Pentagon will sich bei Hightech-Startups bedienen

--- Das US-Verteidigungsministerium sucht verstärkt bei Startups nach neuen Ideen für Waffen und Überwachungsnetzwerke, schreibt die New York Times:

The nation’s military, in its search for the next surveillance system, bioterror vaccine or robot warrior, has decided to take a peek into the garage. Through a program that recently emerged from an experimental phase, the Defense Department is using some of the nation’s top technology investors to help it find innovations from tiny start-up companies, which have not traditionally been a part of the military’s vast supply chain. The program provides a regular exchange of ideas and periodic meetings between a select group of venture capitalists and dozens of strategists and buyers from the major military and intelligence branches. Government officials talk about their needs, and the investors suggest solutions culled from technology start-ups across the country. It is in some ways an odd coupling of the historically slow-moving federal agencies and fast-moving investors, who deal in technologies that are no sooner developed than they are threatened with obsolescence. But the participants argue that the project, called DeVenCI for Defense Venture Catalyst Initiative, brings together two groups that have much to gain from each other and that have had trouble finding easy, efficient ways to work together. Those on the military side of things have adopted the Silicon Valley vernacular to explain the idea of systematically consulting investors to find new technology. “We’re a search engine,” said Bob Pohanka, director of DeVenCI, noting that the program is a chance for military procurement officials to have more intimate contact with investors who make a living scouring laboratories and universities for the latest innovations. Venture capitalists “have knowledge of emerging technology that may be developed by companies as small as two guys in a garage,” Mr. Pohanka said. “These are companies that are not involved in the D.O.D. supply chain.” For the investors, it is a chance to get closer to a branch of government with vast spending power that is a potential customer for the start-ups they have backed. That can be particularly valuable because the venture capital industry, far from enjoying the success of the dot-com boom, has languished in recent years and is looking for new markets and sales opportunities. The military is “like a Fortune No. 1 company,” said E. Rogers Novak Jr., managing director of the venture capital firm Novak Biddle Venture Partners, and one of the investors who consults with the government. “We may get a customer and the D.O.D. gets something that helps them.”

Eigentlich ist die Verbindung zwischen Pentagon und Silicon Valley bzw. zwischen Militär und Computertechnik ja schon lange eine sehr enge, aber über das Einspannen der Wagniskapitalgeber soll die Beziehung wohl noch effektiver gestaltet werden.

Und sonst: Sarkozy triumphiert und Frankreich rückt nach rechts.