It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
When I started out, my first job was for Caspar Weinberger, and Star Wars was the big thing then. And most significant things that happened in technology at the time happened in America and happened because the government made them happen—the internet, GPS, et cetera. That's no longer true. And I certainly recognize that. We are the biggest dog in technology; we spend more than all the big tech companies combined on R&D. But you're right that to a typical tech customer, DOD is a relatively small and kind of problematic customer. We have, to our detriment, some onerous procedures, and a lot of companies just say, “This is too much of a pain in my neck to be worth it.”
So what that means for defense leaders is that they have to play the game that's on the field, and that means making themselves attractive to tech. One way they can do that is to fund R&D, so that cool stuff that is of broader applicability is sponsored by DOD. Another is to be an early adopter so that they buy stuff first, when it's more expensive, but they can afford it because they've got to do whatever they've got to do. And that helps lift up the boat, protecting the tech sector. So there are things that defense can do, but it can't do it if it's a little island. It needs to be involved. And it needs to have the humility to understand that it’s not the controller it once was. And I've seen this, I've lived this my whole life. And so I know it isn’t like it was when I started out.