Fail fast, fight smarter: Silicon Valley’s startup mentality is rewiring the Pentagon

The “fail fast” mentality, once limited to startups, is taking root at the War Department, formerly known as the Department of Defense, thanks to artificial intelligence and other systems that have revolutionized the way the United States handles global conflicts, speakers at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women conference said Tuesday.

In some ways, the Pentagon is like a trillion-dollar business, said Radha Iyengar-Plumb, a former chief digital and artificial intelligence officer at the Pentagon who is now senior vice president of AI transformation at IBM. It has about three million employees, more ground vehicles than FedEx, and a supply chain three times larger than Walmart’s. However, for many years, the vast amount of data associated with their operations has been handled manually and inefficiently.

She noted that analysts would “literally go back and forth between several different computers” collecting information and pasting it into PowerPoint slides.

“As the world around you changes over time, this swivel chair slowly updates,” Plumb said. “People don’t have complete information about the world around them, and that makes it difficult to make good decisions.”

Pentagon update

However, recent efforts by the government are slowly improving this situation. Shannon Clark, a former Pentagon analyst and current head of defense growth at Palantir, cited Project Maven, a Pentagon initiative launched in 2017 to unify data and integrate artificial intelligence into battlefield operations, as a key driver of the improvements. Palantir is a government contractor helping the Pentagon implement Project Maven.

Modernization also requires a new mindset, Clark said. She added that the government and congress need to take more risks, even though they have already made strides, thanks in part to some outside influence.

“They saw what companies in Silicon Valley were doing,” Clark said. “I think they realize that’s the only way we’re going to be able to move forward faster, is to watch and fail and then learn from those mistakes, just like learning from success.”

Plumb said integrating AI into government has already helped drive results in part by accelerating how quickly the Pentagon procures and delivers things.

Clark said another positive development over the years has been the emergence of several defense technology companies that help the United States outpace its adversaries.

She added: “All this technology was used in the war that lasted 12 days. All this technology was used in the conflict with Russia and Ukraine, and it will also be used in the next conflict, whatever its type.” “We really need the best and brightest Americans to work on this.”