Brent Scowcroft Center Nonresident Senior Fellow August Cole cowrites for TechCrunch on the Department of Defense hoping to increase defense innovation with Silicon Valley:
The U.S. Secretary of Defense, Ashton Carter, has made two trips to Silicon Valley this year, but has only spoken directly to his counterpart in Russia once in the same period — despite NATO being on its highest possible alert level.
That’s how serious the Pentagon is about courting Silicon Valley to bolster defense innovation.
Just as the Defense Department is scouring the Bay Area for good ideas (and has even set up a sort of consul outpost at Moffett Field), it also is turning a hard eye on itself.
The military’s leaders want to change the culture of the world’s largest bureaucracy and cut red tape in both acquiring technologies and working with new companies. They are hoping that the startups and tech giants of Silicon Valley will form — to use the DC-jargon — a new “defense industrial base,” or “DIB 2.0” supplier base.