OPINION — I just lately had a dialog with senior intelligence neighborhood leaders about their need to construct stronger partnerships with private-sector know-how corporations—the so-called “Silicon Valley” ecosystem. They had been asking for recommendation on interact, construct relationships, and finally set up strategic partnerships.
However the corporations they had been most curious about? They had been largely consumer-facing platforms. Revolutionary, sure—however not mission-aligned. That dialog highlighted a broader, extra elementary hole I’ve been fascinated about for a very long time: Why are there no U.S. offensive cyber unicorns?
We definitely have protection contractors who do cyber work—on website, on contract, embedded with the federal government. And we’ve got standout cybersecurity corporations like CrowdStrike, Mandiant, and Dragos targeted on detection, response, and resilience. However the place are the startups constructing offensive cyber instruments and platforms? The place’s the VC-backed innovation mannequin we’ve seen in drones, hypersonics, and area?
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Corporations like Anduril and SpaceX have confirmed that Silicon Valley-style innovation—product-focused, capital-efficient, fast-moving—can thrive within the nationwide safety area. So why hasn’t that method been utilized to offensive cyber? Sure, there are authorized and secrecy constraints. However those self same constraints haven’t stopped industrial corporations from constructing weapons methods or extremely labeled ISR platforms.
Check out the NatSec100 – a curated record of high protection and nationwide safety startups. You’ll discover corporations engaged on AI, autonomy, sensing, and cybersecurity. However not a single one targeted on offensive cyber. Why not?
Shouldn’t we would like the perfect minds at CrowdStrike or Mandiant to spin off and construct next-generation offensive platforms? Shouldn’t the DOD and IC be seeding these concepts and constructing an ecosystem that encourages this sort of innovation?
I consider we should always.
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