Defense Secretary Ash Carter is elevating and expanding the Pentagon’s controversial technology sector outreach efforts — and replacing its leaders — just one year after launching a Silicon Valley initiative he calls crucial to keeping the U.S. military the best in the world.
The Defense Innovation Unit Experimental, or DIUx, will also open a second office in Boston, where Carter has deep ties.
The secretary announced the changes on his fifth trip to Silicon Valley since taking office, reflecting on the past year and seeking better results.
“Some of what it’s taught us is not about DIUx’s shortcomings so much as about our shortcomings as a department as a whole,” Carter said Wednesday. “I think we need to admit when we have to change.”
Defense Department officials painted the leadership change not as a panicked shakeup nor as admission that the endeavor had stalled, but as a natural and organic transition into a more Silicon Valley-based model. Carter called the leadership swap and Boston expansion a “sign of confidence” in the endeavor.
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