The article says:
...the company awarded the contract was Thomson Reuters Special Services, which operates separately from Reuters News and specializes in fraud detection and risk management—areas directly relevant to countering cyber threats. [It was a] a contract awarded to a risk analytics firm to develop cybersecurity defenses..."
So... the Canadian company that owns Reuters also develops cybersecurity defenses? And the U.S. government gave that foreign company $9 million?
Here's where it gets really interesting.
Per the Wikipedia page:
Thomson Reuters owns and operates the Consolidated Lead Evaluation and Reporting (CLEAR) database, which scrapes personal and identifying data for use in law enforcement, corporate security, and fraud investigations. Per the company's marketing, CLEAR compiles public records, phone records, utility records, social media information, credit history, motor vehicle registration data, and automatic license plate reader scans to create files on its subjects. CLEAR has been the subject of numerous lawsuits alleging invasions of privacy and other violations of civil liberties.
So... a foreign company has all that information? What is going on here, right?
But, it turns out, Thomson Reuters has contracts with ICE. Here's a story about one from Trump's first term:
And the above article mentions other contracts Thomson Reuters has had with ICE.
So, is the $9 million contract part of their work for ICE?
Answering my own question... The article says it's a DOD contract. Apparently, TRSS has many contracts with DOD and ICE. Musk and Trump jumped the gun on this one.