From Silicon Valley to the Pentagon: The Future of Defense Innovation

The last few decades have been a period of transition for defense. An increasing number of startups have begun to rival large defense primes, the industry has gradually become a calculus of both hardware and software, and exponential technologies have forced the DoD to rethink how it has traditionally done business. These changing conditions were some of the inputs to resulting in the DIU – Defense Innovation Unit – starting in 2015 within the Department of Defense, focused on accelerating the adoption of technology. In this episode recorded at a16z’s American Dynamism Summit in January, a16z General Partner Katherine Boyle is joined by the Director of the DIU, Doug Beck, plus two critical founders ushering in this new era of defense: Brian Schimpf, cofounder and CEO of Anduril and Brandon Tseng, cofounder of Shield AI. So what does the next wave of defense innovation really look like? Let’s find out.