MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- Defense Secretary Ashton Carter will overhaul one of his signature efforts, placing new leadership in charge of the Pentagon's office in Silicon Valley just nine months after it opened and directing its staff to report directly to him. Carter also will establish a sister unit in Boston, which also will work with tech companies on concepts with military applications, defense officials said.
Carter announced the changes Wednesday at the Silicon Valley office, known in the Pentagon as DIUx, short for Defense Innovation Unit Experimental. The office was created to build new relationships with technology companies, but has experienced mixed results. Among its critics have been corporate officials in Silicon Valley who have voiced frustration at the glacial pace of the federal government and a congressional subcommittee that recently called for more oversight of how the unit spends money.
The Pentagon chief said Wednesday that he is replacing the unit's leaders and putting in place a flatter leadership structure that includes partners, each of whom has experience in the tech world and in the Defense Department in some capacity. The managing partner will be Raj Shah, who most recently was the senior director of strategy at Palo Alto Networks in Silicon Valley and also has flown F-16 fighters in the Air Force.
"We're taking a page straight from the Silicon Valley playbook: We're iterating rapidly to make DIUx even better," Carter said. "As a result of all this great experience and in view of technology's and the world's imperative to stay agile, today we're launching DIUx 2.0."
Other partners in the revamped unit include Christopher Kirchhoff, who served as the director of strategic planning for the National Security Council; Isaac Taylor, who spent the past 13 years at Google; and Vishaal Hariprasad, who co-founded Morta Security, a cybersecurity company that was acquired by Shah's Palo Alto Networks in 2014.
A new military unit also will join the tech unit. It comprises reservists who work in the tech industry when not serving the Defense Department. It will be led by Doug Beck, a vice president at Apple who is a Navy Reserve commander, intelligence officer and combat veteran who has served in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Senior defense officials defended the unit's early work ahead of Carter's announcement, noting that he was the first Pentagon chief in about 20 years to visit Silicon Valley when he announced the formation of the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental last year at a site just a few miles from the headquarters of Google, Facebook and other major tech companies. This week marks his fourth trip there, a level of engagement that led to the the recruitment of new "top-flight" people to the unit, the officials said.
The unit had been led by its director, George Duchak, and a military deputy, Rear Adm. Daniel Hendrickson. Their future roles were not immediately clear, but Carter said Duchak will be reassigned within the Pentagon. Carter said he is grateful to Duchak "for helping launch such a path-breaking initiative" and identifying potential partners in industry.
Carter also will realign the unit so that it reports directly to his office, rather than to Frank Kendall, the undersecretary of defense for acquisitions, technology and logistics. It will work in close coordination with Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work and Air Force Gen. Paul Selva, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Pentagon's other research and development leaders.
The initiative also will be expanded to include a new office in Boston, a tech-rich city that includes the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and companies focusing on everything from robotics to textiles.
Carter said during his last trip to Silicon Valley in March that the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental's creation would help entrepreneurs "understand places in the Department of Defense where they secure funding for ideas that they think are relevant to defense." At that time, the Silicon Valley office had identified 22 pilot programs with tech companies that had not previously worked with the Pentagon. Five of those programs were underway, and 17 others were going through the Defense Department's acquisition process, defense officials said.
A Section on 05/12/2016