The Pentagon’s Innovation Insurgents
ChinaTalk6 Aug 2024

The Pentagon’s Innovation Insurgents

Chris Kirchhoff was a founding member of the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) and previously worked in the Obama NSC. He recently published a book called Unit X: How the Pentagon and Silicon Valley Are Transforming the Future of War. He wrote: “To the extent present military and civilian leadership is articulating its strategy, it is one built, for the most part, on a continuation of previous programmatic and budgetary trendlines. If there is a strategy for losing a future war in China, this is it.” Unit X traces the evolution of the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), a group of Pentagon insurgents who are fighting to change how the DoD relates to emerging technologies. We discuss: The origin story of DIU and its early struggles to break Pentagon bureaucracy; How DIU leveraged “waiver authority” to circumvent red tape under Defense Secretary Ash Carter; Why the defense industrial base is ill-equipped to keep pace with technological change; The case for shifting more DoD spending to non-traditional tech companies; Lessons from commercial spaceflight for future AI governance, including potential issues with a “Manhattan project for AI.” Outtro music: 告五人 Accusefive - 愛人錯過 Somewhere in Time (Youtube Link) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Avsnitt(516)

Overfit: NeurIPS Vibes, Research Doesn't Matter, OpenAI Cooked?

Overfit: NeurIPS Vibes, Research Doesn't Matter, OpenAI Cooked?

Nathan and Jasmine debrief from NeurIPS San Diego, where we of course threw the best party. outtro music: we're on a boat https://suno.com/s/dkulmuRvScACxObX Learn more about your ad choices. Visit ...

10 Dec 20251h

Emergency Pod: H200s to China with Dmitri Alperovich

Emergency Pod: H200s to China with Dmitri Alperovich

It's never over with Trump...Dmitri Alperovich of the Silverado Policy Accelerator comes on to discuss Trump's decision to allow the export of H200s to china. outtro music, a fan song to Jameison Gre...

9 Dec 202543min

Second Breakfast: Trump's National Security Strategy + Hegseth's Second Strike

Second Breakfast: Trump's National Security Strategy + Hegseth's Second Strike

First half on the national security strategy you can read here https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-National-Security-Strategy.pdf 26:18 we get into the second strike Tony's Ta...

5 Dec 202558min

Helen Toner Takes the CSET Reins

Helen Toner Takes the CSET Reins

It's think tank director week at ChinaTalk! Helen Toner of CSET kicks us off to talk through where she's planning on taking the storied organization. her speech about jagged progress: https://helent...

2 Dec 20251h 4min

The Future of Secure Telecom

The Future of Secure Telecom

In the wake of Salt Typhoon, what does the future of secure telecom look like? To find out, ChinaTalk interviewed John Doyle, a former Green Beret who spent a decade building Palantir’s national secu...

25 Nov 202559min

Transistor Radio: OpenAI Loses the Mandate, Railroad Bubble = AI Bubble

Transistor Radio: OpenAI Loses the Mandate, Railroad Bubble = AI Bubble

Doug, Dylan, and Wei of SemiAnalysis join me (Jon was sleeping at 5AM taiwan time...) for a pre-holiday get together. 01:00 AI Mandate--OpenAI slipping 19:03 Dylan sells TSMC on AI better than sama ...

25 Nov 202550min

Second Breakfast: Witkoff and Putin's Peace Deal

Second Breakfast: Witkoff and Putin's Peace Deal

Eric Robinson, Justin Mc, Tony Stark and I talk China's sushi ban, Witkoff's peace plan, Jake Sullivan, William Manchester's absurd memoir Here's the full text of the peace plan: https://www.axios.co...

21 Nov 202559min

The Z.ai Playbook

The Z.ai Playbook

Zixuan Li is Director of Product and genAI Strategy at Z.ai (also known as Zhipu 智谱 AI). The release of their benchmark-topping flagship model, GLM 4.5, was akin to “another DeepSeek moment,” in the w...

21 Nov 20251h 16min

Populärt inom Politik & nyheter

aftonbladet-krim
svenska-fall
p3-krim
blenda-2
flashback-forever
rss-sanning-konsekvens
rss-krimstad
aftonbladet-daily
politiken
motiv
rss-vad-fan-hande
rss-krimreportrarna
rss-flodet
spar
svd-ledarredaktionen
rss-frandfors-horna
dagens-eko
olyckan-inifran
rss-aftonbladet-krim
grans