- While the Silicon Valley and Washington are building narrower linksTechnological leaders have given advice on how the government can innovate better and faster. The founders and investors of defense technology startups said the Pentagon should reduce management times and increase its risk tolerance levels to develop new weapons.
After years trying to break through in the notoriously Byzantine Defense sector of the US government, Silicon Valley finally has its chance.
A harvest of New Defense Startups From the valley heads to Washington at a time when the Pentagon is impatient from New Tech. Lots of technology leading figures supported Re -election of President Donald Trump, cement a new link Between an industry that was previously known to support Democrats.
A recent conference in the national capital stressed the new close links Between technology and the government. The Hill and Valley forum presented CEOs on Better Defense Technological Companies on Wednesday like Palantir Alex Karp And AndundilBrian Schimpf, rubbing their shoulders with government representatives such as the national security councilor Mike Waltz, as well as members of the Senate Armed Services Committee such as Joni Ernst (R-IOW), Mike Rounds (RS.D.) and Jack Reed (Dr.I.).
In the context of the in-depth geopolitical rivalry of the United States with China, leaders of the supports of technology leaders so that the government can take A page of his game book has found a welcome audience.
The White House is “absolutely dedicated to the reform of how we acquire technology” to modernize the US military, said Waltz, one day before leaving its role as national security advisor.
Trump signed several decrees This would rationalize how the Ministry of Defense acquires new defense systems. Defense technology startups have long since maintained that current methods let them incapable of competing with existing military entrepreneurs which they considered as lower products but deeper relations in the Pentagon.
Executive orders “go after things that always seem to be too expensive, deliver too little and take too much time,” Waltz told the public during a panel entitled The redesigned arsenal: design the DOD for the 21st century battlefield. “We can fill this auditorium with elements of reflection of the defense and acquisition reform, but you have a president and you have a leadership team which are all gas, no brakes, and sometimes we can help them direct.”
At the center of the talks was the inclination of the Pentagon for long and prolonged long tenders, and a culture opposed to the risk that has made it more difficult for DOD to take risks on experimental technology.
“There is a fundamental reality that innovation is disorderly and chaotic,” said the director of technology Palantir, Shyam Sankar.
Friday, the White House submitted a 2026 Federal budget who understood 1.01 dollars in the financing of the DOD. Tech Defense Startups find themselves in a strange position to be frustrated by the operations of the DOD, which they consider as terms and anti-scentocratic and, at the same time, to court its affairs. Now, given the close relationship of Silicon Valley with the Trump administration, he seems to have found the political allies for the reforms she is looking for.
‘You always pull up’
But even if the DOD opens its supply process to technological companies and startups, they will always face a difficult market, according to Karp of Palantir.
“You always turn on the climb, but shoot the climb and pull as if to set up Everest while they drop grenades on you is another story,” said Karp, whose company has managed to continued the US military In 2016 for blocked it from the call for tenders for a government contract. This movement is widely considered as open Pentagon doors at Silicon Valley.
Andundil’s Schimpf suggested that the Pentagon is moving large orders with defense startups. “If you buy things, the capital will flow into defense,” he said. “Buy large -scale things that matter, that move the needle and create opportunities on board.”
Without the guarantees of major contracts, Andundil has “just delighted” to develop new versions of products such as air-to-air missiles, he does not believe that a buyer, added Schimpf. “I do not think that for 20 years, whoever buys an air-to-air missile that we have done because they have already been committed” to buy from someone else, “he said.
Emil Michael, Trump’s candidate for the Defense Under-Secretary for Research and Engineering, believes that the Pentagon could be less dependent on tailor-made defense systems and more open to existing commercial products when looking for new technologies to buy. “We don’t need things that are always tailor-made,” he said.
Michael, who is not yet confirmed for his role in the Pentagon, said that the DOD could also benefit from the search for opportunities to save time, not just money. “Saving time is not something that is inherent in the DOD business model, [which is] On the reduction of risk to its smallest possible component at the expense of the trip as quickly as possible. »»
Fail quickly, fail often
In discussions on the development of new technologies, the conversation has often turned to one of the Mantras of Silicon Valley: fail quickly, fail often. The idea, which is a must of technological culture, is that the many failed iterations of a product do not matter as long as the final version works.
“Failure does not matter. This is the extent of success that counts,” said Vinod Khosla venture capital when asked how to make government more comfortable with risk taking.
The Sankar de Palantir suggested increasing competition between employees of the Ministry of Defense to create, so that they would have an “incentive to beat the bureaucrat with two doors in the corridor”. He considers that DOD is a single -time one that has stifled innovation by being the only buyer of defense systems on the market.
Instead, Sankar proposed that several program managers be responsible for supervising the same project, the contract finally going to the one who obtained a better result. “They woke up every day like hyper-competitive Americans trying to help you,” he said. “There would be an incentive like” yeah let’s go faster. ” Let’s do it better. »»
The lecturers of the conference said that the current geopolitical tensions and the AI arms race with China have only added an emergency to the issue.
“And when you are in an AI race when each innovation could lead to tens of billions, even hundreds of billions, for value creation – and you consider the creation of value as a better defense, a shield, more deterrence – every minute that you lose is expensive,” said Michael.
This story was initially presented on Fortune.com
