For life cycle logisticians and other defense acquisition workforce professionals who may not have already seen it, the department issued a new DoD Directive 3000.16 Vendor Threat Mitigation late last week. This new DoD issuance “…establishes policy and assigns responsibilities for vendor threat mitigation (VTM) to identify and address the threats posed by vendors that oppose U.S., allies’, or partners’ interests or pose a threat to national security (and for) appropriate VTM actions and funding to implement VTM actions. It also establishes DoD policy that “..the DoD works with other U.S. Government departments and agencies, as well as other allied and partner nations, to use applicable authorities to deny, disrupt, defeat, or degrade adversaries’ potential ability to introduce national security risks and threats through contracts, grants, and cooperative agreements with the U.S. Government, allies, and partners.”

For those who may be wondering, the policy also defines a vendor as “any entity or individual: as a prime contractor or any tier of subcontractor or supplier, or as an award recipient, that has an active contract, grant, cooperative agreement, or other transaction agreement with the U.S. Government, or subcontract or other agreement at any tier thereunder; or that seeks U.S. Government business or awards by registering or submitting proposals or offers for contracts, grants, cooperative agreements or other transaction authority agreements; or that engages in any interactions with the U.S. Government for the purpose of preparing to seek U.S. Government business or awards; or that seeks DoD technical information for commercial purposes other than seeking business or awards with the U.S. Government.