The TechCrunch Global Affairs Project examines the increasingly intertwined relationship between the tech sector and global politics.

Much has been written in this space about the Defense Department’s efforts to tap Silicon Valley’s innovation — and the steep hill tech firms have to climb to ultimately win DOD contracts and cross the “Valley of Death.” The good news is that the U.S. government has heard Silicon Valley’s pleas to cut bureaucracy and foster new ways of doing business and is taking action.

The Critical 4Cs

Over the past year strong, bipartisan alignment has emerged between the executive and legislative branches around a set of actions aimed at closing gaps and removing barriers to success, best thought of as the “Critical 4Cs": Culture, Contracting, Congressional Budget Cycles and Champions.

Let’s start with Champions. The American people are fortunate to have two of Silicon Valley’s greatest champions in Deputy Secretary Kathleen Hicks and Under Secretary for Research and Engineering (R&E) and (CTO) Heidi Shyu. They, along with other champions in the Pentagon, fully understand the challenge and have taken concrete steps from the top down to prime the DOD system for innovation.

For example, Hicks and her former software czar led a huge effort in 2021 to deliver DOD’s Software Modernization Strategy, which aims to better organize the Pentagon’s internal processes for adopting new software technologies across the enterprise. The strategy also produces, in effect, the formal policy "demand signal" for scaling up Silicon Valley tech across the DOD.

Hicks has also visibly empowered the CTO, her management group and the Innovation Steering Group to map the Pentagon’s innovation efforts, examine its alignment and acquisition practices and engage honestly with — and incorporate the views of — industry’s smaller tech stakeholders as moving forward. DOD has also established new programs to recruit and grow tech talent and thereby attract and retain a greater pool of defense tech champions. This gets at another key “4C”: building a tech savvy — and tech driven — culture within the DOD.