Pentagon gets sweeping power to hire cyber workers outside federal rules
S. 2605 — A bill to amend title 10, United States Code, to improve recruitment and retention of the cyber workforce of the Department of Defense, and for other purposes. · Filed by Mike Rounds (R-SD) · Introduced Jul 31, 2025 · Referred to committee
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What it does
This bill allows the Department of Defense to hire and pay cyber experts outside normal federal civil service rules, creating special 'excepted service' positions where the SecDef can set pay up to 150% of the highest federal executive salary, offer bonuses and sabbaticals, and bypass standard hiring procedures. Existing competitive-service employees can refuse conversion to these new positions, and the SecDef must report annually to Congress on hiring, retention, and veteran preference compliance.
Why we flagged it
The bill's core function is to carve out cyber positions from standard federal civil service rules, allowing the DoD to hire and compensate outside normal constraints. While framed as a recruitment/retention measure, the mechanism is fundamentally a regulatory exemption for a specific workforce category.
What the text implies
- The phrase 'without regard to any other provision of law' in subsection (a)(3) is extremely broad and may allow the SecDef to bypass not only civil service rules but also equal employment opportunity, veterans' preference, and transparency requirements — the bill does not explicitly carve out those protections.
- Creating an 'excepted service' tier for cyber workers may establish a precedent for other DoD specialties (AI, space, etc.) to seek similar exemptions, fragmenting the federal workforce into multiple parallel hiring systems with different rules.
- The two-year probationary period and ability to refuse conversion may create instability: existing employees in competitive service could be pressured to convert or face displacement, while new hires have reduced job security.
- Annual reporting to Congress is required, but the bill does not mandate public disclosure or GAO audit authority over hiring decisions — only Comptroller General assessment of comparative recruitment/retention across agencies, which is a weaker accountability mechanism.
- The bill allows pay up to 150% of Executive Schedule Level I (~$230K+), but does not cap total compensation including bonuses, sabbaticals, and allowances — the ceiling is only the 'maximum amount of total annual compensation payable at the salary set in accordance with section 104 of title 3' (the President's salary), which is a very high bar.
Who it affects
The bill may strengthen national cybersecurity by enabling DoD to recruit top talent in a critical field where federal pay is uncompetitive. However, it creates a two-tier workforce system that exempts cyber positions from civil service protections, potentially weakening merit-based hiring, union rights, and accountability — and the bill's broad language ('without regard to any other provision of law') raises transparency concerns about how these exceptions will be applied.
Who stands to gain
- Defense contractors specializing in cybersecurity
- Consulting firms recruiting federal cyber talent
- Technology companies competing for DoD cyber contracts
Named in the bill
Department of Defense, Secretary of Defense, Office of Personnel Management, Defense Digital Executive Service, Senate Committee on Armed Services, House Committee on Armed Services, Comptroller General, Title 5 (federal civil service law), Title 10 (armed forces law)
Where it stands
- Jul 31, 2025 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in Senate”
- Jul 31, 2025 — Referred to Senate Committee on Armed Services · Congress.gov: “Read twice and referred to the Committee on Armed Services”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
Money around this bill
1 lobbying clients named this bill on 1 disclosure filings across 1 quarter, Dec 2025 to Dec 2025. Those filings disclosed $40,000 in lobbying spend. A filing names 4 bills on average, so that figure is what each filing reported, not a share belonging to this bill.
More lobbying clients named this bill than 0% of bills with at least one filing.
Mike Rounds, the sponsor, reported $1,681,790 in PAC receipts in the 2026 cycle.
- Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago — $40,000 on 1 filing
Lobbying Disclosure Act filings through Jan 20, 2026. A filing shows who paid to lobby on a bill it names, not what changed.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the full bill text on Jun 8, 2026; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 16,222 analysed bills.
Status and sponsors — Congress.gov's bill record — actions, committee referrals and cosponsors — loaded nightly. The timeline shows status changes, not every procedural action.
Money — Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act filings whose specific-issue field names this bill for quarters ending Dec 2025 to Dec 2025. A filing's amount is reported whole beside the median number of bills a filing names; it is never divided across them. PAC receipts are FEC-reported contributions to the sponsor's candidate committee in the 2026 cycle.
As of — lobbying records through Jan 20, 2026 · page rendered 2026-10-20.
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