5 Takeaways from AWS Summit 2025
Federal and industry leaders at the AWS Summit 2025 discussed their priorities in cloud, AI, cybersecurity, data and more. Agencies and organizations alike are leveraging the latest innovations to support evolving strategies and adapt to changes in the future tech landscape.
Energy Department’s national labs turn to AI for efficiency.
National labs are tapping AI to streamline operations, improve troubleshooting and empower their workforces, agency leaders told us at the summit.
At Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the National Ignition Facility partnered with AWS to develop an AI-powered troubleshooting and reliability tool that combs through more than 22 years of experiment data.
“AI is transforming our troubleshooting and maintenance,” said Shannon Ayers, the lab’s laser systems operations lead. “Data is our product … and efficiency is core to how we conduct our business.”
Meanwhile, Idaho National Laboratory has introduced an internal AI virtual assistant, AiVA, to help employees navigate research workflows.
“[Our employees] are pushing us to get the latest AI, and [AWS] is also pushing us to go faster,” said Ritter during a panel. “We’re all pushing each other, and I think that’s a huge part of why we’re moving rapidly now.”
Government still values public-private partnerships in the AI race.
The White House is placing its bets on the private sector to keep the U.S. competitive in the global AI landscape. White House AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks said the federal government must act as an enabler of innovation and lean into industry tools.
“The innovation is done by the private sector; it’s not done by the government. We need to be an enabler of the private sector,” Sacks said.
He outlined four key priorities of the Trump administration’s AI agenda: accelerating innovation, expanding energy infrastructure, deepening international partnerships and building a pro-AI workforce. Sacks highlighted the need to ramp up energy production to support AI’s rising demand, citing AWS’s plans to build data centers in Pennsylvania and North Carolina.
He also pointed to new global collaborations, including a partnership with the United Arab Emirates to support digital transformation abroad while creating research and engineering jobs at home.
“We want our technology to become the standard,” Sacks said. “If we don’t allow [global partners] to participate in the bounties of AI … we’re basically going to push them into the arms of China.”
AI and cloud are transforming intelligence operations.
The Intelligence Community is rapidly advancing mission efficiency through AI tools embedded in top-secret cloud environments, said Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.
Gabbard cited major time savings and transparency gains and explained that AI now helps process massive volumes of media and documents in hours instead of months, freeing analysts for deeper tasks.
“Ten thousand hours of media content … now takes one person one hour,” she said.
Her comments came amid AWS’ launch of its Secret-West region to support classified missions with enhanced resiliency and capacity. Gabbard emphasized buying commercial tech over building in-house.
“I want to get us away from having the government trying to build tech solutions for itself.”
Agencies need holistic planning for cloud modernization and security.
As agencies navigate the complexities of modernization, security and cloud implementation in today’s IT landscape, holistic planning and strong industry partnerships are critical for success.
Richard Breakiron of Commvault and David Rubal of AWS highlighted the need for a well-defined architectural approach that integrates people, processes and technology for cloud migration across the public sector.
“Architecture, if you do it right, allows you to do a modernization path, and that’s what’s critical for us going to the cloud as the next modernization effort,” Breakiron said.
Human oversight remains essential for AI in national security.
AI enables the Central Intelligence Agency to process and analyze data, but human oversight remains critical, said CIA Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer Lakshmi Raman.
“AI is able to speed up the processing to be able to do automation,” she said. “But at the end of the day, who is taking on the risk or deciding the intent and making the decisions?”
She also discussed the growing role of agentic AI but warned of the risks posed by their “black box” nature. As these models evolve, transparency and explainability become non-negotiable.
By strategically integrating AI into secure workflows, the CIA is seeing measurable gains in productivity. But Raman reiterated that real mission success comes when AI supports, not replaces, human intelligence.