YouSaid · the spoken record

Michael Brown

lines on the record: 71
first: 2018-03-28
most recent: 2018-03-28
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Have a lot I have a lot, but I'm a pandemic obsessor, I think. But anyway, thank you so much. This has been very depressing. But we do need technologists in government, and this administration really needs to focus on it. But I have to say, I'm not very hopeful about that at this point. But we can always hope things can change. Anyway, this has been Chris Kirchhoff. He's the former partner at the Pentagon Silicon Valley office. DIUX, which stands for Defense Innovation Unit Experimental, which is still operating here. It funds private companies in exchange for commercial products that can solve the National Defense Problems. Thank you, Chris, for coming.”
2018-03-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Flying cars are the future of military transportation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, the thing is, we're kind of changing the world in the wrong way, right? So we're deforesting, we're laying roads and air travel everywhere. And when we deforest, we create these things that scientists call ecosystems where species clump together that normally don't. And it turns out that's basically like creating the world into a giant petri dish for emerging infectious disease. So, I actually worry the most, to be honest, about pandemics. I'm kind of in the Bill Gates camp on that one when it comes to security.”
2018-03-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Flying cars are the future of military transportation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Ask not what you could know. So we get together and we host a bunch of speakers from tech, also from tech policy in Washington. We're looking for ways to get internships through this group of folks so they can actually go experience what tech is. And I think what we tell them is that there definitely is a role, whatever educational tract you're on, to be able to learn more, whether if you're a computer scientist, Harvard just debuted in ethics and computer science course this semester, something turns out is kind of relevant.”
2018-03-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Flying cars are the future of military transportation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm having a ton of fun 20 years after I was a freshman and got involved in public policy, there's a little corner of Harvard called the Institute of Politics. It's a living memorial to John F.K. I'm teaching a seminar on the topic of public leadership in a technological age. So whether you're a computer science undergraduate or somebody studying government or classics for that matter. What ought you know about technology, about how it's produced, about how it's governed so that you can be a future leader on this issue and get ready to join the conversation after you graduate?”
2018-03-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Flying cars are the future of military transportation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think we're at a moment where technology is probably a part of almost every major issue in one way or another. I think you can't any longer. Say, oh, well, you know, here are the four issues that technology is a part of and the 12 that aren't. And then divide your staff that way. And that's part of the challenge because this is different than it was even 10 years ago.”
2018-03-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Flying cars are the future of military transportation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think one of the, again, going back to the importance of people. You can sit around a table in Washington and not even know that technology is in the middle of the issue you're trying to solve if you don't have somebody at the table that can see it. So if you don't have a tech teammate, if you have a lawyer in the room and have a commas in the room and everybody in Washington has got their lawyer and their economist, but if you don't have your technologist You don't even know what you're missing So I think that's the first and probably the most fundamental. Part of the solution”
2018-03-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Flying cars are the future of military transportation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. I mean, you would think, right? But it turns out that the bulk of the government, of course, is governed by the Civil Service Act, which history goes back to the age of the telegraph. It was designed originally to staff the post office. Great at providing general administration, not so great at bringing in niche tech skills for term tours. Yet, you know, despite that, every department agency generally has a couple hiring authorities on the books that if leadership says, hey, go do this. You can get people”
2018-03-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Flying cars are the future of military transportation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'll give you one great example we found. In USAID, they have something called the Global Development Lab that's all about technology innovation and global development. US And it was run actually by a former Apple employee named Anme Chun. And she within that lab had the operational innovation team that was the team designed to get to yes. So it had people from the legal department, from the HR department, from the contracting department, whatever problem was brought to that team. Hey, how do we get this Silicon Valley executive info? How can we do this contract faster? They were given the charge of coming up with a way to do it. So they actually hired a technical recruiter. Imagine that, the government hiring somebody who is an expert in recruiting technologists.”
2018-03-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Flying cars are the future of military transportation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think a lot of people in Silicon Valley are still sort of pretending that what happens in Washington doesn't really matter to them. And I think a lot of people in Washington just don't have easy ways to get the knowledge they know they need.”
2018-03-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Flying cars are the future of military transportation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In fact, it is hostile to it. The past months have not been kind. To those who care deeply about this topic. But I think it's just crucial to step back and notice that as a nation, this is her feature. This is the one thing we cannot afford to get wrong.”
2018-03-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Flying cars are the future of military transportation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. So through every single department in our government, they have to be thinking about that. What about this idea that they were going to, I mean, I know that Chris Liddell and Jared Kushner were always pushing the Office of American Innovation. Pretty much everybody quit it. I think a lot of the people that were on these different business councils have left over, I think it was Charlottesville. How do you get Silicon Valley re-engaged then with the government or this government at least And you do have a president who seems entirely uninterested in science and technology, who in fact is hostile to it.”
2018-03-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Flying cars are the future of military transportation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. So a lot of the State Department's mission is reporting and communicating. So that's, of course, completely changed. But a lot of the state uprights mission also is American values And it turns out our values are actually bound up quite a bit in our technology. In our technology, in the kind of mobile phone operating systems that we create, in the kind of internet we advocate for. These are all deeply technological areas. And again, ask the question how many computer scientists are there today working at state. The answer is”
2018-03-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Flying cars are the future of military transportation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They can look around the corner and say, hey boss, there's this thing that you ought to know about called stealth technology. Unfortunately, the Defense Department is one of the few parts of the government that has an advanced technology shop like that. And that's because 30 years ago, nobody thought advanced technology was relevant to, say, diplomacy. But it certainly is today. And so I think we face a real transformational challenge of how do we re-engineer the State Department to have in it some technologists that can think about how diplomacy might be different going forward.”
2018-03-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Flying cars are the future of military transportation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. That, of course, impacts the intelligence community's mission. It also impacts, believe it or not, the development mission, because blockchain is going to revolutionize how a lot of development takes place, whether it's land titles or new financial technologies for the developing world. Similarly, the Department of State. You know, there's this thing called digital now that turns out changes how we communicate. So almost every department or agency across the government is facing some real curveballs and the curveballs are coming fast. And most of them are not equipped with the kind of people or the kind of offices that you would want.”
2018-03-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Flying cars are the future of military transportation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so you can just imagine if you were to walk across each building in Washington and ask the people there, what do you do? And how is it likely to change in the next five years because of what's been invented in a garage somewhere? Boy, there are some real challenges that we're going to face.”
2018-03-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Flying cars are the future of military transportation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. And these are the departments involved with regulating blockchain, which they won't be able to regulate at some point because it's unregulatable on some level if it's being created by not them or being monitored by not the government.”
2018-03-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Flying cars are the future of military transportation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think on the tech issues, it has to come from the top because if you're going to get people in the department, not through the usual means and get them involved in the top-level policy conversations, you're going to have to be the one that opens that door.”
2018-03-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Flying cars are the future of military transportation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Got a Goldman Sachs banker running it who has some unusual manner. I think we can be kind. That's a kind way of putting it Who doesn't seem interested in that, correct? I mean, that's that where it comes from the top of the Department of Treasury.”
2018-03-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Flying cars are the future of military transportation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that was the answer, actually. And it's not a surprise because the Department of Treasury doesn't have a DARPA. They have been recruiting for PhD cryptographers. But it turns out they need to. And desperately.”
2018-03-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Flying cars are the future of military transportation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They are, and that's something I worry about a lot. We did this big review in the White House that looked across radical emerging technology and where would it just completely turn upside down the mission of certain federal agencies and departments? So the Department of Treasury, for instance, regulates money, something kind of important. And it also, it turns out, is the biggest bank for the government. It clears a lot of payments for federal agencies. So blockchain is going to be something that completely changes the Department of Treasury's mission.”
2018-03-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Flying cars are the future of military transportation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So let's start with that. I mean, there was a big push by the Obama administration to get techies to come for short amounts of time, and they fixed Obamacare. They fixed a lot of things. They moved in and fixed things. And now they really having a hard time recruiting anybody, correct?”
2018-03-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Flying cars are the future of military transportation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Wouldn't that be nice And these things are all important. And one of the greatest challenges is just with people because the people that tend to know the most about these technologies are not employed in Washington. They're employed far away. So that creates a challenge to begin with. How on earth do we get the people that know the most about the technology, talking to the people that are in charge of writing regulations?”
2018-03-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Flying cars are the future of military transportation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, no, that's certainly true. So, you know, the United States is in this peculiar predicament, right, where 4.4% of the world's population, we still command a quarter of global GDP It's why we had nice houses, nice big screen televisions, all that. Our challenge going forward is our economic competitiveness. How on earth can we keep generating so much of the global economy with so few people? And if we're going to be successful at this, we're going to have to make sure the leading part of our economy, the part of our economy that's most dynamic, the tech sector, really succeeds. And the tech sector at the moment, if you haven't noticed, is producing crazy wild disruptive technology. And that technology will not be successful without the government clearing the road for it.”
2018-03-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Flying cars are the future of military transportation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so Secretary Mattis was very kind with his time. He comes from a background of playing an incredibly transformational role in the Marine Corps. So he gets transformation and he came out last summer and spent a day and a half here in Silicon Valley. And I think he's very enthusiastic about our mission. He's the logics. He's the fit and wants us to grow”
2018-03-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Flying cars are the future of military transportation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. So taking six Air Force programmers and a couple IMAX, and for under $2 million in literally eight weeks coming up with an app that revolutionized how the Air War has fought against ISL. That cost a lot of folks across the Air Force to notice and to ask the question, well, gosh, I have this problem too. Could you send some of your guys my way? So strangely enough, cultural change, I think, is going to be our biggest lever, if you will”
2018-03-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Flying cars are the future of military transportation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Are Yeah, it was, to be honest, pretty mixed. The Defense Department. Big, really big actually, and also very tradition bound for good reason because it turns out that mistakes in war are costly and you remember them. So we really did have, I think, a challenge to prove to people that commercial tech could actually be durable enough and good enough to perform and in cases even outperform existing military technology.”
2018-03-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Flying cars are the future of military transportation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Outfit. So, yeah, sure. Right. Wearables, it turns out, is another great place that there's a heck of a lot of innovation going right now on the commercial market. So imagine you're on an infantry squad and you have a mission that involves getting miles away in tough conditions. Dehydration is actually one of your biggest enemies. Imagine if you had a wearable sensor that would allow the squad leader to know when one of his or her soldiers was in danger of dehydration.”
2018-03-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Flying cars are the future of military transportation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You can do that. You can conduct ocean surveillance. You can monitor temperature conditions, which are really important for other Navy missions. So there's a whole bunch of things you can do. Again, DIUX is after broad classes of technology that are going to be transformational in many ways.”
2018-03-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Flying cars are the future of military transportation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it turns out one of our great advantages militarily is our undersea technology. But at the same time, there's been a lot of progress made on the commercial front, different kinds of submersibles and robots that can operate in new ways. So that's another great example of startups out here that are developing technology that is for a different purpose altogether, but actually it's quite relevant for military missions.”
2018-03-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Flying cars are the future of military transportation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There are secret test ranges. Most of them are not. And a couple of them are actually very close to the Bay Area. So DIUX has set up a couple test ranges, one for flying cars. Another actually for drones and anti-drone technology, which is another real issue on the battlefield. How can we stop ISIL or other foreign adversaries from using drones to disrupt?”
2018-03-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Flying cars are the future of military transportation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because we have, you know, first of all, we have a small amount of money to spend. Many of these companies are so well capitalized. Our money is peanuts. But we also have test ranges that they can go tomorrow and fly on. And we're able to give them...”
2018-03-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Flying cars are the future of military transportation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, the same companies that you probably know about are making them, and this is, again, an example where the Department of Defense can actually play a role helping these companies on their commercial path.”
2018-03-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Flying cars are the future of military transportation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And you can do things too like disaggregate a squad. So right now we put a lot of people typically in one or two helicopters. That's not great for all kinds of obvious reasons. So wouldn't it be nice to have 10 or 12 area vehicles carrying the same number of people that would not nearly be as vulnerable?”
2018-03-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Flying cars are the future of military transportation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Can hover, right? Which is useful for resupply But yeah, they can do all kinds of things. And so it was our mission to ask the question, gosh, who could potentially use these and how ought we be planning to use this future technology?”
2018-03-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Flying cars are the future of military transportation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. Well, I mean, it's a large drone, essentially, and because it's electrically operated, you have far fewer number of parts than you do in an internal combustion engine. So your rate of engine failure is much lower. It's fully autonomous. The range actually is pretty impressive on certain companies' prototypes. So what you have is actually something that's very close to being operational, something that we could almost say.”
2018-03-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Flying cars are the future of military transportation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Our question is how can we use this prototype technology to do military missions better? And it turns out there's enormous opportunity both for delivering troops and special forces into tonight areas. There's also great possibilities for resupply, all of which right now are being carried out through much.”
2018-03-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Flying cars are the future of military transportation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“With Chris Liddell. Yes, we're trying to Yeah, so we did a couple projects with flying cars, which I think really will be the future of military transportation. So right now, we use helicopters to get around the world.”
2018-03-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Flying cars are the future of military transportation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's what they're trying to do. I was just with Chris Liddell. Yes, we're trying to do Washington. But let's get back to other things you guys did. So, what else did you, this is a billion dollars a lot of money? That's a pretty fair-sized VC fund, for example. What other things did you do? Yeah.”
2018-03-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Flying cars are the future of military transportation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that actually brings up one of the bigger lessons that I've strongly taken away from my time both in government and out here, which is there is such extraordinary talent out here. And there is no way we're going to get them to apply for a civil service job and go in there. So we need to find some kind of way to get folks out here that are ready to take a year or two of public service and kind of like the Peace Corps.”
2018-03-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Flying cars are the future of military transportation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But this is a great Way that Eric and the Innovation Board is able to contribute because they know other ways of doing things. And the process can not only make the US military more effective, but save millions, even billions of taxpayer money.”
2018-03-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Flying cars are the future of military transportation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I had an argument with Obama person when they were like, I said, Well, you know, Tinder makes all these matches because it's all matching. All I need to do was matching. Tinder makes all these matches every day, millions and millions and millions of matches. And they said, are you comparing Obamacare to Tinder? And I said, no, Tinder works at the time. It was funny. But the expenses were enormously different between what government was charged in terms of software and what. Could get almost off the shelf. There's no shelf to get it off anymore, in fact, you know what I mean? It was just a shocking inability to just do software on the fly.”
2018-03-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Flying cars are the future of military transportation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A defense contractor had built their first one, and there was a refresh scheduled when we met them, they said, oh, don't worry. The refresh has been worked on now. The initial version should come in 2020, 2021. We were, of course, astonished at the length of time”
2018-03-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Flying cars are the future of military transportation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He turned to DIUX and said, all right, you guys fix this. So we did. We sent some of our Air Force guys forward with IMAX. They set up shop. They actually knew how to code. And in less than really three months, they built a prototype app that allowed the same programming to occur automatically in seconds.”
2018-03-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Flying cars are the future of military transportation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And Eric said, Well, you know, there's this thing called software. Why are you still doing this manually? And they said, Oh, well, we actually have software that does it, but it's awful. It doesn't really work. So the three of us just take 60 man hours every day to do this. And it's a real pain because if one thing changes, then we have to go do it all over again.”
2018-03-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Flying cars are the future of military transportation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Recently. Yes. So if you're trying to prosecute an airstrike in Iraq, in Syria, this is the operations center that does that. And Eric noticed there were these three Air Force captains doodling on a giant whiteboard. And they had all these numbers and symbols. And he said, well, what on earth are you doing? And they said, oh, we're planning tanker routes in one of the hardest things to do is to get enough refueling tankers in the right orbits so that they can link up. With aircraft to refuel them as we're getting ready to do airstrikes.”
2018-03-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Flying cars are the future of military transportation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so the story here is, I think, representative of the kind of insights they're able to have. They toured the air operations center in Qatar. So, this is the war room, if you will, that's prosecuting the air war.”
2018-03-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Flying cars are the future of military transportation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So the Defensive Innovation Board is a group of folks from outside the department, each of whom have really deep expertise in an area of tech. And they travel together essentially as a bunch of consultants who visit different commands around the world and look at what they're doing and then make suggestions for maybe how they could be doing things better.”
2018-03-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Flying cars are the future of military transportation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so we actually started first by talking to different units in the military and asking them, hey, what's your hardest problem these days? And is there something you think we could do to potentially help? And we went from there then to doing market research and asking the question, is there tech somewhere out in the tech world that might be relevant? And the big surprise for us, I think, is showing up in Silicon Valley would expect cybersecurity software or software in general to be a huge part of your portfolio. But actually, it turns out most of our deals, many more than software, have gone towards hardware, which I think reflects a huge shift in the valley here towards hardware itself that was a real surprise. So a couple examples of projects were really proud of. One actually funny story. So Eric Schmidt is chairman of the Defense Investigation Board, took his band of innovators around. Is he still that? He is. And one of the many...”
2018-03-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Flying cars are the future of military transportation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You mentioned a few the problem in Afghanistan with an earpiece essentially name some other things that you guys invested in and how did you find, you did a, you did searches for them, all kinds of research to find them. Who did you focus on the big companies, the Googles? Or did you go to the smaller startups is what you were looking for?”
2018-03-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Flying cars are the future of military transportation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Why? Well, it was obscure. Not too many of the contracting officers or lawyers were trained in it. But after taking in off lawyers to lunch, we found a couple that were willing to work with us and agree that this would be a perfect fit.”
2018-03-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Flying cars are the future of military transportation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT