Did America Forget How to Make the H-Bomb? “… officials at the National Nuclear Security Administration realized they couldn’t produce an essential material known as “Fogbank.”” A case of the ten-year-itis: “Ten years go by and people forget things that they used to know how to do.”
2019 David Packard Excellence in Acquisition Award Winners. Congrats!
Speed, agile development, and the need for slowness of reflection. Here’s a quote from John Boyd: “If a somewhat slower tempo allows a system to develop a richer and more reflective memory, it will allow the system to deal with surprises in its environment in a better way. The argument of slowness is actually an argument for APPROPRIATE SPEED.”
Google Wants to Do Business With the Military—Many of Its Employees Don’t. In an open letter from Google employees recognizing the hypocrisy of working with China but not the democratic US government, they make a good point: “We have only to look to IBM’s role in working with the Nazis during the Holocaust to understand the role that technology can play in automating mass atrocity.”
China watch: Highly Impressive Lineup Of Chinese Air Combat Drone Types Caught By Satellite. China continues to experiment and develop concepts rapidly on multiple fronts while the DOD debates the inkling of such experimentation with the digital century series aircraft. The Chinese government is better at replicating market-like forces than the US government, which only pretends to be pluralistic.
Unintended Consequences of Small Business Contracting. A slice: “Small business set asides can create a perverse incentive not to grow. Some even intentionally slow their rate of growth and diversification to ensure that they stay small by consciously avoiding bidding and winning work that would put them over the ceiling to remain eligible for set-aside contracts.”
Congress backs off push for space-based missile intercept layer. More studies and dilly-dallying.
Reagan National Defense Forum panel with Peter Thiel and Josh Wolfe of Lux Capital.
Other agencies are also focusing on speed, finding backlash: FDA Approving Drugs at Breakneck Speed, Raising Alarm.
Eric Schmidt and Tom Kalil: Creating a Moonshot Culture.
DoD using 14 entities as JEDI pathfinders as contract gets underway. “Over the last two years the Department of Defense has awarded more than $11 billion across 10 separate cloud contracts.”
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