Pentagon board taps Alphabet’s Schmidt
Advisory panel’s mission is to bring Silicon Valley innovation to military
Alphabet Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt will head a new Pentagon advisory board to kickstart Silicon Valley innovation in the U.S. military.
Defense Secretary Ash Carter discussed the new Defense Innovation Advisory Board with Schmidt on Wednesday during the annual RSA cybersecurity conference. The new advisory board is modeled on the Defense Business Board, which gives advice on best business practices from the private sector.
Schmidt “knows that you can’t have everything else, you can’t have freedom, innovation and take care of your family if you don’t have security. It’s not a game,” Carter said.
The aim: help the Department of Defense identify quick solu- tions to its problems with suggestions for tech alternatives and project management processes.
“The Defense Innovation Advisory Board will seek to advise the department on areas that are deeply familiar to Silicon Valley companies, such as rapid prototyping, iterative product development, complex data analysis in business decision making, the use of mobile and cloud applications, and organizational information sharing,” Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said in a statement.
The board, which will be comprised of 12 individuals from Silicon Valley and beyond, will not engage in discussion of military operations or strategy, Cook said.
“I’m going to let him have substantial latitude in picking the members of the board,” Carter said.
“They’ll travel around the world to our bases and installations, get to know our commanders and tell me how we can do better.”
Also Wednesday, the Pentagon said it was inviting vetted hackers to break into the military’s network as part of a program to test the vulnerability of the system. The military’s most sensitive networks won’t be part of the program.