The Trump administration launched a six-month pilot in Texas called Project Watershed 250 that will bring volunteer expertise and technologies from cyber and artificial intelligence companies to bear on water-system security. The Office of the National Cyber Director (ONCD) described the pilot as the first of the state-based, industry-centric projects it has previewed since the national cybersecurity strategy was published earlier this year. Officials position the program as a pragmatic, outcome-focused effort to “find and fix” defenses across vulnerable water and wastewater systems.
Scope of the pilot and what organizers say it will do
The pilot is explicitly time-limited to six months and, according to Cairncross, will use private-sector services described at the rollout as “red teaming that tests utilities’ current defenses, system hardening using the latest private sector cyber tools and AI tooling that helps utilities’ frontier cyber defenders to protect Texas water systems and scale proven solutions across the country.” The stated aim is to make water and wastewater critical infrastructure “more resilient and resistant to cyber attacks by proactively finding and fixing system weaknesses.”
Who showed up to help: a dozen named companies
A dozen companies appeared at the San Antonio rollout to praise the initiative and outline intended contributions. Those companies, named by the event organizers, were:
- Parsons
- Microsoft
- Fortinet
- Google Cloud
- Palo Alto Networks
- Amazon Web Services
- Reflection AI
- Cloudflare
- Zscaler
- Forescout
- Abnormal AI
- Dragos
Organizers framed those vendors as providing “world-class cyber capabilities” and tooling that could be deployed to test and harden water utilities’ defenses.
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See what we buildTexas oversight and the incidents organizers cited
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said the pilot would be overseen by Cairncross’s office and Texas Cyber Command, which Abbott noted was established “just last year.” He invoked recent incidents to justify the program, citing “an Iranian-backed cyberattack” that affected 30 water systems across 12 states and a 2024 attack on the water system in Muleshoe, Texas, that was “suspected to be the work of Russian hackers.” Abbott said many rural providers “simply don’t have the resources they need to be able to protect themselves.”
Criticism from a water-security professional and the funding question
Not everyone at or about the rollout welcomed the approach. A cyber professional who works on water security issues, speaking on condition of anonymity, called the program “all smoke” and said “there’s no real money behind it.” That person added: “The White House did what it always does — reached out to industry with their hands out asking for industry to pay for things the government should be doing, at least in part.”
The rollout itself framed the effort as a federal-state-industry collaboration; the anonymous critique framed it as a model that shifts costs onto private firms and, implicitly, onto utilities that accept vendor help. The pilot’s reliance on volunteer industry contributions is one of the clearest flashpoints in public reactions reported at the event.
How technologists, policymakers, and utilities are positioned
- Technologists and security teams: Organizers said vendors will perform red teaming, system hardening and deploy AI tools to help utility defenders test and improve defenses; the pilot will be an opportunity to validate specific private-sector tools in operational environments.
- Policymakers and regulators: The rollout was framed explicitly as an alternative to prior federal approaches — the piece notes that the Biden administration’s audit requirements were challenged in court and led the Environmental Protection Agency to withdraw its rule — and ONCD said it intends to “find out what works” and scale successful measures.
- Rural and municipal utilities: Advocates for the pilot cite limited resources at smaller systems; organizers and Gov. Abbott emphasized that rural providers lack the resources to defend themselves and therefore are key beneficiaries of vendor-supplied testing and hardening.
Project Watershed 250 is being presented as a practical, timebound experiment: officials promise active testing and remediation and say lessons will be scaled afterward. But the rollout also surfaced a clear tension — between a public-private volunteer model promoted by the ONCD and Texas leaders, and critics who say the plan lacks dedicated funding and asks industry to shoulder responsibilities they view as partly governmental. The next six months will be the program’s proving ground; ONCD and state partners have said they intend to “target that, and ... scale off of this and learn lessons.” Whether the pilot produces replicable, funded pathways for small water systems remains the central open question from the facts reported at the rollout.
