WASHINGTON — Michael Brown, a veteran tech trade govt who has led the Pentagon’s business outreach workplace since 2018, is President Biden’s decide for the Protection Division’s prime procurement job, the White Home introduced April 2.
Brown was nominated to function undersecretary of protection for acquisition and sustainment. He’s at the moment the director of the Protection Innovation Unit, primarily based in Silicon Valley. The Obama administration created the workplace in 2015 to construct ties with startups and enterprise traders, and assist transition applied sciences from the non-public sector to army applications.
The technological competitors with China has been a prime concern for Brown throughout his time at DIU. In 2018 he co-authored a paper on how Chinese venture investments are giving that nation entry to the “crown jewels of U.S. innovation.”
Chinese language enterprise offers financing early-stage expertise corporations have grown quickly in recent times, the paper mentioned. “The applied sciences the place China is investing are the identical ones the place U.S. companies are investing and that will probably be foundational to future innovation: synthetic intelligence, autonomous automobiles, augmented-virtual actuality, robotics and blockchain expertise.”
Beneath Brown, DIU grew to become an early supporter of emerging space launch companies like Rocket Lab, Virgin Orbit and Relativity Area. These corporations had been chosen by DIU to launch experimental DoD payloads as a part of an effort to determine how DoD can leverage business launch providers.
DIU additionally invested within the space surveillance startup LeoLabs which tracks satellite tv for pc actions in low Earth orbit with a community of phased-array radars.
As undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment, Brown would oversee a greater than $240 billion annual price range for army services
Earlier than becoming a member of the U.S. authorities, Brown was the CEO of two public Silicon Valley expertise companies, Symantec and Quantum.
In a current interview with Francis Rose, host of Authorities Issues, Brown made the case that utilizing business options saves taxpayer {dollars}.
“It’s actually going to be vital as budgets turn into tighter on the Protection Division over the subsequent a number of years for us to make the most of business expertise,” Brown mentioned. “ I believe that’s going to be vital, in order that we will save Protection Division {dollars} for these applied sciences the Protection Division in flip, must develop by itself — issues like hypersonics or directed vitality.”
Brown has advocated for the Pentagon to extra rapidly undertake business improvements. Considered one of DIU’s targets was to not let related applied sciences languish within the so-called “valley of demise” as a result of it will probably take years for the Pentagon to fund a program and situation contracts.
Former senior Air Pressure acquisition govt Will Roper praised the number of Brown to run DoD acquisitions.
“That is merely implausible information for all keen about serving to our army compete in a brand new period of worldwide expertise,” Roper wrote in a social media publish.
Biden on Friday additionally nominated former Nationwide Safety Company official Ronald Moultrie to be undersecretary of protection for intelligence and safety. Moutrie is at the moment president and CEO of Oceanus Safety Methods.
Former Pentagon comptroller Michael McCord, who served within the Obama administration, was chosen to return to his former publish as undersecretary of protection (comptroller), the Pentagon’s chief monetary officer.
Protection Secretary Lloyd Austin endorsed the nominations. “Every of those people is gifted, skilled and extremely certified for the vital nationwide safety roles they are going to, if confirmed, undertake on behalf of the Division,” he mentioned in an announcement. “I stay up for working with the Senate for his or her speedy affirmation.”
