Hacking for Defense in Silicon Valley

Hacking For Defense (H4D)
When Colonel Peter Newell left the Army, he came to Silicon Valley at the urging of a friend and fellow retired Army Colonel, Joe Felter, a Stanford PhD who moved to Palo Alto and Stanford after a career in the Special Forces. Newell accepted Felter's invitation to join a company he had originally established. BMNT does for the Department of Energy, the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community what the REF did for the U.S. Army - build teams that deliver solutions to complex problems, with access to the entire network of suppliers and partners that Newell and Felter developed throughout their careers.
To tap into the innovation of Silicon Valley, BMNT, in collaboration with Stanford's Preventive Defense Project organized Hacking For Defense (H4D) - a series of hackathons - to help the Department of Defense do four things:

1. Identify new ideas that will solve problems the military expects to see in the future
2. Map those ideas to the technology that could be used to solve them
3. Recruit the people who can make it happen
4. Show the DoD how to engage Silicon Valley with challenging problems and build networks of people to solve them

BMNT's first hackathon, "Hacking the Supply Chain," brought together diverse teams of technologists and users to provide solutions to the questions: How do you supply troops which can be sent on short-notice, for long periods to places where there are no existing bases or supplies? How might we create the most resilient and efficient supply chain possible for our forward-deployed land forces in 2025?
"Hacking the Supply Chain" is focused on:

• energy and power generation
• potable water and field expedient sewage systems
• advanced manufacturing and repair maintenance technologies
• training and readiness technologies
• command, control, computers, and communications technologies

In mid-April, the ideas generated at BMNT's first hackathon will be presented to a panel of experienced senior entrepreneurs, engineers, and military and government officials and then sent to the Department of Defense with specific recommendations on the technologies with potential to support them.
Ultimately Newell and Felter say they want to use BMNT to create an "insurgency" in Silicon Valley to get cutting-edge innovation into the organizations defending our country. (Click here for information on Hacking for Defense events.)
Hacking the Prime's
In reality, what BMNT is trying to fix is the way the Department of Defense acquires radically new technology and ideas. While DARPA tries to fill that need, today the primary conduits for bringing new technology to the government are the prime contractors (e.g., Lockheed, Boeing, Raytheon, Northrup Grumman, L3, General Dynamics, et al.) But most of these contractors focus on fulfilling existing technology needs that can be profitable.
If a startup wants to provide new technology to the Department of Defense (DoD), they have to sell through the prime contractors who own the relationships with the DoD. Most startups and innovative companies are unwilling to risk exposing their Intellectual Property and go through the paperwork of dealing with the government, so they choose not to pursue government ventures. In this way, the primes artificially restrict DoD's technological funnel. (Palantir is the most visible Silicon Valley insurgent in this space.)
Today, incentives for bringing innovation into the government with speed and urgency are not aligned with the government acquisition, budgeting, and requirements process. As a result, the DoD fails to acquire truly innovative technologies (much less paradigm-changing technologies) in a timely fashion.
Lessons Learned

• In peacetime the U.S. military is an immovable and inflexible bureaucracy
• In wartime it can adapt and adopt organizational change with startling speed
• The Rapid Equipping Force operated with speed and urgency to deliver solutions to real customer problems
• BMNT and Hacking for Defense are trying to bring this same process to Silicon Valley