In the previous fiscal quarter, the number of TSP millionaires rose by about 19,000.

Michele Sandiford

January 14, 2026 4:08 pm

< a min read

 

  • Close to 5,000 more Thrift Savings Plan participants have joined the club of so-called TSP millionaires. As of Jan. 1, nearly 195,000 TSP participants now have accounts totaling over $1 million. That represents about 2.7% of all TSP accounts. The pace of growth appears to be slowing down, though. In the previous fiscal quarter, the number of TSP millionaires rose by about 19,000.
  • The Defense Department has tapped Owen West, a former energy trader at Goldman Sachs and the Department of Government Efficiency staffer, to lead its Defense Innovation Unit. West will take over the organization in March. Emil Michael, undersecretary of defense for researching and engineering and the Defense Department’s chief technology officer, has led the unit in an acting capability since Doug Beck’s unexpected resignation in August. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said West will ”bring a warfighter’s mentality to DIU’s core mission of transitioning technology to our troops.”
  • The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has gone nearly one year without a permanent leader. On Wednesday, President Donald Trump re-nominated Sean Plankey to serve as CISA director. Plankey was first nominated last March. His nomination was held up by multiple procedural holds. His nomination is widely supported by the cybersecurity industry. Plankey is a Coast Guard veteran who led Energy Department cyber efforts during the first Trump administration. His nomination is widely supported by the cybersecurity industry.

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  • The Department of Homeland Security’s watchdog said DHS needs to improve its hiring practices. DHS law enforcement components are looking to recruit thousands of officers in the coming years. But the department’s inspector general said DHS’s fragmented and inconsistent hiring practices could trip up those efforts. In a new report, the IG warns that a lack of centralized hiring at DHS results in duplicative efforts, higher costs and slower onboarding. The report comes as Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Patrol and the Secret Service are all undertaking their own recruiting blitzes.
  • When Congress authorized over $5 trillion in pandemic-era relief programs, fraudsters cashed in with bogus claims. But now, data from these pandemic-era relief programs is being used to train artificial intelligence-powered tools meant to detect fraud before payments go out. The Pandemic Response Accountability Committee built an AI-enabled “fraud prevention engine” that’s trained on over five million applications for pandemic-era relief programs. It can review over 20,000 applications for federal funds per second and can flag suspected fraud before issuing payments.
  • More than half of the Social Security Administration’s frontline employees are earning less than a living wage, according to a new report. In a survey of 800 SSA employees, 17% of respondents told the Strategic Organization Center that they are working a second job. Nearly two-thirds of survey respondents said they were struggling to provide at least one necessity for their families. The recent government shutdown only deepened those financial problems. The release of the report coincides with a “national day of action” organized by the American Federation of Government Employees.
  • The Defense Department is overhauling its innovation ecosystem. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the system “remains a tangle of overlapping organizations.” Under a new directive, the Pentagon will consolidate its innovation efforts under the control of DoD’s chief technology officer. Hegseth designated the Silicon Valley-based Defense Innovation Unit and Strategic Capabilities Office as the department’s “field activities” under the CTO supervision. Hegseth said the DIU director will continue to report directly to him. The defense secretary also disbanded the Defense Innovation Steering Group, the Defense Innovation Working Group and the CTO Council as part of the overhaul.
  • Agencies have some new resources to help them jumpstart the “rule of many” in federal hiring. The Office of Personnel Management is answering common questions on how the new “rule of many” aligns with existing recruitment standards, like veterans’ preference and skills-based hiring. The new resource document comes after OPM’s recent finalization of the “rule of many,” which has been in the works for years. The new rule will change the way agencies rank potential job candidates, allowing them to select from a larger pool of applicants.

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