November 1, 2024
Colloquium Topic: A Requiem for Defense Innovation? Ukraine, the Pentagon’s Innovator’s Dilemma, and Why the United States Risks Strategic Surprise
The interplay between radical visions, motivated teams working outside of corporate strictures, and the struggle to bring innovation back into settled organizations is a common motif in the history of technology. Eight years after Secretary of Defense Ash Carter spun out Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx) and launched the Defense Innovation Board (DIB) and the Defense Digital Service (DDS), it’s time to ask whether this motif is playing out inside the Pentagon as well. These initiatives and other innovation cells inspired by them in each military service, like the Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Functional Team and more recently Replicator, have achieved stunning successes in both deployable technology and the methods used to develop and procure them. Yet despite notable progress in specific areas and on small scales, they have not meaningfully transformed how the Pentagon adopts emerging technologies or procures large systems for the future of war. Making the “bare” case for innovation beyond what’s argued in Unit X: How the Pentagon and Silicon Valley are Transforming the Future of War, this talk takes the view that the pace of adaptation in the U.S. military is being outstripped by the threat environment, opening the nation to risks comparable to the eve of prior great power conflicts.
An essay outlining the talk is available at Requiem_for_Defense_Innovation.
Colloquium Speaker: Christopher Kirchhoff, Ph.D.
Christopher Kirchhoff is expert in the future of war, artificial intelligence, strategic forecasting, and the social impacts of technology. He founded the Pentagon Silicon Valley’s office and is the author of Unit X: How the Pentagon and Silicon Valley are Transforming the Future of War, a Financial Times “best business book of 2024.” Taking readers to the front lines in Ukraine, Taiwan, and the Middle East, Unit X chronicles the Pentagon’s Silicon Valley office, Defense Innovation Unit, which piloted flying cars and microsatellites in military missions and created a new acquisition pathway for start-ups now responsible for $70 billion dollars of technology acquisition by the Department of Defense. During the Obama Administration Kirchhoff served as the National Security Council’s Director for Strategic Planning, the senior civilian aide to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and in the White House Chief of Staff’s office. Kirchhoff went on to work for Google CEO Eric Schmidt and the AI company Anthropic. A graduate of Harvard College, he holds a doctorate in politics from Cambridge University. Kirchhoff has been awarded the Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Service and the Civilian Service Medal for hazardous duty in Iraq. From 2011-2014 he was the highest ranking openly gay advisor in the U.S. Department of Defense.