Re NYTimes: Why Silicon Valley Shouldn’t Work With the Pentagon

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Ross Stapleton-Gray <ross.stapletongray () gmail com>
> Date: April 19, 2018 at 7:25:10 PM EDT
> To: DAVID FARBER <dave () farber net>
> Subject: Re: [IP] NYTimes: Why Silicon Valley Shouldn’t Work With the Pentagon
>
> > On Thu, Apr 19, 2018 at 11:42 AM, Dave Farber <farber () gmail com> wrote:
> > Here's a story from The New York Times that I thought you'd find interesting:
> > Our technology sector is good at innovation precisely because it is not dominated by the state.
>
> As someone who cut his doctoral teeth on Soviet Cold War IT R&D and who was into the U.S. intel community around the 
> time the Internet became that post-ARPANET Internet, I think this is a pretty weak analysis, and its fears of major 
> U.S. military influence over U.S. tech hugely overblown. What has been driving U.S. tech R&D and commercialization 
> has been the consumer dollar, and as much as the DoD spends, it's not going to really move the needle compared to 
> many, many other parties.
>
> I've actually been looking to marry up SF Bay area companies with opportunities for federal R&D funding, as well as 
> having looked at one of the "feeder" areas (availability of data to support cybersecurity R&D) and am pretty amazed 
> at how poorly the federal R&D processes seem to be managed, e.g., DARPA has just announced (like, yesterday) a new 
> solicitation for "human-in-the-loop" machine-learning/AI and cybersecurity vulnerabilities (a program called CHESS, 
> "Computers and Humans Exploring Software Security"), but wants executive summaries within two weeks, and full 
> proposals in two months.  How are inventors and smaller companies going to have enough runway to develop a credible 
> proposal within such a window?  I contacted 3-4 companies for the DARPA Active Social Engineering Defense (ASED) 
> program, all of which expressed some interest in a proposal, and all of which abandoned the idea because they just 
> wouldn't have had the time to respond.
>
> I'd be happy to help do something in the way of federal/private sector impedance matching for federal R&D grants, but 
> I worry that it's not as often as it ought to be money well spent.
>
> I also think the availability of venture funding is edging out the perceived value of federal R&D money.  While the 
> DARPA money you might get will be "nondiluting" (i.e., a grant, and not an investment take a share in the company), 
> CHESS won't kick into gear until November (so, proposals due mid-May, but then you wait nearly half a year), while 
> venture funds are throwing $10M chunks at start-ups at a rather rapid pace. If you want to get into [tech with 
> possible military application] and don't also pursue the venture-funding route, you'll fund yourself a months behind 
> those that do. (And news of this past month was Softbank's investment of $300M in Wag, a start-up brokering dog 
> walking and kenneling services... it's not as absolutely crazy as the previous dot-com bubble, but seriously... 
> that's got to be on a part with what DARPA will spend on IT-related R&D this coming year...)
>
> Ross
>
> Stapleton-Gray & Associates, Inc.
> Albany, CA
>
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