If we were designing a defense procurement system from scratch today, we would not design the one that we have.

When you talk about two, three, four years to build an aircraft carrier in two billion dollars and it being destroyed on week

one of any hot conflict with an adversary, you say, is that really the force that we want

to build? It's innovative approach and innovative technology versus none.

The authorities and policies all exist.

You can do it.

It's about making it so that this becomes more commonplace, more

understood, and these patterns of how to acquire differently become kind of

established. Artificial intelligence, biotechnology, autonomy, energy, the pace of change in those spaces is, and frankly, likely

always will be faster than it is in a purely bespoke defense-oriented way. When you talked about how prepared we are.

I don't think you'd be asking that question

and we wouldn't be all here if we felt really prepared.

The last few decades have been a period of transition for defense.

An increasing number of startups have begun to rival large defense primes.

The industry has also gradually become a calculus of both hardware and software, and exponential technologies have forced the DoD, of course that's the Department of Defense, to rethink how it's traditionally done business. In fact, these changing conditions were some of the inputs that

resulted in the D. I.U. the Defense Innovation Unit, starting in 2015, within the DoD,

focused on accelerating the adoption of technology.

And today you'll actually get to hear it from the director of the D.I.U.

That's Doug Beck, alongside founders and funders, equally looking to advance this partnership

between Washington, D.C. and Silicon Valley.

In fact, joining Doug for this conversation recorded in the heart of Washington DC back in January at

A16Z's American Dynamism Summit are A16Z general partner and co-founder of

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