
According to OpenSecrets federal lobbying tracking profiles, both ATI and the Pew Charitable Trusts (my prior employer) sit at the top of the non-profit advocacy bracket influencing government spending.
Both frequently participate as expert submitters to the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense and the Hoover Institution's Biosecurity Strategy frameworks. Pew advises on the regulatory and public safety aspects of biotechnology, while ATI presents data on the defense industrial base's capacity to scale those exact medical counter-measures.
Specialized defense consultants like Sancorp routinely operate within these ATI-managed consortia networks or partner on adjacent programs funded by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security (OUSD(I&S)).
Sancorp Consulting, LLC holds a $4.06 million sole-source contract (Award ID: HQ003422C0094) for "AARO Support Services."
Sancorp is primarily a security and intelligence consulting firm specializing in Insider Threat Programs, identity intelligence, and counterintelligence support.
Watchdogs argue embedding a counterintelligence support team inside an office meant to receive public/military tech disclosures creates an inherently intimidating environment for potential whistleblowers.
If Sancorp or any other defense contractor were to actively retaliate against a whistleblower, it would trigger a formal investigation by the Department of Defense Office of the Inspector General (DoD OIG) and constitute a severe breach of federal law.
The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) relies heavily on Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI) to serve as its primary bridge to the civilian scientific community. Rather than operating purely behind closed military doors, AARO leverages AUIโs deep academic network to standardize how anomalous data is tracked, stored, and analyzed.
AARO uses AUI to build a collaborative, professional process that standardizes the study of UAPs across the Department of Defense, "moving the conversation away from conspiracy theories and toward rigorous physical science and peer-reviewed data systems."
Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI) primarily manages world-class radio astronomy observatories and cutting-edge technology development facilities under cooperative agreements with the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF).
The primary research institutions and facilities managed by AUI include:
1. National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO)
2. Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA)
3. Green Bank Observatory (GBO)
4. Advanced Pharmaceutical & Supply Chain Incubators
AUI has expanded beyond space exploration into national biodefense and logistics. IMCA-CAT (Industrial Macromolecular Crystallography Association): A state-of-the-art research facility located at Argonne National Laboratory that AUI operates to assist pharmaceutical companies with structure-based drug design.
The laboratory is a premier hub for high-performance computing, housing the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF). Born out of the University of Chicago's work on the World War II-era Manhattan Project, Argonne today employs thousands of scientists tasked with solving massive national challenges across clean energy, supercomputing, and national security.
Dating back to the dawn of the nuclear age in the late 1940s and 1950s, nuclear and atomic installationsโincluding Hanford, Oak Ridge, Los Alamos, and Argonneโwere the primary hotspots for military UFO reports.
When the Pentagon's AARO needs to test alleged physical UAP metal specimens or debris, they do utilize the Department of Energyโs national laboratory infrastructure. However, AAROโs primary materials testing contract was awarded to Argonne's sister site, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), to analyze a highly publicized magnesium alloy sample.
Argonneโs Global Security Directorate directly collaborates with defense organizations to develop advanced sensor arrays, risk modeling, and predictive software.
โข Argonne frequently leads DARPA-funded initiatives, utilizing its specialized cleanrooms to develop advanced microelectronics for military radar and next-generation communications systems.
โข DTRA (Defense Threat Reduction Agency): Argonne engineers model tracking metrics for weapons of mass destruction, chemical dispersals, and atmospheric threats.
โข OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Microsoft: Argonne collaborates with these frontrunners via specialized partnerships to explore how frontier AI foundation models can be securely deployed to accelerate automated scientific and physical experiments.
โข Argonne remains a chief scientific advisor to the agencies that manage and police nuclear technology, such as NNSA (National Nuclear Security Administration). They collaborate closely on nuclear nonproliferation, engineering advanced detection sensors to catch the illegal movement of nuclear materials globally.
The Aurora Supercomputer, located at Argonne National Laboratory, is one of the world's most powerful exascale computing systems. Co-developed by the Department of Energy, Intel, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), it represents the pinnacle of modern computing power.
Unlike commercial chatbots, this AI is fed billions of pages of scientific text, chemical structures, and genomic data. Its goal is to act as an autonomous scientific assistant capable of discovering new materials.
The supercomputer also does nuclear fusion modeling, running high-fidelity simulations of plasma physics, helping engineers figure out how to stabilize magnetic fusion reactors to unlock clean, limitless energy.
Because Aurora is a Department of Energy asset, a significant portion of its computing reservation is dedicated to high-level national security tasks for the NNSA. It is utilized to run complex simulations that verify the safety, security, and effectiveness of the nation's nuclear stockpile without the need for live underground nuclear testing.
Private tech and aerospace corporations lease and use computing time on the Aurora supercomputer and other systems at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF).