Silicon Valley warns the Pentagon: ‘Time is running out’
After years of research and development efforts, tech startups want to see the Pentagon commit to real production work.
By Valerie Insinna on December 21, 2021 at 7:45 AM
REAGAN NATIONAL DEFENSE FORUM: On Dec. 3, top Pentagon leaders, military brass and defense CEOs flocked to California for the annual Reagan National Defense Forum. The Davos-style event, which brings the power brokers of the defense world out to California, has increasingly become a venue for meetings with the young Silicon Valley-based tech founders and venture capitalists eager to break into government markets.
This year, there was an air of foreboding served alongside the free drinks and hors d’oeuvres.
“Time is running out with Silicon Valley,” said Katherine Boyle, a partner with venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, in a series of tweets published the day before the event. “We have, at most, two years before founders walk away and private capital dries up. And many, many startups will go out of business waiting for DOD to award real production contracts.”
To many of the executives from defense-oriented tech startups who attended the forum and spoke to Breaking Defense, Boyle’s tweets rang true, a Cassandra-like warning to the Pentagon establishment about what it could lose.
