DOD Seeks to Grow Partnerships with Silicon Valley Startups

The Defense Department’s efforts to build deeper partnerships with Silicon Valley has put the agency on a path to integrate more commercial technology for critical defense applications faster. Defense innovation leaders briefed attendees at a panel discussion in Arlington, Virginia, Thursday.

“The integration and collaboration between those two worlds have never been stronger,” said David Rader, senior advisor at the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU). “We have a lot of great commercial tech that we can plug in quite quickly and modify modestly to solve some warfighter and national security needs.”

He pointed to successful ventures with Joby Aviation, which manufactures a remote autonomous quadcopter, and with DIU for the super AI-enabled xView dataset that helps satellites look at ships when the transponders are off. With this technology, DOD can track human and weapons trafficking and support collaborations with the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department and other agencies.

“The commercial tech sector — including large and small companies — is increasingly ready and eager to partner with the department,” Defense Innovation Unit Director Doug Beck told GovCIO Media and Research while highlighting DIU’s new strategy and realignment within the department. “Real and perceived cultural barriers notwithstanding, the number and capability of companies developing dual-use technology — and the talent and investment energy that is flowing into those efforts — is inspiring.”  

DIU’s National Security Innovation Network (NSIN) is another program office that focuses on early-stage technology by connecting people, ideas and concepts through an accelerator program.

NSIN creates onramps for these groups “to actually come and work with the department,” said NSIN National Capital Regional Director Kedar Pavgi at the event. “Last year we were doing an accelerator cohort that specifically focused on C5ISR (Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Cyber, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance), different types of communications technologies and information-processing technologies.”

On the acquisition front, NSIN designed a suite of programming to streamline the proposal process for startups, reducing the layers of bureaucracy that startup teams need to go through and orient them to the cultural nuances of the requirements for government contracting.

Growth of Defense Startups

There is significant growth in the venture capital industry, with new funds emerging and corporate venture arms expanding investments across many sectors and particularly for defense now, noted Silicon Valley Defense Group’s Sam Gray on the panel.

Defense advisors see partnering with startups as a key component to overcoming the proverbial “valley of death” in which tech projects get stuck in the process and do not materialize past funding.

While there were only one or two defense corporate venture capital arms five years ago, now nearly every major defense company has a venture arm. SAIC launched one last week, and Booz Allen Hamilton’s was worth $100 million at the end of last year.

The defense industry also has garnered attention from the likes of Silicon Valley’s Y Combinator, a notable institution that runs programs supporting startups. Its “request for startups” list that it updates periodically as it seeks new applicants for its programs included defense technology for the first time in last week’s iteration.

“This decade is the time to return Silicon Valley to these roots” where it was “born in the early 20th century as an R&D area for the U.S. military,” according to the blog post.