Pentagon Innovation Unit Grapples With Leadership Shakeup Amid Arms Race With China

The internet that powers a vast digital world. The GPS on your phone that gets you around the physical one. These are just two of the many everyday technologies that the United States military played a key role in developing (see also: microwave ovens, duct tape and aviator sunglasses).

But last week, the most cutting-edge corner of the Pentagon had an abrupt leadership change. Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) director Doug Beck resigned unexpectedly at a time when the wider Department of Defense is trying to counter increasingly savvy Chinese military research and development.

En Garde

The DoD has never had a shortage of technological firepower. In-house innovation efforts are led by the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, effectively a CTO, and it has its own independent research and development agency, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which reports directly to senior leadership. DIU, which was kick-started in 2015, is unique because it has run 2,800 miles away from the Pentagon in Silicon Valley. There, it acts as a sort of bridge between the tech industry and the armed forces, with the goal of getting the military to adopt more commercial tech. Companies, of course, benefit from the potential for lucrative Pentagon business.

According to the US Government Accountability Office, DIU handed out 450 awards to companies between 2016 and 2023 to develop prototypes, with more than half of them (51%) moving on to production. It also launched a university accelerator earlier this year — a Pentagon Y Combinator of sorts — that will fund early-stage startups coming out of schools that are developing dual-use technologies (meaning they have both commercial and military applications). It will soon spread its wings to other tech hubs, as well: Last week, the Financial Times reported that the DIU plans to post liaisons in allied countries in Europe, the Middle East and Asia to search for global commercial tech worthy of adoption (in Taiwan, for example, to work with its cutting-edge drone companies). The moves come amid warnings from DoD officials about China’s own military making technological headway.

• “China is developing and integrating cutting-edge technologies—AI, hypersonic and advanced missiles, and space-based capabilities—at an alarming pace,” US Navy Admiral Samuel Paparo, who leads the US Indo-Pacific Command, told lawmakers at an April Senate hearing, adding: “China is outpacing the US in testing not only these critical technologies but also technologies from across their military industrial base.”
• Paparo also warned that China’s military is making headway in advanced manufacturing: The Middle Kingdom already has the world’s largest navy and, he said, is building ships at a rate of 6 to 1.8 compared with the US, or more than three times as fast. For fighter jets, the rate is 1.2 to 1 compared with the US.

Tug of War: Pentagon CTO Emil Michael will serve as acting director of DIU, but told media last week that he doesn’t plan on keeping the job and that the unit will remain independent. When it was founded, the DIU reported to the under secretary of defense for research and engineering, but officials complained that bureaucracy hampered its entrepreneurial mandate. After years of back and forth, Congress codified for good that the DIU reports directly to the defense secretary.