The Pentagon's Master Plan to Crack into Silicon Valley

James Hasik

Security,

Should the DoD relocate some contracting officials to Sand Hill Road?

On Tuesday evening, as part of the Council’s Captains of Industry series, our Lund Fellow Steve Grundman hosted a panel discussion amongst the CEOs of three Californian startup firms. Mylea Charvat's Savonix is building a “mobile, clinically valid, reliable, neuro-cognitive assessment and brain health platform.” John De Santis’s Hytrust is writing and deploying software that automatically monitors and secures computing infrastructure for “continuous compliance.” Gary Gysin's Liquid Robotics is “instrumenting the ocean” with its fleet of Wave Gliders, solar- and wave-powered robots that track everything from whales to submarines. All three want to help, but have had their frustrations with the government. And all three agreed that the government has a ways to go in convincing the startup community that it’s serious.

The want for fresh ideas from new sources has been a consistent message during Pentagon officials’ periodic pilgrimages west. Last week, the Building went further, asking the Congress to consider, in its final writing of the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), actual set-asides for newcomers. The program would offer contracts for as long as two years, twenty of up to $2 million, and five of up to $5 million, to “companies who have done little or no business with the federal government, but can provide needed innovation.” Those aren’t the monies that get new bombers or missile cruisers built, or even designed. But they are rather like the engineering funding that CIA venture outfit In-Q-Tel has long been providing. And as our panelists agreed, they're the kind of monies that can get startups interested in work with a military purpose.