Silicon Valley-US military ties key to beating China: top Pentagon official
- Deputy Defence Secretary Kathleen Hicks pushes for stronger military ties with Palo Alto tech firms to help the force compete with Beijing
- But start-ups frustrated with bureaucracy say the Pentagon is all talk and not placing orders
The Pentagon’s No 2 official went to California this week to explore how to harness Silicon Valley’s innovation mindset as America’s military seeks to compete with China. The tech wizards she met with said the Defence Department must change its bureaucratic ways if it wants to succeed.
“The military keeps talking about their want and need for greater manufacturing capability, but they aren’t placing orders,” Blake Resnick, the 23-year-old multimillionaire and founder of BRINC Drones Inc., said in an interview after he and other industry leaders met with Deputy Defence Secretary Kathleen Hicks.
“This part drives me freaking crazy about this whole situation,” Resnick said. “Why in the world would I go and spend tens, hundreds of millions of dollars building factories to produce nothing?”
It’s a problem that Hicks and her predecessors have tried to answer for years, so far with limited success. One issue is the way the Pentagon spends money. In an interview on Wednesday after touring start-ups in Palo Alto, Hicks acknowledged that the department’s two-year appropriations cycle is challenging for start-ups, which move on shorter fundraising timelines.
It’s among impediments Hicks will have to address as she and her Pentagon colleagues push their new “Replicator” initiative, which aims to spur mass production of low-cost drones for the military.
