If you’ve paid attention to the defense acquisition space long enough, you’ve surely heard of the “Last Supper” — the secret 1993 dinner meeting in which Secretary of Defense Les Aspin invited the CEOs of America's largest defense contractors to share the news that the Pentagon was going to scale back spending leading to a consolidation of the defense industrial base. While that meeting and the decisions tied to it came to define the past three decades of defense contracting, it has also been riddles with myths, according to Margaret Mullins, Director of Public Options and Governance at the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator. Mullins joins this episode of CTRL + ALT + DEFENSE to share the reality of defense acquisition consolidation and how that history can best inform how the Pentagon should approach the current pivotal moment of transformation it’s encountering where it must scale industrial innovation to compete with adversaries like China and Russia.
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If you’ve paid attention to the defense acquisition space long enough, you’ve surely heard of the “Last Supper” — the secret 1993 dinner meeting in which Secretary of Defense Les Aspin invited the CEOs of America's largest defense contractors to share the news that the Pentagon was going to scale back spending leading to a consolidation of the defense industrial base. While that meeting and the decisions tied to it came to define the past three decades of defense contracting, it has also been riddles with myths, according to Margaret Mullins, Director of Public Options and Governance at the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator. Mullins joins this episode of CTRL + ALT + DEFENSE to share the reality of defense acquisition consolidation and how that history can best inform how the Pentagon should approach the current pivotal moment of transformation it’s encountering where it must scale industrial innovation to compete with adversaries like China and Russia.
How startup speed and private-sector risk-taking could reshape defense
CTRL + ALT + DEFENSE
50 minutes 38 seconds
2 months ago
How startup speed and private-sector risk-taking could reshape defense
Can venture capital unlock the Pentagon’s innovation problem? Alex Harstrick of J2 Ventures, an Army reservist and former leader of the Defense Innovation Unit's National Security Innovation Capital team, joins CTRL + ALT + DEFENSE to explore how startup speed and private-sector risk-taking could reshape defense. We dig into where VC is making a real impact, where it struggles against DOD bureaucracy, and what it will take for government and investors to actually work together to deliver the next wave of national security technology.
CTRL + ALT + DEFENSE
If you’ve paid attention to the defense acquisition space long enough, you’ve surely heard of the “Last Supper” — the secret 1993 dinner meeting in which Secretary of Defense Les Aspin invited the CEOs of America's largest defense contractors to share the news that the Pentagon was going to scale back spending leading to a consolidation of the defense industrial base. While that meeting and the decisions tied to it came to define the past three decades of defense contracting, it has also been riddles with myths, according to Margaret Mullins, Director of Public Options and Governance at the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator. Mullins joins this episode of CTRL + ALT + DEFENSE to share the reality of defense acquisition consolidation and how that history can best inform how the Pentagon should approach the current pivotal moment of transformation it’s encountering where it must scale industrial innovation to compete with adversaries like China and Russia.
