When people think of Silicon Valley, they often think of the next big tech breakthrough. Today, more of those breakthroughs are aimed at national security. And the Pentagon is taking notice.
“I tried to sell to the U.S. Navy in 2013, and they literally laughed at me and said, ‘How do we possibly use unmanned systems?’ and I said, ‘Well, believe me, one day it’ll be a thing,'” said Richard Jenkins Founder and CEO of Saildrone.
Twelve years later, Jenkins’ company goes beyond working with the Navy, to the Coast Guard, Homeland Security, and many of America’s allies. Autonomous vessels the Navy once couldn’t wrap its mind around, now assist U.S. forces by tracking ships, spotting illegal smuggling operations, and identifying threats to critical infrastructure.
They can remain at sea for months at a time, carrying cameras, radar and other sensors.
“All our customers that we work for, the first thing they say is we had no idea how many things were out there…You realize (the ocean is) an incredibly vast place that is both underutilized and underprotected. It’s really like the wild west. No one’s looking. Some very, very nefarious things happen out there,” Jenkins told CBN News.
In one recent case, a Saildrone Voyager detected suspected drug smugglers, enabling the Navy seize more than $81 million worth of cocaine. This summer, the company crossed a new threshold as one of its newer vessels launched missiles during Navy training exercises.
With lethal decisions still handled by human operators, the test marked a major step forward, moving from just monitoring threats, to providing an unmanned platform capable of responding to them.
“What we’re seeing now is customers wanting more and more sophisticated payloads, everything from signals intelligence through to electronic warfare, through to kinetics,” Jenkins explained.
Saildrone’s path to the Pentagon began in 2015 with the Defense Innovation Unit, created in Silicon Valley to help the military find and adopt commercial technology.
“Saildrone was one of the early programs that we stood up at DIU and now they’re quite a success story. Having started at DIU and now scaling across many of the services, that’s phenomenal…I would argue, though, that we don’t have the years that it took to do that,” said Sarah Pearson, DIU’s Chief of Strategic Initiatives.
The Defense Innovation Unit now leads the charge as the Pentagon works to bring in more commercial defense-tech companies, while also cutting the time needed to field their products.
That push comes as Silicon Valley itself goes through a major shift.
Dan Berkenstock, co-founder of the satellite-imaging company Skybox, and now with the Hoover Institution, says the moment reminds him of an earlier era of American innovation.
“When I look at Silicon Valley today, I think of the sort of Golden Era back in the 1950’s and ’60s. I worked at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in college, and I got to meet some of the people who had landed on the moon or helped people land on the moon, and hearing their stories of what it was like back then, that’s what it feels like to me today in Silicon Valley,” Berkenstock told CBN News.
So what changed? Berkenstock believes the shift is two sided: a new way of doing business at the Pentagon combined with a new mindset in Silicon Valley.
“You had a new generation of entrepreneurs that were interested in government service, were motivated by 9/11, in some cases had served previously in the military or intelligence services, and so they had this kind of desire to solve problems that they had seen in uniform or in service,” he explained.
Pearson says Russia’s invasion of Ukraine added a new level of urgency.
“That is when I watched most of my former colleagues still in industry, whether they were at startups or big technology companies, begin to explore and really think seriously about how we take the best technology we have in industry and ensure that the United States of America and our allies have access to that.”
Still, Pearson says less than 1 percent of the Pentagon’s budget goes to venture-backed startups, even as their technology becomes increasingly important on the battlefield. For those companies, and their investors, Pentagon interest must now lead to real orders.
“For companies, especially new companies part of this emerging defense industrial base, to make commitments to that, they need to know that if they build it, someone will buy it,” Berkenstock said.
For some companies, Pentagon support begins long before a product is ready for the battlefield.
Foundation Future Industries is developing humanoid robots. Company co-founder Mike LeBlanc, a former Marine, says the goal is to eventually send them on missions that now put U.S. troops at greatest risk.
“Our robot wouldn’t look anything like it does today without the Department of Defense. They have, through small grants and research grants that we’ve worked together with other companies on, they’ve put over $73 million into helping us develop this technology, primarily the actuators that are in the robot,” LeBlanc told CBN News.
Those actuators, essentially the robot’s joints, determine what can be picked up, lifted and the work it can perform. Making Foundation just another example of the growing connection between Pentagon investment and commercial innovation.
This defense tech boom extends far beyond robots or autonomous vessels at sea.
Berkenstock points out, some of the most consequential developments are out of this world.
“We’re moving into an age where space is becoming dynamic, where things that have traditionally stood still are now moving tremendously. It’s natural that space will become a battleground, either below the threshold of outright conflict or above it, but its really unclear today how that happens.”
As the U.S. embraces these emerging technologies, experts note: They’re also pursued by America’s adversaries.
And Pearson warns the U.S. cannot afford to fall behind.
“Everything is at risk, right? Adversaries can be phenomenal competitors and they’re observing us as well. So there is no time more crucial than right now to rebuild the arsenal, to ensure that arsenal is full of the best commercial technologies available for the warfighter.”
Today’s defense race isn’t just about building better weapons. It’s about building better technology, faster, and that’s exactly why the Pentagon is paying attention to the innovation happening in Silicon Valley.
