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Since its launch a few years ago, the Defense Entrepreneurs Forum (DEF) has sat at the center of a movement to bring innovation into national defense from a broad array of individuals of all ranks and...
View ArticleThe End of Globalization? The International Security Implications
Over the last few decades, globalization has created great wealth and brought millions out of poverty. Today, a combination of technology, politics, and social pressures seems to be reversing...
View ArticleMy Droneski Just Ate Your Ethics
“War does not determine who is right — only who is left.” ― Anonymous Morality is a private and costly luxury. ― Henry Adams In 2018, you may expect battalions of adversarial Russian “Avtonomnyy” to...
View ArticleI Saw the Future of Defense in California, And It’s Coming to a University...
It’s back-to-school season, and the smell of defense reform is in the air. Depending on how much of a wonk you are, the mere mention of the U.S. defense acquisition system will either make you fall...
View ArticleThe Pentagon’s New Chief Innovation Officer Should Tread Lightly
Unlike most government boards, the Defense Innovation Advisory Board is a particularly eclectic assembly that includes astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and Instagram Chief...
View ArticleStaff Sergeant Disruptor: Observations on Leading Innovation
Early this year, I witnessed a new surveillance capability employed in Operation Inherent Resolve. It implemented a modernized flexible model of intelligence collection that should guide all future...
View ArticleFinding Room for Failure in the Pentagon
Mike Grimm’s first startup had just failed. He’d just blown his entire annual budget in a single day. His sole investor wasn’t happy. Mike was a mid-level manager in the army, a major. He was...
View ArticleSwiping Left on Silicon Valley: New Commercial Analogies for Defense Innovation
Under former Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter and the third offset strategy, the Department of Defense launched a love affair with Silicon Valley. The relationship was a logical fit for Carter, a...
View ArticleThe Path to Prototype Warfare
Can a radical approach to weapons development help the Pentagon cope with uncertainty and improve military effectiveness? Over the past several years, the topics of decentralization of military...
View ArticleScientist-Warrior Geeks: Turning Knowledge Into Power
Sharon Weinberger, The Imagineers of War. The Untold Story of DARPA, the Pentagon Agency That Changed the World (Alfred A. Knopf, 2017) Since antiquity, philosophers have wondered if it is possible to...
View ArticleThe Red Queen Problem: Innovation in the Defense Department and Intelligence...
“…it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place. ” –The Red Queen, Alice in Wonderland During the Cold War, the threat from the Soviets was quantifiable and often predictable. We could...
View ArticleThe Next Military-Industrial Complex, Part I: Riding Venture Capital’s Coattails
The U.S. national security establishment is facing the stark reality that the technological innovation needed to help keep its defenses strong resides largely in the private sector. Impelled by this...
View ArticleBuggy Whips and Segways: Historical Misinnovation in National Security and...
In the 1991 film Other Peoples’ Money, Danny DeVito plays Lawrence Garfield, a corporate raider hell-bent on acquiring and dismantling a cable-and-wire manufacturing company. (He’s essentially Richard...
View ArticleThe Next Military-Industrial Complex, Part II: Global Business and National...
In the future, the American defense establishment’s engagement with the private sector will vary with the mission. The arms-length procurement requirements of a dedicated industrial base for big-ticket...
View ArticleThe Next New Military Specialty Should Be Software Developers
The words “soldier” and “airman” do not immediately evoke the image of workers in grease-stained coveralls turning wrenches on tanks, personnel carriers, trucks, and aircraft. Most people predictably...
View ArticleThe National Defense Strategy: A Compelling Call for Defense Innovation
“Success no longer goes to the country that develops a new fighting technology first, but rather to the one that better integrates it and adapts its way of fighting …Our response will be to prioritize...
View ArticleCommercial Accelerators and the Defense Department: A Blueprint for...
Three thousand two hundred and sixty-nine. This was the number of companies to graduate from more than 170 different accelerators across the United States and Canada in 2016. Since 2005, these...
View ArticleBuilding the Hierarchy of Innovation in the Defense Department: A Plan for...
“Success no longer goes to the country that develops a new fighting technology first, but rather to the one that better integrates it and adapts its way of fighting….” -The National Defense Strategy...
View ArticleRenewing Defense Innovation: Five Incentives for Forming Pentagon-Startup...
At confirmation hearings on Capitol Hill on Nov. 7, 2017, Sen. John McCain was serving up a heaping of the straight talk for which he’s become known: “The DoD’s relationship with Silicon Valley … will...
View ArticleA Solution to the U.S. Military’s Scalability Problem: Software Flexibility
Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku, the architect of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, predicted the pivotal role that industrial overmatch would play in the outcome of World War II. Proving him right, America...
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