I think you’d have some statistical complications around stress: beyond the inherent pressure of the job itself, it’s highly likely that they were understaffed even before losing a lot of support when the DOGE chainsaws were in “cut first, measure later” mode — I know multiple people in the military who are still running at like half productivity because telework was cancelled so everyone’s day is a couple hours longer commuting into an office where they’re sitting on the floor because there aren’t enough desks — and if they were married to another federal employee they might be dealing with loss of income or childcare (DOGE closed the GSA office which handled that, apparently to pressure parents into resigning) at the same time.

The suicide rate isn't uniformly distributed given gender. There are likely screenings (previous mental health history) and rejection of the most affected age group (70+) that should lead the baseline to be even lower. Meaning 18x is probably on the low end.

I think that it would be necessary to correct for things like income and education level since engineers in cyber command are likely not representative of the general public.

Stress, PTSD, and overwork can and do aggravate mental health issues. All of these are probably hitting these people - probably at the same time.

This particular population is highly selected because of the work they do and the types of clearances they hold. I would expect the suicide rate to differ significantly from the general population.