News Coverage for National and State Issues

This is what a government shutdown looks like to contractors. We have a small project with Amtrak to support a Microsoft Access application. They sent us this letter after the budget impasse in Congress.

The suspension isn’t a big deal to us since we don’t have dedicated staff supporting it. It’s awful for contractors with larger commitments and their staff who are unlikely to be compensated for the shutdown.

After posting on Twitter about the letter we received from Amtrak in regard to the Government Shutdown, FMS President Luke Chung was contacted by WUSA9 and the Huffingtonpost.

WUSA9, December 26, 2018

On December 26, 2018, FMS President Luke Chung was quoted by John Henry from WUSA9 on our FMS, Inc. government contract suspension in his #ShutdownStories. It was featured on the 11pm News and WUSA9 website!

To read the article and watch the video, visit #ShutdownStories: Government contractors tackle life without pay during partial shutdown.

Huffingtonpost, December 27, 2018

On December 27, 2018, The Huffingtonpost quoted FMS President Luke Chung:

“Business owners who have [dedicated] staff are making the decision: Do we pay people or not, even though we won’t get paid by the government?” Chung said. “Either you force people to take vacation, or you pay them, to be a good company ― but depending how long it drags on, one may not have a choice.”

For the full article, visit Shutdown Leaves Government Contractors Without Work And Likely No Back Pay.

To read more on the Government Shutdown, visit our blog post, Government Shutdown's impact on the Contractors and Employees and leave us a comment about your experience.

The Sean Hannity Radio Show, January 22, 2018

Background

On January 22, 2018, Luke Chung was on the radio show with Sean Hannity and Andrew Ziem. The three of them discussed the technology behind the ability to retrieve text messages that were deleted. Luke commented specifically on:

• How text messages are stored on a sender’s/receiver’s device, unlike emails which on stored in a central server.
• The ability to retrieve an email that has been deleted is more likely than trying to retrieve a text.

To listen to the interview and more insight on these issues, visit Luke Chung's blog post, Sean Hannity Radio Show Interview on Missing FBI Text Messages.

The Sean Hannity Radio Show, January 4, 2017

Background

The day after an amazing personal interview of Julian Assange by Sean Hannity aired on his TV show, FMS President Luke Chung was invited to discuss the related technology on his radio show.

Hannity traveled to London to interview Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy where he’s seeking asylum. They discussed an overview of Assange’s role as founder of WikiLeaks, and their obtaining and publishing the emails from the Democratic National Committee the weeks before the US Presidential election. Some people attribute Hillary Clinton’s loss to the revelations in those emails especially from John Podesta, the former White House Chief of Staff and Chairman of the Clinton campaign. They are also accusing the Russians for hacking (stealing) and providing the data to Assange so Donald Trump could win the election.

Radio Show

On January 4, 2017, Luke was on the radio show with Sean Hannity and Brigadier General Eli Ben Meir, former Israeli Military Intelligence chief. The three of them discussed the WikiLeaks disclosures. Luke commented specifically on:

• Cyber attacks and the security breach at OPM disclosed non-classified government employees and by omission who were covert at American Embassies globally.
• Noting Julian Assange’s careful word choices to exclude Russia as source without excluding them as the ultimate source of his sources.
• The need for WikiLeaks’ to keep their sources confidential and how they amplified the data from Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden.
• Different approaches to preventing cyber attacks depending on the cause.

“It’s one thing when someone steals your car because they broke into it. It’s another thing when someone steals your car because you left your keys in the ignition.”

To listen to the interview and more insight on these issues, visit Luke Chung's blog post, Sean Hannity Radio Show Interview on Julian Assange, WikiLeaks, Russian Hacking, and Cyber Warfare.

On the Record, with Greta Van Susteren (Fox News), December 14, 2015

FMS President Luke Chung participated in a live studio interview with Greta Van Susteren on her evening show, On the Record. Discussing the tragic San Bernardino, CA terrorist incident, Greta questioned how the State Department could have allowed the terrorists to enter the country. Luke confirmed how Google and Twitter searches can be used to screen immigrants, along with the challenges of tracking people intent on hiding their identities and activities with multiple aliases.

FMS has experience with law enforcement and counter-terrorism through our Sentinel Visualizer data visualization program that helps analysts find hidden relationships among people, places, and events.

FOX Business News, Tom Cavuto's Coast-to-Coast Show, July 29, 2015

FMS President Luke Chung was invited for a live interview with Neil Cavuto on his FOX Business News show Coast-to-Coast. The primary issue was NFL quarterback Tom Brady’s destruction of his cellphone surrounding the Inflate-gate controversy and his recent suspension.

Prior to his hearing before the NFL, Brady physically destroyed his cellphone and was able to avoid disclosing his text messages which were suspected to contain incriminating information. The question was whether that really destroyed his text messages.

The answer is not quite so simple. For more information on the technical differences between text messages and emails, read Luke's blog post on his experience.

For more pictures, visit our Facebook album.

How did the IRS not have backups and lose Lois Lerner's emails and other files? Who came up with their backup and disaster recovery plan? Wrong policies, incorrect execution? Incompetence or intentional?

Hannity TV Show on June 19, 2014

A 3.5 minute live interview with Sean Hannity in New York with Luke at their Washington, DC studio.

Sean Hannity Radio Show on June 20, 2014

A more in-depth 14 minute discussion with David Kennedy on the radio show. Luke starts about 2:30 after the introduction.

October 1, 2013

FMS President Luke Chung visited the Healthcare.gov web site the first day it launched to get a price quote for his family based on the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). He quickly discovered the website was poorly designed, poorly developed and seemingly untested.

He wrote a blog Healthcare.gov is a Technological Disaster about his experience which became a rare, non-partisan technical assessment of the website. It garnered social media attention from many news organizations, which led to an article in the New York Times, followed by national news coverage on CBS, CNN and Fox News! He was even asked to educate the House Energy and Commerce Committee on how the project could have gone so sideways. Then provided a formal testimony to the House Homeland Security Committee.

For clips of all the media coverage, visit Media Coverage for Changing the National Discourse on Healthcare.gov.

After being quoted in the New York Times, the CBS News crew visited our office that afternoon. Luke was included in the next morning's national broadcast of CBS News. Read the text or watch the video in Obamacare website looks “like nobody tested it,” programmer says.

“It wasn’t designed well, it wasn’t implemented well, and it looks like nobody tested it,” said Luke Chung, an online database programmer.

Chung supports the new health care law but said it was not the demand that is crashing the site. He thinks the entire website needs a complete overhaul.

“It’s not even close. It’s not even ready for beta testing for my book. I would be ashamed and embarrassed if my organization delivered something like that,” he said.

Luke spoke on Sean Hannity's radio show and was then invited to join him on his TV show recorded in New York City on October 24, 2013. Watch this lively 4 minute interview:

"It's just an awful website...As I was using it, the system kept crashing on me. And as soon as it started crashing, I was like 'Oh, my God, this system is not ready for prime time.' The types of crashes I was experiencing had nothing to do with too many users. It was just bad...They had developers who I sensed had never been paid to create software before. It was really amateurish. It looks like it was their first job...The programming was really bad; it looks like it wasn't tested, and even if they had programmed it properly and tested it, the design was wrong. So it really didn't matter whether they did it right...They haven't thought through the buying process...$200 million at $200 an hour is a million man hours, 500 man years. How did they have time to use 500 man-years? Or triple that, 1500 man years..This is just filling out a paper form and getting a subsidy...It shouldn't be that complicated."

Appearing with David Kennedy, Luke Chung discusses how the Healthcare.gov web site should have cost less and been designed with security up front.

"This does not need to be a Silicon Valley space project...None of these contractors are ever held accountable for delivering such crap"

On October 24th, a relatively lengthy eight minute interview where Luke evaluates the existing system and points out the problems with federal contractors. Chris Jansing does a nice job challenging some of his conclusions: "It’s just an awful web site".

An article by Paul Bremmer commenting on my interview including a complete transcript of the conversation,
Software Expert Slams Healthcare.Gov On MSNBC: 'This Really Shouldn't Be That Difficult'.

On November 26th, Luke appeared on Greta van Sustern's show for the second time. Kimberly Guilfoyle was substituting for Greta who was on vaction.

On November 30th, over Thanksgiving vacation in Sarasota, Florida, Luke had a one-on-one live interview with Clayton Morris for four minutes discussing how large government contractors profit from delivering systems that don’t work: "If we follow the money, we’ll see the stink in the system…Too Big to Fire"

Video: ObamaCare: Mistake or moneymaker?

Luke appeared on a panel with three others for a live interview discussing the relaunched Healthcare.gov web site.

He tried to explain how software works to better understand the expected 1% error rate since software either works or doesn't. Do they expect 1% of the people to crash for unknown reasons or do they know certain situations will always crash and only expect 1% of the people to do that? Frankly, we don't understand how anyone develops software with expected failure rates like this.

Articles About the Interview

• Noah Rothman comments about his appearance in this article: Tamron Hall Interrogates Tech Expert After He Criticized Supposed 'Improvements' to ACA Site
• On Grabien, the video and comments: MSNBC Interrogates Tech Expert Who Dared To Criticize ObamaCare Site

Richmond, VA (February 2012)

FMS President Luke Chung was invited by the governor's office to participate in his proclamation of 2012 as the Year of the Entrepreneur. Luke stood behind Governor Bob McDonnell and Lieutenant Governor Bill Bolling during the press conference and participated in a day-long event supporting entrepreneurship, small businesses, and job creation.

Commerce Secretary James Cheng led the events. Participants were able to hear from successful Virginia business founders and learn from each other through a luncheon and Entrepreneurial Town Hall. Examples of agricultural, technology, manufacturing, and craft businesses showed the diversity of Virginia firms offering products and services for in-state, national and international customers. It was also interesting to trace the roots of the founding of Virginia in 1607 as a high-risk entrepreneurial enterprise that eventually led to success after many failures.

Here's a news video from the local NBC station.

All parties recognized the value and responsibility of seasoned entrepreneurs helping newer entrepreneurs, and how fundamental this was to the success of our state and nation. Activities will occur around the commonwealth over the year where government representatives and entrepreneurs share their ideas, experiences, and resources. Already recognized as one of the most business friendly states in the country with one of the lowest unemployment rates, Virginia continues to foster business success in a bipartisan manner. Noteworthy was the inclusion of Education Secretary Laura Fornash in the activities stressing the importance of public education as part of a healthy business climate. This includes having great K-12 education and the many higher education institutions across Virginia. Those institutions attract bright students from outside Virginia, create entrepreneurial opportunities around them, and give us the ability to keep them in Virginia for life. FMS and Luke Chung are honored to be a part of this initiative.