Last week, I attended the Aspen Security Forum. It was a week of meaningful conversations, and a true honor for me to connect with so many forward-thinking and influential leaders in national security.
A few highlights…
On moving beyond the valley of death
I’m particularly energized to hear about new approaches to government-industry collaboration – including moving past simply solving the “valley of death” and instead building innovation at scale into the DoD’s approach to major conflict deterrence. One year into the DIU 3.0 strategy, DIU Director Doug Beck says his team is working with DoD to partner with “the true engines of scale of the department,” which include acquisition and sustainment, research, and engineering.
On AI and national security
I’ve thought a lot about how we incorporate the power of AI into our national security posture, and specifically for Heven, how we engineer the most cutting-edge software capabilities into our drones. Sir Jeremy Fleming, former director of GCHQ in the UK, expressed a concern on all of our minds – “I’m worried about how our institutions will keep up” – especially as AI as a term is often misunderstood by the public.
On shoring up the defense industrial base
During a panel featuring Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) and Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE), it was exciting to see bipartisan agreement on the need to invest in the defense industrial base. Sen. Coons and Sen. Sullivan both agreed that defense spending needs to be a national priority regardless of the party in power. As the U.S. DoD looks to buy drones that aren’t manufactured in China – via the Replicator program and other initiatives – a focus on industrial base capability is especially reassuring. On another panel, Anduril Chief Strategy Officer Chris Brose pointed to the importance of global cooperation in industrial base capacity building saying, “We need to start seeing each other as a common industrial base…and look at our allies as contributors of technology and not just buyers of things America built.”
Bentzion
