So we started with students in an academic environment because it's new that or the one place that we could mix.

Academia, industry, the government, and just, you know, really hard problems.

We have found that that process of sourcing problems, curating them to the point that

they're understandable by other people, and then a heavy date of discovery in a region

environment like this actually produces some insights

about both problems and potential solutions that are highly, highly valuable to the defense

agencies and the intelligence folks.

They came into the class working on a problem related to countering illegal commercial fishing.

But it turns out that the circumstances that commercial fishing boats will go to see the fish,

with the bad weather cloudy, where they can't be tracked and can't see them, is almost

identical to the way North Korean mobile missile launchers work.

Hey, welcome to another episode of the Modern War Institute podcast.

I'm John Ambo, editorial director at MWI, and for this episode, I had a chance to talk to

Peter Newell. He is a retired colonel who, after leaving the army, founded a Silicon Valley

based consultancy called BMNT Partners. He was also instrumental in setting up a program

called Hacking for Defense, and that's what we're going to hear him talk about today.

Now, many listeners will

have heard of hacking for defense. It has been making news and growing rapidly since it first

launched. Essentially, it aims to leverage the unique qualities of academia and private sector

startups to solve problems for the government, especially the defense enterprise. The ins and outs

of how they do that is fascinating, and the program provides a potentially

important model for government to really harness the private sector to provide solutions

...