2025-11-11 22:00:12
上周，战争部终于彻底废除了罗伯特·麦克纳马拉1962年创立的规划、计划与预算系统（PPBS）的最后残余。
战争部已将重心从优化成本与性能转向快速交付先进武器。耗费数十年研发武器的时代已一去不复返。战争部已迈入21世纪，采用精益方法论。
有两个组织应当高度警惕——中国与国防主承包商。
战争部长皮特·赫格塞斯公布了60年来战争部（DoW）在武器与服务采购方式上的最大变革。这些改革绝非小修小补，而是对战争部武器采办体系的全方位重构——从关注"武器造价多少"转向聚焦"交付速度多快"。
战争部将优先采购现成商用产品，采用快速采办流程替代繁琐的《联邦采购条例》。为此，各军种正重组整个采办生态系统。这些变革落实了过去十年国防部获得却始终忽视的所有良策。
全新的战争部将以硅谷速度运作，交付更多、更好、更快的装备。作战人员将受益于商用技术的创新与低成本，美国将再次打造无可匹敌的军事力量。
这场迟来的改革，堪称大胆、果敢而宏伟。
【背景回溯】
1962年，时任国防部长（前福特汽车CFO）罗伯特·麦克纳马拉发现国防开支失控。1950年代，空军同时研发五种战斗机、三代轰炸机与三代洲际导弹；海军打造核动力攻击潜艇舰队；陆军采购三代核导弹系统。各军种争相采购新技术，却忽视运维、训练与维持的预算规划。
麦克纳马拉遂推行CFO式管控，建立延续60余年的"规划（能力缺口/威胁假设）-计划（五年规划/可承受性）-预算"体系。国防采购大学培训数万名合同官员掌握复杂规则，大型承包商逐渐适应了这个文书繁冗、流程漫长的系统。
【症结所在】
当对手是采办体系同样臃肿的苏联，或毫无体系的ISIS时，这套笨重系统尚可应付。但过去十年间，其弊端日益凸显：国防工业基础饱受进度延误与成本超支困扰；中国采用敏捷系统，武器交付速度远超我们。
乌克兰战争证明，小国也能年产百万架无人机并持续迭代设计（我们却做不到）。初创企业利用私人资本开发的商用技术，其成本与速度远超联邦研发中心。但战争部采办体系对初创企业而言犹如铜墙铁壁。
我们的系统被不切实际的风险阈值所瘫痪，过度关注流程而非结果，变得畏首畏尾、僵化不前。
【旧体系剖析】
各军种现行采办体系：需求论证（1年+）→技术开发（3-6年）→原型研制（3-4年）→生产交付（1-10年）。从需求提出到武器列装需8-16年——在当前技术迭代速度下，这已成为建设现代化战争部的绊脚石。
以陆军为例，3.2万采办人员+16.5万保障人员构成的体系存在七大弊端：责任分散、产品导向、定制化需求、流程至上、合规优先、瀑布式开发、交付迟缓。
【革命性变革】
新体系直击要害，由深谙商业精益流程的专家设计，通过九大举措解决核心问题：
1. 交付速度优先
2. 结果导向取代流程导向
3. 采办流程组织重构
4. 需求定义与优先级重塑
5. 供应商结构变革
6. 合同方法创新
7. 成功标准重新定义
8. 采办人才培养转型
9. 强制系统互操作性
【新型采办架构】
各军种设立"组合采办执行官"(PAE)，统管端到端采办全流程：能力缺口分析、系统中心、计划制定、采办实施、测试验证、合同签订与持续保障。PAE被授权为快速交付承担可控风险。
PAE采用矩阵式组织，围绕作战概念/技术/集成需求组建组合。例如陆军将12个项目执行官办公室重组为6大组合：机动、空中机动、火力、指挥控制、敏捷保障、分层防护。每个PAE由少将领导，拥有成本/进度/性能的权衡决策权。
【颠覆性规则】
• 商用优先：强制采购现成产品，定制开发作为最后手段
• 激励制度：PAE与项目经理奖金与交付速度/任务成效挂钩
• 非传统准入：采用"其他交易授权"(OTA)绕过5000页的联邦采购条例
• 精益开发：增量交付"够用就好"的技术，允许持续迭代
• 强制互操作：所有武器采用模块化开放架构，避免厂商锁定
【配套改革】
• 双源采购：关键项目初期必须保持两家合格供应商
• 危机扩产：设计生产解耦，确保战时快速扩能
• 任期延长：PAE任期延长至4-6年
• 教育革命："国防采办大学"转型为"作战采办大学"，侧重实战化培养
【联合参谋部改革】
废除缓慢的JCIDS需求审批系统，新建三大机构：
1. 联合加速储备金（快速部署有潜力装备）
2. 需求资源对齐委员会（资金直接对接优先事项）
3. 任务工程与集成中心（政府-工业界-实验室早期协作）
【潜在挑战】
• 未来6个月将存在职责不清的混乱期
• 主承包商必将通过游说国会反扑
• 合规文化改革需要铁腕手段
• 盟友装备采购仍未纳入议程
【创业公司机遇】
战争部与初创企业终于讲同一种语言：精益、战场反馈、快速迭代、敏捷交付。"商用优先"政策为初创企业创造历史性机遇，但必须用实际交付而非PPT证明实力。
这场改革本质上是向主承包商商业模式的心脏插刀。私人资本与上市公司游说资金的博弈即将展开——愿这些变革能顶住压力，真正落地。
（感谢BMNT公司皮特·纽维尔的见解）
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Last week the Department of War finally killed the last vestiges of Robert McNamara’s 1962 Planning, Programming, and Budgeting System (PPBS).
The DoW has pivoted from optimizing cost and performance to delivering advanced weapons at speed. Taking decades to deliver weapons is no longer an option. The DoW has joined the 21st century and adopted Lean Methodology.
Two organizations ought to be very concerned – China and the defense prime contractors.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth unveiled the biggest changes in 60 years of how the Department of War (DoW) plans for and buys weapons and services. These changes aren’t a minor attempt at reform. It’s a top-to-bottom transformation of how the DoW plans and buys weapons, moving from contracts that prioritize how much a weapon costs to how fast it can be delivered.
Instead of buying custom-designed weapons, the DoW will prioritize buying off-the-shelf things that already exist, and using fast-track acquisition processes, rather than the cumbersome existing Federal Acquisition Regulations. To manage all of this, they are reorganizing the entire Acquisition ecosystem across the Services. These changes implement every piece of good advice the DoD had gotten in the last decade and had previously ignored.
The DoW is being redesigned to now operate at the speed of Silicon Valley, delivering more, better, and faster. Our warfighters will benefit from the innovation and lower cost of commercial technology, and the nation will once again get a military second to none.
It’s big, bold and brave and long overdue.
Background
In 1962 Robert McNamara, the then-Secretary of Defense (and ex CFO of Ford), discovered he had inherited a Defense Department whose spending was out of control. During the 1950s the Air Force built five different types of fighter planes, three generations of bombers, and three generations of ICBMs. The Navy had created a fleet of nuclear-powered attack and ballistic missile submarines and aircraft carriers. The Army bought three generations of its own nuclear-capable missile systems. Many of these systems duplicated capabilities of other services. But most importantly, the Services, in their rush to buy new technology, hadn’t adequately budgeted for the cost of operating, training, maintaining, and sustaining what they had bought.
In response, Secretary McNamara imposed the discipline of a Chief Financial Officer. He put in place a formal system of Planning (capability gaps, risks, scenarios, threats assumptions), Programming (5-year plans, affordability, quantities, phasing, unit fielding plans) and Budgeting that has lasted 60+ years. An entire defense university was created to train tens of thousands of contracting officers how to follow the detailed rules. Large contractors (the Primes) learned to work with this paperwork-heavy Defense acquisition system and lived with the very long time it took the DoD to buy.
The Problem
This unwieldy and lethargic acquisition system was adequate for over half a century when our adversary was the Soviet Union who had an equally complex acquisition system, or ISIS and Al Qaida who had none.
However, in the last decade it became painfully obvious that our acquisition system was broken and no longer worked for the world we lived in. Our existing defense industrial base suffers from schedule overruns and huge backlogs; cost increases have become the norm. We’ve been outpaced by adversaries. China, for example, implemented a much more agile system that delivered weapons in a fraction of the time it took us.
We needed a defense industrial base we could count on to scale in a crisis rather than one that will wait for money before taking action.
The war in Ukraine showed that even a small country could produce millions of drones a year while continually iterating on their design to match changes on the battlefield. (Something we couldn’t do.) Meanwhile, commercial technology from startups and scaleups (fueled by an immense pool of private capital) has created off-the-shelf products, many unmatched by our federal research development centers or primes, that can be delivered at a fraction of the cost/time. But the DoW acquisition system was impenetrable to startups.
Our Acquisition system was paralyzed by our own impossible risk thresholds, its focus on process not outcomes, and became risk averse and immoveable.
We needed an acquisition system that could deliver needed things faster.
Reminder: What Did Our Acquisition System Look Like Until Last Week?
The Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Space Force train soldiers, sailors and airmen, and specify and buy the weapons for their Service. (It’s the Combatant Commands, e.g. INDOPACOM, CENTCOM, etc., who fight the wars.)
One of the confusing things about Acquisition in the DoW is that it is more than just the buyers of equipment. In the DoW Acquisition with capital “A”, includes the entire end-to-end process – from concept, requirements, prototyping, testing, buying it, to using it and maintaining it.
In each of the Services, the current Acquisition system started with a group that forecast what the Service would need in the future and wrote requirements for future weapons/services/software. This process could take a year or more. Next, Service laboratories developed the technology, tested prototypes and concepts. This could take 3 to 6 years. Next, a vendor was selected and began to prototype and refine the systems. This added another 3 to 4 years. Finally, the system was ready to be built and delivered. It could take 1 to 2 years to deliver weapons in low rate production, or 5 to 10 years for something complex (e.g. aircraft, ships, spacecraft). In the system we’re replacing the time from when a need was turned into a requirement to delivery of a weapon would take 8 to 16 years. As you can imagine, given the rate of change of current technology and new warfighting concepts our own Acquisition process was an obstacle to building a modern War Department.
As an example, the Army’s current Acquisition system has 32,000 civilians and military (program managers, contracting officers, etc.) If you include the long tail of sustainment that’s another 165,000+ people. The Acquisition system in the Army (representative of the other services) looks like this:
What Was Wrong With this Process?
Responsibility in the Acquisition system was scattered across multiple, siloed organizations with no one individual responsible.
The existing system was designed to acquire individual products (weapons, services, etc.) with a Program Executive Office to manage each effort that only indirectly solved warfighter problems.
Requirements were written so that most everything the DoW bought was bespoke and required development from scratch.
Acquisition was process-focused with rigid rules that emphasized compliance to contracting rules.
Compliance to the rules and processes overrode speed of delivery
Weapons and systems development used sequential “waterfall” development processes which precluded learning, pivots and iterative design.
The result was that speed of delivery was on no one’s priority list.
Why Is The Warfighting Acquisition System A Big Deal?
While previous administrations tried to go around the process, this new system confronts it head on. It is a revolutionary transformation in the Department of War. It was clearly designed by people who have worked in industry and understand commercial Lean Processes. This transformation will solve the DoW critical Acquisition problems by:
Prioritizing speed of delivery
Moving the focus from process to outcomes
Organizational redesign of the Acquisition process
Changing what weapons we ask for and how we prioritize what we need to buy
Changing the preferred vendors the DoW will buy from
Changing the contracting methods the DoW will use
Changing how we measure and reward success
Changing how we educate Acquisition professionals
Insisting that disparate systems/vendors interoperate
The New Warfighting Acquisition Organization – The Portfolio Acquisition Executive
To cut through the individual acquisition silos, the services are creating Portfolio Acquisition Executives (PAEs).
Each Portfolio Acquisition Executive (PAE) is responsible for the entire end-to-process of the different Acquisition functions: Capability Gaps/Requirements, System Centers, Programming, Acquisition, Testing, Contracting and Sustainment. PAEs are empowered to take calculated risks in pursuit of rapidly delivering innovative solutions.
PAE Offices Are Matrix Organizations
Portfolio Acquisition Executives (PAEs) are organized as a matrix organization – using people from existing organizations – requirements, PEOs, sustainment, contracting etc. The PAEs themselves will have a small staff for coordination.
Portfolios Around Common Problems
In the past, Acquisition was organized by weapon systems and managed by Program Executive Offices. Portfolios will organize instead around common Warfighting Concepts, technologies, or operational integration needs.
Multiple Portfolios In Each Service
Each of the services are consolidating and reorganizing the functions of what were their Program Executive Offices into Portfolios. Program Executive Offices/Officers (PEOs) will become Capability Program Executives (CPEs), and act as a Portfolios’ acquisition arm.
(The examples below are from the Army. Other Services will have equivalent organizational designs for their Portfolios.)
The acquisition chain of authority runs directly from Capability Program Manager to PAE to the Service Acquisition Executive (SAE), with no intermediate offices or approval layers. (The Service Acquisition Executive for the Army is the Assistant Secretary for Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. For the Navy/Marines, the Assistant Secretary for Research, Development & Acquisition. For the Air Force/Space Force the Assistant Secretary for Acquisition, Technology & Logistics.)
The Army Has 6 Portfolio Acquisition Executives
For example, the Army will likely reorganize its 12 existing PEO offices to become part of 6 portfolios aligned with Army Warfighting Concepts and functions. Each of the 6 portfolios headed by a PAEs will be commanded by a Major General.
The likely 6 Army Portfolios are: 1) Maneuver, 2) Maneuver Air, 3) Fires, 4) C2/CC2, 5) Agile Sustainment and Ammo, and 6) Layered Protection and CBRN. One additional portfolio, called the PIT, will likely include the Army’s Innovation at the Edge activities.
Army PAE Maneuver will likely combine elements of PEO Soldier, PEO Ground Combat Systems, Future Capabilities Division and Maneuver Divisions, Test and Evaluation Integrator, Strategic Contracting Office, and others. This portfolio will likely have the Abrams tank, XM30 Mechanized Infantry Combat Vehicle (replacing the M2 Bradley), the ISV (Infantry Squad Vehicle), Soldier Borne Mission Command program (SBMC), Next Generation Squad Weapon (NGSW), Soldier Borne Sensor (SBS) program, and Organization Clothing and Individual Equipment (OCIE).
Authority to Make Trade-offs
PAEs now have the authority to make trade-offs between cost, schedule and performance and apply flexible funding between weapons systems to rapidly deliver capabilities to the warfighter. This means focusing on fielding “good enough” technology instead of waiting for a product that meets every single requirement.
Army PAE Maneuver Air will likely combine elements of Program Executive Office Aviation, Aviation and Missile Command, Futures Command Future Vertical Lift team DEVCOM Aviation & Missile, and others. It will likely include the Long-Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA) the Bell V-280 Valor (to replace the UH-60 Black Hawk), Uncrewed Aircraft Systems (UAS), Rotary and Fixed Wing, and Autonomy.
Program Executive Officers (PEOs) are Now Capability Program Executives (CPEs)
Inside each portfolio is a Capability Program Executive (CPE), typically a Brigadier General or a civilian SES. Capability Program Executives have similar roles and responsibilities as today’s PEOs. They are the Acquisition leader responsible for cradle-to-grave management of their programs within their portfolio.
Streamlined Layers of Bureaucracy
97 Army acquisition programs may be reassigned to align with the Army PAE reorganization. 46 organizations that were writing requirements likely will be consolidated into 9 Future Capability Directorates.
Army PAE Fires will likely combine elements from Program Executive Office Missiles and Space, Enterprise Information Systems, the Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office, Fires System Center, and others. It will likely include the Integrated Battle Command System (IBCS), Patriot/PAC-3, Precision Strike Missile (PrSM), Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon – Dark Eagle (LRHW), Common Autonomous Multi-Domain Launcher (CAML), Guam Defense and Golden Dome.
DoW Will Buy Commercial First
One of the biggest changes is the mandate for PAEs to buy Commercial Off the Shelf (COTS) products, modify them if necessary and only buy bespoke products as a last resort. This change by itself is going to send shockwaves through the existing Prime contractors.
It’s telling everyone that the playing field is now open to everyone. Forget who has more lobbyists on K-Street. Speed, mission impact, and innovation is what will be rewarded. What this means for startups is that if you can execute and deliver (not just PowerPoints) you can become a supplier to the DoW.
Incentive Compensation to PAEs and Program Managers
PAEs will be judged on whether they deliver systems to the warfighter on time and on schedule. PAEs and Program Managers will have “incentive compensation” tied to “capability delivery time, competition, and mission outcomes. (How they’ll pay that kind of compensation for a member of the military remains to be seen.)
Incentives and Scorecards for Contractors
They’ll be managing their contractors with “time-indexed incentives” to make sure contractors deliver on time and on budget, using “scorecards” to keep tabs on how each portfolio is doing.
Army PAE C2/CC2 (Command and Control/Counter Command and Control) will likely combine elements of PEO Command, Control, Communications and Network.. And include NGC2, TITAN, TENCAP, Next Generation Constructive, STE
Non-Traditional Entry Points
Companies selling to the DoW previously had to comply with the impenetrable DFAR and FAR – the Defense and Federal Acquisition Regulations – with over 5,000 pages of complex rules. It was designed for buying Aircraft Carriers, not startup technology.
Now the DoW is telling PAEs to toss those and use Non-FAR regulations like OTAs (Other Transaction Authorities). OTAs are not subject to the extensive, rigid rules and regulations of the DFAR. They allow for greater flexibility, speed, and allow the DoW to work with a broader range of innovative commercial companies. For startups this means massively reduced documentation, shorter timelines, and fewer barriers to working with the DoW.
PAEs Will Use Lean Methodology
Rather than fixed requirements and using waterfall development processes, the services are now insisting that vendors use Lean Methodology to set incremental and iterative delivery targets. That means they can field “good enough technology” that can be incrementally updated in the field and improved on a more frequent cadence.
The only requirement for each increment is that they need to target 1) an initial fielding date,
One other interesting Lean mandate is that each PAE will set up lean technical advisory processes to inform accelerated decision-making, ensuring technical rigor without sacrificing speed.
Weapons Will Be Able to Talk to Each Other – By Design
The new PAEs are also tasked with insisting that all weapons across their programs use Modular Open System Architectures, including by asserting government purpose rights over critical software interfaces — a move that allows the Pentagon to retain the data rights needed to avoid “vendor lock” (weapon systems that can only be modified and/or repaired by the company that designed it).
Army PAE Agile Sustainment will likely combine elements of PEO Combat Support and Combat Service Support, PEO Solider and PEO Joint Program Office Armaments and Ammunition. It will likely include next generation Common Tactical Truck (CTT,) Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles (FMTV), 155mm, 6.8mm ammunition.
Two Vendors Through Initial Production
The DoW has painfully learned that having only one vendor selected leads to cost overruns and late projects. A new idea is that each critical acquisition program will have at least two qualified sources through initial production. While this will cost more upfront, it gives government leverage when it is strongest and enables them to re-compete modular components and find alternative suppliers if needed.
Design For Rapid Scale In a Crisis
PAEs have been told to establish acquisition strategies that decouple design from production to allow additional third-party suppliers to surge and rapidly scale manufacturing capacity in a crisis. They are to put in place guidelines for wartime consumption rates through manufacturing and supply chain partnerships and alternative sources.
Army PAE Layered Protection and CBRN (Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear) will likely combine elements of PEO JPEO-CBRND. It will likely include Joint Chemical Agent Detector, UIPE, Decontamination Family of Systems, Biometrics
PAE Officers Now Have More Time To Learn On the Job
A complaint from past acquisition program managers is that they would only be there for two or three years, and then off to their next assignment. Two years was not enough time to see a program through. Now PAEs will have 4-year tours, extendible for another 2 years.
PAEs Top to Bottom
Every military service has 60 days to tell the Secretary of War a list of portfolios it is proposing to be initially stood up. A full implementation plan is due in 90 days. All major acquisition activities across all Services are going to be transitioned to PAE portfolios within two years.
Army PIT is the Army’s innovation initiatives at the edge. It’s the front door for startups wanting to partner with the Army.
The PIT includes the Joint Innovation Outpost, the Global Tactical Edge Acquisition Directorate (G-TEAD) Marketplace, the FUZE program, and Disruptive Technologies.
The G-TEAD Marketplace merges Prize Challenge events (e.g., Army xTech Program) and DEP submissions through open call announcements.
FUZE brings together the Army SBIR/STTR seed funding, MANTECH (Army Manufacturing Technology program), TMI (Tech Maturation Initiative) and XTech the Army’s scouting program.
Reeducation Camp – Warfighting Acquisition University
To retrain/reeducate contracting and acquisition officers, the “Defense Acquisition University” will become the “Warfighting Acquisition University.” They have been ordered to stop compliance-focused training operations and in six months transform into a competency-based education institution.
The university will pivot to offer experiential team-based programs that work on real DoW challenges (does that ever sound like a description of Hacking for Defense.) And they’re going to have their students get out of the building and take part in industry-government exchanges. In the next six months they’re going to prioritize education and rotation programs to get their students exposure to commercial industry practices, manufacturing and operational expertise, and real-world problem-solving. All to develop Acquisition executives critical thinking and agile and rapid decision-making skills. (Note to DAU: we’ve been building these programs for a decade at the Stanford Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation. Our national security classes are in 60+ universities and we’re happy to help.)
The Joint Staff – Coordinating the Needs of All the Services
While each of the Services generated their own weapons requirements, plans and budgets, they all had to be approved by the Joint Staff (which reports to the Secretary of War) through a process called the JCIDS (Joint Capabilities Integration & Development System). In theory this was to coordinate each of the Service’s needs so they weren’t duplicating each other, to ensure that they were interoperable, and to give the Combatant Command a voice; and tie all the requirements to joint concepts – all of this needing to be done before Service weapons programs got funded and built.
The problem was that JCIDS moved at the speed of paperwork, not war, so the Secretary of War eliminated it earlier this year. (They kept part of it called the Joint Requirements Oversight Council but reoriented it from validating documents to identifying joint operational problems, which will drive the priorities for the entire department of War.)
In JCIDS’ place the Secretary of War created three new organizations:
The Joint Acceleration Reserve, a pool of money set aside to quickly field promising capabilities.
The Requirements and Resourcing Alignment Board (RRAB) that will tie money directly to the top warfighting priorities and how much money each will get from the new Joint Acceleration Reserve.
The Mission Engineering and Integration Activity brings government, industry, and labs together early on to rapidly experiment, test, and prototype new tech.
It’s interesting to note that none of these changes at the Joint Staff have seemed to (at least publicly) filter down to the charter of the Services Portfolio Acquisition Executives (PAEs). The achilles heel of the Services Acquisition process appears that they are still planning to put the Requirements and Capability gap analysis up front. Here’s why that’s a problem and how to fix it.
Foreign military sales
One other tangential decision in this redesign was not in acquisition but in sales. The DoW wants a greater emphasis on selling our weapons to our Allies. They’ve moved two agencies responsible for those functions – the Defense Technology Security Administration DTSA and the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) – from OSD Policy to OSD Acquisition and Sustainment.
This move is about selling more of our equipment, but makes no mention of buying any equipment from our allies.
Inferred But Not Mentioned
Pretty interesting that in this reorg no one has noticed that Elbridge Colby – Under Secretary for Policy – had three organizations taken away from him.
Defense Technology Security Administration DTSA
Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA)
The Joint Production Accelerator Cell (JPAC) now renamed the Wartime Production Unit (WPU)
All three organizations were handed to Michael Duffey the Under Secretary for Acquisition & Sustainment. Regardless of the public statements the optics are not a vote of confidence.
Bigger and Better?
It appears that the Office of Strategic Capital may have been swallowed up by the Economic Defense Unit run by George Kolitdes. From all appearances the Economic Defense Unit is tasked to decouple our economy from China, using private and public capital. That means considering how to on-shore the critical components like minerals, chips, batteries, motors, PNT, etc.) The Acquisition announcement was how to buy things. This Economic Defense Unit is how do we ensure the things we buy are made with parts we know we can have an assured supply of?
Summary
Startups and the DoW are now speaking the same language – Lean, feedback from the field, pivots, iterative and incremental product design, speed to delivery.
The DoW mandate to first buy commercial-off-the-shelf products is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for every startup and scaleup.
But you have to deliver. Don’t hand wave with PowerPoints.
DoW will be ruthless in shutting down and freezing out non-performers.
The use of Non-Federal Acquisition Regulations will eliminate huge amounts of paperwork.
It eliminates one of the reasons to subcontract with a prime or other company
DoW needs to be ruthless in reforming the compliance culture
Who to talk to in each service and how will they do business will be unclear for at least the next six months
Reorganizations will create uncertainty of who is the front door for startups, how the new rules apply, and who can commit to contracts.
The Army appears to be further along than the other services in putting a PAE organization in place.
In theory this is a knife to the heart of the Primes’ business model.
They will flood Congress and the Executive Branch with infinite capital to change these rules.
It’s a race between private capital and public company lobbying money
Let’s hope these changes stick
Thanks to Pete Newell of BMNT for the feedback and insight.
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2025-10-30 21:00:42
我一直自视为实践者。在我参与的初创企业中，唯一的"战略"就是我的营销策略——如何让销售副总裁成为公司最富有的人。退休后，我创立了客户开发方法论，并共同提出了精益创业理念，以简单易懂的语言和流程将创始人的最佳实践体系化。这一切都源于实践者的视角。
因此你可以想象，当我收到战略管理学会(SMS)颁发的年度"战略领导力影响力"奖项时有多惊讶。SMS是战略领域最具权威的专业组织，拥有3100多名会员，出版《战略管理期刊》《战略创业期刊》和《全球战略期刊》三大学术刊物。
颁奖词写道：[史蒂夫·布兰克]作为现代创业之父，改变了初创企业的构建方式、创业教育模式、科研成果商业化路径以及企业与政府的创新机制。
以下是我的获奖感言。
感谢授予我战略领导力影响力奖。作为一名站在满屋子战略家面前的实践者，我深感谦卑与荣幸。
萧伯纳曾说英美是"被共同语言分隔的两个民族"。我常觉得实践者与战略家之间也存在这种鸿沟。
最贴切的比喻是有次长途飞行到悉尼后，我跳上出租车时司机开始说话，我却恐慌起来——完全听不懂他在说什么语言，不知该如何沟通。
直到快到酒店我才意识到：他说的就是英语。
这就像战略研究者与实践者之间的隔阂。
今天我想分享，这个实践者如何意外成为战略家，以及这段旅程如何催生了精益创业。
故事要从我所说的"硅谷秘史"开始。
—-
硅谷的根基源于二战和冷战期间解决国家安全领域的高不确定性难题。
二战期间，美国通过福特、通用等"民主兵工厂"实现了规模化生产——四年内制造30万架飞机、12.4万艘舰船、8.6万辆坦克。但与此同时，我们开创了颠覆性模式：成立科学研究与发展局(OSR&D)，建立大学实验室网络解决电子、化学等军事难题。
这些实验室交付了雷达、火箭、近炸引信、青霉素等突破，前两年还主导了核武器计划。这实际上是动态能力的早期实践——在极端不确定性下感知、把握和转型的能力。
其中专注电子战的部门，成为硅谷创新模式的真正起源。
—
1943年，美军轰炸机在欧洲战场损失惨重。斯坦福大学弗雷德·特曼领导的哈佛无线电研究实验室（其实与哈佛无关）三年内构建完整电子战系统，通过跨学科团队、快速原型和战场反馈循环——这正是现代MVP和OODA循环的雏形。
战后特曼将这套模式制度化：在斯坦福引入政府研究项目，聘请战时工程师任教，重塑大学为外向型机构。他鼓励教授创业咨询，将微波电子技术商业化，使斯坦福成为创新生态系统的早期平台。
这些斯坦福衍生的科技企业本质上是应对不确定性的学习型组织，基于实时数据和客户反馈持续迭代。但当时缺乏风险资本引导，它们只是为生存挣扎的小企业。
直到1970年代中期养老金"谨慎人规则"修订，风险投资成为机构资产类别，金融逻辑才取代学习逻辑成为主导。随后25年里，具有MBA背景的风投者用大公司思维管理初创企业，完全背离了硅谷最初的创新方式。
现在让我们回到精益创业。
在冷战武器系统领域工作21年后，我退休开始反思：
所有商业计划初次接触客户就会失效
初创企业本质上是未经验证的假设集合
成功者都通过客户学习迭代计划
但现有战略工具都是为大公司设计
更严重的是，我们都误以为初创企业只是大公司的微缩版。实际上大公司执行已知商业模式，而初创企业是在探索商业模式。
于是我重构了创业方法论：
客户开发——"大楼内没有真相"
敏捷开发——迭代式产品构建
商业模式画布——技术商业化的假设映射
这三者构成了精益方法论，将手艺活转化为战略学习的学科——通过MVP实验和关键转型的持续循环。
过去二十年，精益已成为新创企业的实际标准。我在斯坦福开发的课程被美国国家科学基金会采纳用于科研成果转化。当代创业者们不知不觉中，正运用着战时创新的持续学习循环。
展望未来，2025年将成为新的转折点。AI、合成生物学和空前规模的资本正在消弭探索与利用的界限。当战略本身进化为动态能力——不是计划而是超越环境变化的快速学习过程时，我期待见证各位创造的新纪元。
最后感谢斯坦福技术创业项目的同仁，是你们让一个实践者走进了学术殿堂。
谢谢。
I’ve always thought of myself as a practitioner. In the startups I was part of, the only “strategy” were my marketing tactics on how to make the VP of Sales the richest person in the company. After I retired, I created Customer Development and co-created the Lean Startup as a simple methodology which codified founders best practices – in a language and process that was easy to understand and implement. All from a practitioner’s point of view.
So you can imagine my surprise when I received the annual “Strategy Leadership Impact” Award from the Strategic Management Society (SMS). The SMS is the strategy field’s main professional society with over 3,100 members. They publish three academic journals; the Strategic Management Journal, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, and Global Strategy Journal.
The award said, [Steve Blank] as the Father of Modern Entrepreneurship, changed how startups are built, how entrepreneurship is taught, how science is commercialized, and how companies and government innovate.
Here’s my acceptance speech.
Thank you for the Strategy Leadership Impact Award. As a practitioner standing in front of a room full of strategists, I’m humbled and honored.
George Bernard Shaw reminded us that Americans and British are “one people separated by a common language.” I’ve often felt the same way about the gap between practitioners and strategists.
The best analogy I can offer, is the time after a long plane flight to Sydney, I jumped into a taxi and as the taxi driver started talking I started panicking – wondering what language he was speaking, and how I was going to be able to communicate to him.
It took me almost till we got to the hotel to realize he was speaking in English.
That’s sometimes how it feels between those who do strategy and those who study it.
So today, I’d like to share with you how this practitioner accidently became a strategist and how that journey led to what we now call the Lean Startup.
It’s a story that begins, perhaps surprisingly with what I call the Secret History of Silicon Valley.
—-
Silicon Valley’s roots lie in solving urgent, high-uncertainty national-security problems during World War II and the Cold War with the Soviet Union.
During WW II, the United States mastered scale and exploitation—mass-producing ships, aircraft, and tanks through centralized coordination. Ford, GM, Dupont, GE and others became the “arsenals of democracy.” In less than 4 years the U.S. built 300,000 aircraft, 124,000 of all types of ships, 86,000 tanks.
But simultaneously we created something radically different, something no other nation did – we created the Office of Science and Research and Development – OSR&D. This was a decentralized network of university labs that worked on military problems that involved electronics, chemistry and physics. These labs solved problems where outcomes were unknown and time horizons uncertain—exactly the conditions that later came to define innovation under uncertainty.
These labs delivered radar, rockets, proximity fuses, penicillin, sulfa drugs, and for the first two years ran the U.S. nuclear weapons program.
In hindsight, way before we had the language, the U.S. was practicing dynamic capabilities: the capacity to sense, seize, and transform under extreme uncertainty. It was also an early case of organizational ambidexterity—balancing mass production with rapid exploration.
One branch of this Office of Science and Research and Development – focused on electronic warfare—became the true genesis of the Valley’s innovation model.
—
In 1943, U.S. bombers over Europe faced catastrophic losses—4–5% of planes were shot down every mission. The German’s had built a deadly effective radar-based air defense system. The U.S. responded by creating the Harvard Radio Research Lab, led by Stanford’s Fred Terman. The lab had nothing to do with Harvard, Radio or Research.
Its goal was to rapidly develop countermeasures: jammers, receivers, and radar intelligence.
In the span of three years, Terman’s lab created an entire electronic ecosystem to defeat the German air defense systems. By war’s end U.S. factories were running 24/7 mass producing tens of thousands of the most complicated electronics and microwave systems that went on every bomber over Europe and Japan.
These teams were interdisciplinary, field-connected, and operating in continuous learning cycles:
Scientists and engineers worked directly with pilots and operators—what we’d now call frontline customer immersion.
They built rapid prototypes—the Minimum Viable Products of their time.
They engaged in short feedback loops between lab and battlefield—what John Boyd would later formalize as the OODA loop.
They were, in essence, running a learning organization under fire—a live example of strategic adaptation and iterative sensemaking.
But what does this have to do with Silicon Valley?
When the war ended Terman came back to Stanford and became Dean of Engineering and institutionalized this model. He embedded government research into the university, recruited his wartime engineers as faculty, and redefined Stanford as an outward-facing institution.
While most universities pursued knowledge exploitation – publishing, teaching, and extending established disciplines, Terman at Stanford did something that few universities in the 1950’s, 60’s or 70’s were doing – he pursued knowledge exploration and recombination. Turning Stanford into an outward facing university – with a focus on commercializing their inventions.
He reconfigured incentives — encouraging professors to consult and found companies, an unprecedented act of strategic boundary spanning
He believed spinning out microwave and electronics companies from his engineering labs was good for the university and for the country.
He embedded exploration in the curriculum — mixing physics, electronics, and systems engineering.
Cultivating external linkages — he and his professors were on multiple advisory boards with the Department of Defense, intelligence agencies, and industry.
Terman’s policies as now Provost effectively turned Stanford into an early platform for innovation ecosystems—decades before the term existed.
The technology spinouts from Stanford and small business springing up nearby were by their very nature managing uncertainty, complexity, and unpredictability. These early Valley entrepreneurs weren’t “lone inventors”; they were learning organizations, long before that term existed. They were continuously testing, learning, and iterating based on real operational data and customer feedback rather than long static plans.
However, at the time there was no risk capital to guide them. They were undercapitalized small businesses chasing orders and trying to stay in business.
It wasn’t until the mid 1970’s when the “prudent man” rule was revised for pension funds, and Venture Capital began to be treated as an institutional asset class, that venture capital at scale became a business in Silicon Valley. This is the moment when finance replaced learning as the dominant logic.
For the next 25 years, Venture investors – most of them with MBAs or with backgrounds in finance, treated startups like smaller versions of large companies. None of them had worked on cold war projects nor were they familiar with the agile and customer centric models defense innovation organizations had built. No VC was thinking about whether lessons from corporate strategic management thinkers of the time could be used in startups. Instead, VCs imposed a waterfall mindset —business plans and execution of the strategy in the plan — the opposite of how the Valley first innovated. The earlier language of experimentation, iteration, and customer learning disappeared.
And now we come full circle – to the Lean Startup.
At the turn of the century after 21 years as a practitioner, and with a background working on cold war weapons systems, I retired from startups and had time to think.
The more I looked at the business I had been in, and the boards I was now sitting on, I realized a few things.
No business plan survived first contact with customers.
On day one all startups have is a series of untested hypotheses
Yet startups were executing rather than learning
Our strategic language and tools—all designed for large firms—were useless in contexts of radical uncertainty.
Startups that succeeded were the ones that learned from their customers and iterated on the plan. Those that didn’t, ended up selling off their furniture.
Most importantly – as I started reading all the literature I found on innovation strategy, almost all of it was about corporate innovation.
We had almost a century of management tools and language to describe corporate strategy for both growth and innovation – yet there were no tools, language or methods for startups.
But it was worse. Because both practitioners and their investors weren’t strategists, we had been trapped in thinking that startups were smaller versions of large companies
When the reality was that at their core, large companies were executing known business models, but startups? Startups were searching for business models
This distinction between startup search and large company execution had never been clearly articulated.
There was a mismatch between the reality and practice.
We needed to reframe entrepreneurship as a strategic process, not a financial one
I realized that every startup believed their journey was unique, and thought they had to find their own path to profitability and scale.
That was because we had no shared methodology, language or common tools. So I decided to build them.
The first was Customer Development – at its heart a very simple idea – there are no facts inside the building – so get outside.
Here we were reinventing what the best practices from the wartime military organizations, and from Lead User Research and Discovery Driven Planning – this time for startups
The goal is to test all the business model hypotheses – including the two most important – customer and value proposition – which we call product/ market fit.
The next, Agile Engineering – a process to build products incrementally and iteratively – was a perfect match for customer development.
And then finally, repurposing Alexander Osterwalder’s Business Model Canvas to map the hypotheses needed in commercialization of a technology
The sum of these tools – Customer Development, Agile Engineering and the Business Model Canvas – is the Lean Methodology.
What I had done is turn a craft into a discipline of strategic learning—a continuous loop of hypothesis testing, experimentation via minimum viable products, and adaptation via pivots.
Lean is a codified system for strategy formation under uncertainty.
Over the last two decades Lean has turned into the de facto standard for starting new ventures. The classes I created at Stanford were adopted by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, to commercialize science in the U.S.
And while contemporary entrepreneurs didn’t know it they were adopting the continuous learning cycles that had fueled wartime innovation.
What comes next is going to be even more interesting.
We’re going to remember – for better or worse – 2025 as another inflection point.
AI in everything, synthetic biology, and capital at previously unimaginable scale, are collapsing the distance between exploration and exploitation.
The boundary between discovery, invention, and strategy is dissolving.
Given how fast things are changing I’m looking forward to seeing strategy itself become a dynamic capability—not a plan, but a process of learning faster than the environment changes.
I can’t wait to see what you all create next.
In closing, my work at Stanford was made possible by the unflinching support from Tom Byers, Kathy Eisenhardt and Riitta Katila in the Stanford Technology Ventures Program who let a practitioner into the building.
Thank you.
2025-10-15 21:00:11
2025年10月PEO名录——更新版2
战争部（DoW）是全球最大的组织之一。如果您是一家初创企业，试图弄清该联系谁以及如何在这个体系中穿行，客气地说——这颇具挑战性。战争部内部人员很难体会，对外界而言这个看似坚不可摧、异常复杂的体系有多么难以理解。
内部人士知道该联系谁，主要承包商也有专门团队跟踪广泛领域公告和合同，但作为初创企业，您完全没有这些人脉资源。（而随着社交媒体的兴起，甚至我们的对手都掌握了更充分的信息。）
如果我们真心要构建下一代国防生态系统（而非仅仅采购下一个光鲜亮丽的项目），那么这本就该是战争部应当公开发布的名录。
在此之前，请查收这份战争部PEO名录的第二版更新。
本次更新的战争部电话簿及初创企业市场进入战略指南新增了500个名称/组织。
（变更摘要详见附录H。）
名录下载地址请点击此处。
订阅及时更新请点击此处。
The October 2025 PEO Directory – Update 2.
The Department of War (DoW) is one of the world’s largest organizations. If you’re a startup trying to figure out who to call on and how to navigate the system, it can be – to put it politely – challenging. Those inside the DoW have little perspective of how hard it is to understand what to an outsider looks like in an impenetrable, incredibly complex system.
Insiders know who to call, and prime contractors have teams of people following broad area announcements and contracts, but if you’re startup, you have none of those relationships. (And with the advent of Social Media even our adversaries have better knowledge.)
If we’re serious about building a next generation defense ecosystem (not just buying the next shiny object), then this is the directory the Department of War should be publishing.
Until then, here’s the second update to the Department of War PEO Directory.
500 new names/organizations in this DoW phonebook and startup Go-to-Market Strategy playbook.
(See Appendix H for a summary of the changes.)
Downloads of the Directory can be found here.
Sign up for timely updates here.
2025-10-13 21:00:56
关于特朗普政府对大学科学领域的打压，已有大量文章讨论。但很少有人追问：科学究竟是什么？它如何运作？科学家是谁？他们做什么？更重要的是，为何大学之外的人们应该关心这些？
（遗憾的是，大众媒体不会解答这些问题——它们不够吸引眼球。科学期刊也不会涉及——这不够技术性。处于风口浪尖的大学同样无法给出简明解释——它们早已丧失将自身工作价值与公众日常生活联系起来的能力。）
本文将阐述科学如何运作，科学与工程如何共同推动美国创新企业的崛起——以及你为何应该关注。
（在前文中，我描述了美国如何构建科技生态系统，以及为何科学投资与国家实力直接相关。建议先阅读该文。）
科学运作之道
当我终于理解科学家、工程师、企业家和风险投资家的区别，以及他们在推动经济繁荣、国防强大和美国崛起中所扮演的角色时，年龄已大到不愿承认。
科学家
科学家（有时称为研究者）是那些不断追问事物运行原理的人群。他们并不知晓答案，而是被好奇心驱使，乐于做出有根据的猜测（专业术语称为假说）并通过实验验证。多数情况下假说会被证伪，但每次正确的发现都推动人类进步——新药物、疾病疗法、消费品、更优质廉价的食物等。
科学家通常专精于某个领域（生物学、医学研究、物理学、农业、计算机科学、材料学、数学等），少数会跨领域研究。自1940年起，美国政府便以数十亿美元规模支持科研。
科学家主要分为两类：理论家与实验家。
理论家
理论家构建数学模型、抽象框架和宇宙运行假说。他们不亲自实验，而是提出新理念或原则，解释现有实验结果，预测未观测现象。理论家帮助界定现实的可能性。
各科学领域都有理论家身影，例如：
物理学 量子场论、弦理论、量子力学
生物学 神经科学与认知、系统生物学、基因调控
化学 分子动力学、量子化学
计算机科学 算法设计、计算极限证明
经济学 市场或决策模型构建
数学 因果推断、贝叶斯网络、深度学习
20世纪最著名的理论家爱因斯坦仅用黑板和大脑，在1905年写下E=MC²方程，揭示微小质量可转化为巨大能量。当时这只是理论，而1930-40年代的其他理论家基于此推动了原子弹研发（利奥·西拉德构想中子链式反应，汉斯·贝特领导洛斯阿拉莫斯理论部，爱德华·泰勒发展氢弹理论）。广岛长崎的爆炸最终验证了爱因斯坦理论的正确性。
实验家
除理论家外，实验家负责在实验室设计和操作实验。显微镜前穿白大褂的科学家形象多属此类，他们通过实验验证假说，如NASA詹姆斯·韦伯望远镜或LIGO引力波观测实验。（后文将看到，实验设备往往由工程师建造。）
部分实验家专注于基础科学，纯粹为认知自然基本原理而研究，不考虑即时应用；另一些则从事应用科学，将基础科学的发现转化为产品与工艺的创新。
应用科学家解决现实导向的实际问题（如洛斯阿拉莫斯科学家研究铀-235临界质量）。基础科学为应用突破奠基：量子力学（基础）催生半导体继而计算机（应用）；病菌理论（基础）带来抗生素和疫苗（应用）。20世纪的应用科学家通常不创办终端产品公司，这一角色由工程师和企业家承担（21世纪更多应用科学家，尤其在生命科学领域，开始从实验室孵化企业）。
美国的科研版图
美国主导科学与发明的独特洞见在于：二战后将研发资金投入大学而非仅限政府实验室。这是其他国家未曾大规模实施的策略。
企业研发中心
20世纪美国企业将超额利润投入杜邦、贝尔实验室、IBM等企业研发中心。1982年证券交易委员会允许公司回购股票后，企业基础研究几乎消失，转而聚焦股东价值最大化的应用研究。如今理论与基础研究主要转移至研究型大学。
研究型大学
表面看（或对本科生而言），大学是上课获学位之地。但在研究型大学，科学教师不仅教学，更通过实验、论文、专利等创造新知。教授们从联邦机构（NSF、NIH、国防部等）、基金会和企业获取资助，大学则建设配套实验室、中心和计算设施。
美国542所研究型大学按卡内基分类分为三级：
R1：187所极高研究活动大学（如斯坦福、哈佛、MIT），授予大量博士学位；
R2：139所高研究活动大学（如詹姆斯麦迪逊、维克森林），研究规模稍小；
R3：216所研究型学院/大学，侧重教学型博士项目。
大学对科学的意义
美国大学承担约50%的基础科学研究（物理、化学、生物、社会科学等），因其是研究生和博士后的人才培养基地。大学年研发支出约1090亿美元，其中600亿来自NIH（生物医学）、NSF（基础科学）、国防部、能源部等。（企业则倾向投资能直接转化为产品的应用研发。）
教授（尤其STEM领域）运营着类初创企业的实验室：提出研究问题，招募团队，撰写基金提案（耗时30-50%）。获资助的首席研究员称"主要研究者"（PI）。实验室兼具工作与教学功能，研究生和博士后在此进行科研训练（常为攻读博士），本科生在顶尖院校也参与辅助。
（2025年前，美国科学高度国际化，约40-50%基础研究由外国出生研究者完成。移民和学生签证曾是科研能力的关键组成部分。）
研究成果通过期刊、会议、专利和技术转移办公室与初创企业分享。从谷歌搜索到CRISPR，众多商业技术源自大学实验室。
大学通过行政支持（合规、采购、安全）和顶级研究设施（实验室、洁净室、望远镜）及核心科学服务（DNA测序中心、电镜、云计算接入）赋能科研。这些设施曾是全球顶尖——直至2025年大幅削减预算。
工程师：科学发现的建造者
工程师基于科学发现进行设计与建造。例如科学家发现原子分裂七年后，数万工程师才造出原子弹。工程师明确建造目标，正是得益于前期基础与应用研究。
科学家vs工程师
工程师制定计划，用软件测试设计，继而切割金属、建造火箭发动机、设计芯片、为实验家制造设备等。例如英伟达GPU芯片由台积电制造，应用材料公司的应用科学又基于半导体研究的基础科学。而使用这些芯片的数据中心，则由机械等各类工程师建造。
典型案例：SpaceX可回收火箭着陆，依托斯坦福Steven Boyd在凸优化算法上的应用科学研究，而Boyd的工作又基于凸分析数学基础科学（SpaceX、NASA、蓝色起源等均采用凸优化进行制导控制）。
企业家：迭代创新的推动者
企业家创办公司将新产品推向市场，雇佣工程师进行产品开发测试。二者在风险承受度和目标上截然不同（许多杰出企业家出身工程师，如马斯克、盖茨、佩奇/布林）。工程师解决已知规格的问题，而企业家则通过最小可行产品迭代，验证客户需求与市场契合度。（将商业未知视为假说，正是企业家的"科学方法"。）
风险投资家：创新生态的燃料
风投资助那些与工程师合作的企业家，而工程师的建造基于应用科学家验证的基础研究。不同于银行对明确项目的贷款，风投投资高风险组合，通过股权获利。多数风投非科学家出身，但优秀者能把握技术趋势，其投资塑造未来。风投主要承担工程与制造风险，极少涉足基础研究风险——这正是政府与大学的职责。
随着科技源头活水枯竭，美国深科技风投机会将减少，未来属于投资科学的中国或欧洲。
为何需要科学家？
读至此或有人疑惑："不能只保留工程师、企业家和风投（或AI）吗？"大学-产业-政府的三方合作，正是硅谷、航空航天、生物技术、量子与AI的基石。这些投资带来了火箭、癌症疗法、互联网、ChatGPT等成果。
科学投资与国家实力直接相关。削弱科学，就是削弱经济长期增长与国防。科技公司对AI数据中心的上千亿投资远超联邦研发支出，但这些属于工程而非科学投资。用通用人工智能取代科学家的设想误解了AI的作用——它正使科学家更高效而非被替代。
忽视科学的国家终将依赖他国。美国二战后的主导地位源于基础科学投资（OSRD、NSF、NIH等）。同期英国削减科学投资，反使美国商业化其战时发明。苏联解体部分源于未能将科学转化为持续创新，而美国大学、初创企业与风投正创建硅谷。核武器、GPS、AI等长期军事经济优势，皆可追溯至科研生态系统。
经验总结
• 科学家分理论家与实验家两类
• 实验家又分基础科学（探索新知）与应用科学（实际应用）
• 科学家培养人才，创造专利与国防解决方案
• 工程师在科学发现基础上建造
• 企业家测试产品边界
• 风投为初创提供资金
• 这些角色互为补充——缺失任一环，系统即退化
科学不会停止。削减美国资助，科学将转移至理解其与国家伟大关联的国家（如中国）。国家实力源于科学投资，削弱基础与应用科学研究，就是削弱美国。
附录：科学方法
五百年来，无论理论家或实验家，验证科学的方式都是科学方法：提出"我认为这应如此运作"的假说并进行验证。其目标是将猜测转化为证据，通过设计实验、分析结果来确认或修正假说。科学家建造仪器开展实验，正是源于对未知的探索。
这些实验小至大学生物实验室的数千美元项目，大至耗资数十亿的卫星、粒子加速器或望远镜。（美国在二战后领跑科学，因政府意识到资助科学家有益经济与国防。）
优质科学应具可重复性。科学家不仅公布结果，更公开实验细节供同行验证，使科学方法具备自我纠错能力。科学方法的另一优势是接受多数实验会失败——失败本身就是探索未知过程中的学习。
Tons of words have been written about the Trump Administrations war on Science in Universities. But few people have asked what, exactly, is science? How does it work? Who are the scientists? What do they do? And more importantly, why should anyone (outside of universities) care?
(Unfortunately, you won’t see answers to these questions in the general press – it’s not clickbait enough. Nor will you read about it in the science journals– it’s not technical enough. You won’t hear a succinct description from any of the universities under fire, either – they’ve long lost the ability to connect the value of their work to the day-to-day life of the general public.)
In this post I’m going to describe how science works, how science and engineering have worked together to build innovative startups and companies in the U.S.—and why you should care.
(In a previous post I described how the U.S. built a science and technology ecosystem and why investment in science is directly correlated with a country’s national power. I suggest you read it first.)
How Science Works
I was older than I care to admit when I finally understood the difference between a scientist, an engineer, an entrepreneur and a venture capitalist; and the role that each played in the creation of advancements that made our economy thrive, our defense strong and America great.
Scientists
Scientists (sometimes called researchers) are the people who ask lots of questions about why and how things work. They don’t know the answers. Scientists are driven by curiosity, willing to make educated guesses (the fancy word is hypotheses) and run experiments to test their guesses. Most of the time their hypotheses are wrong. But every time they’re right they move the human race forward. We get new medicines, cures for diseases, new consumer goods, better and cheaper foods, etc.
Scientists tend to specialize in one area – biology, medical research, physics, agriculture, computer science, materials, math, etc. — although a few move between areas. The U.S. government has supported scientific research at scale (read billions of $s) since 1940.
Scientists tend to fall into two categories: Theorists and Experimentalists.
Theorists
Theorists develop mathematical models, abstract frameworks, and hypotheses for how the universe works. They don’t run experiments themselves—instead, they propose new ideas or principles, explain existing experimental results, predict phenomena that haven’t been observed yet. Theorists help define what reality might be.
Theorists can be found in different fields of science. For example:
Physics Quantum field theory, string theory, quantum mechanics
Biology Neuroscience and cognition, Systems Biology, gene regulation
Chemistry Molecular dynamics, Quantum chemistry
Computer Science Design algorithms, prove limits of computation
Economics Build models of markets or decision-making
Mathematics Causal inference, Bayesian networks, Deep Learning
The best-known 20th-century theorist was Albert Einstein. His tools were a chalkboard and his brain. in 1905 he wrote an equation E=MC2 which told the world that a small amount of mass can be converted into a tremendous amount of energy. When he wrote it down, it was just theory. Other theorists in the 1930s and ’40s took Einstein’s theory and provided the impetus for building the atomic bomb. (Leo Szilard conceived neutron chain reaction idea, Hans Bethe led the Theoretical Division at Los Alamos, Edward Teller developed hydrogen bomb theory.) Einstein’s theory was demonstrably proved correct over Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Experimentalists
In addition to theorists, other scientists – called experimentalists – design and run experiments in a lab. The pictures you see of scientists in lab coats in front of microscopes, test tubes, particle accelerators or NASA spacecraft are likely experimentalists. They test hypotheses by developing and performing experiments. An example of this would be NASA’s James Webb telescope or the LIGO Gravitational-Wave Observatory experiment. (As we’ll see later, often it’s engineers who build the devices the experimentalists use.)
Some of these experimentalists focus on Basic Science, working to get knowledge for its own sake and understand fundamental principles of nature with no immediate practical use in mind.
Other experimentalists work in Applied Science, which uses the findings and theories derived from Basic Science to design, innovate, and improve products and processes.
Applied scientists solve practical problems oriented toward real-world applications. (Scientists at Los Alamos weretrying to understand the critical mass of U-235 (the minimum amount that would explode.) Basic science lays the groundwork for breakthroughs in applied science. For instance: Quantum mechanics (basic science) led to semiconductors which led to computers (applied science). Germ theory (basic science) led to antibiotics and vaccines (applied science). In the 20th century Applied scientists did not start the companies that make end products. Engineers and entrepreneurs did this. (In the 21st century more Applied Scientists, particularly in life sciences, have also spun out companies from their labs.)
Scientists
Where is Science in the U.S. Done?
America’s unique insight that has allowed it to dominate Science and invention, is that after WWII we gave Research and Development money to universities, rather than only funding government laboratories. No other country did this at scale.
Corporate Research Centers
In the 20th century, U.S. companies put their excess profits into corporate research labs. Basic research in the U.S. was done in at Dupont, Bell Labs, IBM, AT&T, Xerox, Kodak, GE, et al.
This changed in 1982, when the Securities and Exchange Commission ruled that it was legal for companies to buy their own stock (reducing the number of shares available to the public and inflating their stock price.) Very quickly Basic Science in corporate research all but disappeared. Companies focused on Applied Research to maximize shareholder value. In its place, Theory and Basic research is now done in research universities.
Research Universities
From the outside (or if you’re an undergraduate) universities look like a place where students take classes and get a degree. However, in a research university there is something equally important going on. Science faculty in these schools not only teach, but they are expected to produce new knowledge—through experiments, publications, patents, or creative work. Professors get grants and contracts from federal agencies (e.g., NSF, NIH, DoD), foundations, and industry. And the university builds Labs, centers, libraries, and advanced computing facilities that support these activities.
In the U.S. there are 542 research universities, ranked by the Carnegie Classification into three categories.
R1: 187 Universities – Very High Research Activity
Conduct extensive research and award many doctoral degrees.
Examples: Stanford, UC Berkeley, Harvard, MIT, Michigan, Texas A&M …
R2: 139 Universities – High Research Activity
Substantial but smaller research scale.
Examples: James Madison, Wake Forest, Hunter College, …
R3: 216 Research Colleges/Universities
Limited research focus; more teaching-oriented doctoral programs.
Smaller state universities
Why Universities Matter to Science
U.S. universities perform about 50% of all basic science research (physics, chemistry, biology, social sciences, etc.) because they are training grounds for graduate students and postdocs. Universities spend ~$109 billion a year on research. ~$60 billion of that $109 billion comes from the National Institutes for Health (NIH) for biomedical research, National Science Foundation (NSF) for basic science, Department of War (DoW), Department of Energy (DOE), for energy/physics/nuclear, DARPA, NASA. (Companies tend to invest in applied research and development, that leads directly to saleable products.)
Professors (especially in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) run labs that function like mini startups. They ask research questions, then hire grad students, postdocs, and staff and write grant proposals to fund their work, often spending 30–50% of their time writing and managing grants. When they get a grant the lead researcher (typically a faculty member/head of the lab) is called the Principal Investigator (PI).
The Labs are both workplaces and classrooms. Graduate students and Postdocs do the day-to-day science work as part of their training (often for a Ph.D.). Postdocs are full-time researchers gaining further specialization. Undergraduates may also assist in research, especially at top-tier schools.
(Up until 2025, U.S. science was deeply international with ~40–50% of U.S. basic research done by foreign-born researchers (graduate students, postdocs, and faculty). Immigration and student visas were a critical part of American research capacity.)
The results of this research are shared with the agencies that funded it, published in journals, presented at conferences and often patented or spun off into startups via technology transfer offices. A lot of commercial tech—from Google search to CRISPR—started in university labs.
Universities support their science researchers with basic administrative staff (for compliance, purchasing, and safety) but uniquely in the U.S., by providing the best research facilities (labs, cleanrooms, telescopes), and core scientific services: DNA sequencing centers, electron microscopes, access to cloud, data analysis hubs, etc. These were the best in the world – until the sweeping cuts in 2025.
Engineers Build on the Work of Scientists
Engineers design and build things on top of the discoveries of scientists. For example, seven years after scientists split the atom, it took 10s of thousands of engineers to build an atomic bomb. From the outset, the engineers knew what they wanted to build because of the basic and applied scientific research that came before them.
Scientists Versus Engineers
Engineers create plans, use software to test their designs, then… cut sheet metal, build rocket engines, construct buildings and bridges, design chips, build equipment for experimentalists, design cars, etc.
As an example, at Nvidia their GPU chips are built in a chip factory (TSMC) using the Applied science done by companies like Applied Materials which in turn is based on Basic science of semiconductor researchers. And the massive data centers OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, et al that use Nvidia chips are being built by mechanical and other types of engineers.
My favorite example is that the reusable SpaceX rocket landings are made possible by the Applied Science research on Convex Optimization frameworks and algorithms by Steven Boyd of Stanford. And Boyd’s work was based on the Basic science mathematical field of convex analysis (SpaceX, NASA, JPL, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab all use variations of Convex Optimization for guidance, control, and landing.)
Startup Entrepreneurs Build Iteratively and Incrementally
Entrepreneurs build companies to bring new products to market. They hire engineers to build, test and refine products.
Engineers and entrepreneurs operate with very different mindsets, goals, and tolerances for risk and failure. (Many great entrepreneurs start as engineers e.g., Musk, Gates, Page/Brin). An engineer’s goal is to design and deliver a solution to a known problem with a given set of specifications.
In contrast, entrepreneurs start with a series of unknowns about who are the customers, what are the wanted product features, pricing, etc. They retire each of these risks by building an iterative series of minimum viable products to find product/market fit and customer adoption. They pivot their solution as needed when they discover their initial assumptions are incorrect. (Treating each business unknown as a hypothesis is the entrepreneurs’ version of the Scientific Method.)
Venture Capitalists Fund Entrepreneurs
Venture capitalists (VCs) are the people who fund entrepreneurs who work with engineers who build things that applied scientists have proven from basic researchers.
Unlike banks which will give out loans for projects that have known specifications and outcomes, VCs invest in a portfolio of much riskier investments. While banks make money on the interest they charge on each loan, VCs take part ownership (equity) in the companies they invest in. While most VC investments fail, the ones that succeed make up for that.
Most VCs are not scientists. Few are engineers, some have been entrepreneurs. The best VCs understand technical trends and their investments help shape the future. VCs do not invest in science/researchers. VCs want to minimize the risk of their investment, so they mostly want to take engineering and manufacturing risk, but less so on applied science risk and rarely on basic research risk. Hence the role of government and Universities.
VCs invest in projects that can take advantage of science and deliver products within the time horizon of their funds (3–7 years). Science often needs decades before a killer app is visible.
As the flow of science-based technologies dries up, the opportunities for U.S. venture capital based on deep tech will decline, with its future in countries that are investing in science – China or Europe.
Why Have Scientists? Why Not Just a Country of Engineers, Entrepreneurs and VCs (or AI)?
If you’ve read so far, you might be scratching your head and asking, “Why do we have scientists at all? Why pay for people to sit around and think? Why spend money on people who run experiments when most of those experiments fail? Can’t we replace them with AI?”
The output of this university-industry-government science partnership became the foundation of Silicon Valley, the aerospace sector, the biotechnology industry, Quantum and AI. These investments gave us rockets, cures for cancer, medical devices, the Internet, Chat GPT, AI and more.
Investment in science is directly correlated with national power. Weaken science, you weaken the long-term growth of the economy, and national defense.
Tech firms’ investments of $100s of billions in AI data centers is greater than the federal government’s R&D expenditures. But these investments are in engineering not in science. The goal of making scientists redundant using artificial general intelligence misses the point that AI will (and is) making scientists more productive – not replacing them.
Countries that neglect science become dependent on those that don’t. U.S. post-WWII dominance came from basic science investments (OSRD, NSF, NIH, DOE labs). After WWII ended, the UK slashed science investment which allowed the U.S. to commercialize the British inventions made during the war.
The Soviet Union’s collapse partly reflected failure to convert science into sustained innovation, during the same time that U.S. universities, startups and venture capital created Silicon Valley. Long-term military and economic advantage (nuclear weapons, GPS, AI) trace back to scientific research ecosystems.
Lessons Learned
Scientists come in two categories
Theorists and experimentalists
Two types of experimentalists; Basic science (learn new things) or applied science (practical applications of the science)
Scientists train talent, create patentable inventions and solutions for national defense
Engineers design and build things on top of the discoveries of scientists
Entrepreneurs test and push the boundaries of what products could be built
Venture Capital provides the money to startups
Scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs – these roles are complementary
Remove one and the system degrades
Science won’t stop
Cut U.S. funding, then science will happen in other countries that understand its relationship to making a nation great – like China.
National power is derived from investments in Science
Reducing investment in basic and applied science makes America weak
Appendix – How Does Science Work? – The Scientific Method
Whether you were a theorist or experimentalist, for the last 500 years the way to test science was by using the scientific method. This method starts by a scientist wondering and asking, “Here’s how I think this should work, let’s test the idea.”
The goal of the scientific method is to turn a guess (in science called a hypothesis) into actual evidence. Scientists do this by first designing an experiment to test their guess/hypothesis. They then run the experiment and collect and analyze the result and ask, “Did the result validate, invalidate the hypothesis? Or did it give us completely new ideas?” Scientists build instruments and run experiments not because of what they know, but because of what they don’t know.
These experiments can be simple ones costing thousands of dollars that can be run in a university biology lab while others may require billions of dollars to build a satellite, particle accelerator or telescope. (The U.S. took the lead in Science after WWII when the government realized that funding scientists was good for the American economy and defense.)
Good science is reproducible. Scientists just don’t publish their results, but they also publish the details of how they ran their experiment. That allows other scientists to run the same experiment and see if they get the same result for themselves. That makes the scientific method self-correcting (you or others can see mistakes).
One other benefit of the scientific method is that scientists (and the people who fund them) expect most of the experiments to fail, but the failures are part of learning and discovery. They teach us what works and what doesn’t. Failure in science testing unknowns means learning and discovery.
2025-09-17 21:00:43
伟大的创始人会在危机中发光。
我刚刚和一家电动自行车公司的两位联合创始人喝了一杯咖啡，他们正在指导我们的一支学生团队。很快我就意识到他们是非常优秀的创始人——富有创造力、敏捷且仍然享受着公司建设的乐趣。与其他电动自行车租赁公司不同，他们的商业模式独特，提供免费的租赁时间以换取用户观看广告。我们进行了一次很棒的对话，他们谈论了各种话题，唯独没有提到“桌上的死麋鹿”。
桌上的死麋鹿
在我们见面之前，我读到他们刚刚输给了另外三家电动自行车公司（包括Uber）争夺在另一座主要城市的经营权。这意味着他们接下来四年都将被排除在该市场之外。在三家公司中排名第四是痛苦的，但优秀的CEO会从失败中学习，并确保这些教训被应用到未来，以避免再次发生。 (如果不行，他们的董事会就会敲他们的头，直到他们做到。) 但在交谈中，我了解到这些创始人并非如此。
他们随意地提到，他们再次在争夺在一座主要城市的经营权，这次就是我所在的城市。
我问了一些在我看来显而易见的问题，首先是：“你们从上次的失败中学到了什么？你们做了哪些改变以确保不会再发生？”对我而言，更重要的是：“如果你们失去了这座城市，你们的估值和业务会受到什么影响？”他们的回答很模糊，如果我是他们的董事会成员，这会让我感到犹豫。 (这是我对他们所说内容的委婉描述。)
被忽视的危机
虽然创始人还在谈论新产品、品牌合作和客户获取计划，但他们似乎还没有真正理解上次失败的含义，也没有意识到如果这次再失去这座城市可能带来的后果。更不用说他们现在正陷入一场关乎公司生死存亡的斗争。如果不是为了生存，至少也是为了在估值上获得一个数量级或两个数量级的差异。
这位CEO显然没有意识到如果失去这次城市经营权选择的紧迫性。鉴于我之前见过类似的情况，我建议他们应该把这场竞争当作一场四警报的火灾来对待。这是一场危机，但他们却像对待日常琐事一样处理。
识别非日常事务
初创公司本质上就是混乱的。创始人不断面对各种决策、需求和干扰。但他们必须识别哪些事件或结果会对公司产生数量级或生死攸关的影响。当危机发生时，CEO需要调动所有资源，以不同于处理其他日常“燃眉之急”的方式来应对。而不是将这次事件视为“又一次消防演习”，作为第一步，初创公司CEO需要阐明为什么这会是公司生存的生死攸关的问题。我发现最好的方法是起草一份一页纸的备忘录，说明以下几点：
除非公司大楼正在燃烧，否则应向一些值得信赖的顾问测试这份备忘录（而不是你的高管团队或董事会成员）。
然后，CEO需要亲自领导应对措施：
经验教训
- 有能力的创始人能够识别危机，而不是日常事务。
- 优秀的创始人知道如何培养新技能和能力来应对危机。
- 伟大的创始人已经准备好了B计划。
- 在危机中，如果你无法管理混乱和不确定性，如果你无法倾向于采取行动，而是在等待别人告诉你该怎么做，那么你的投资者和竞争对手将替你做决定，或者你将耗尽资金，公司最终会倒闭。
Great founders shine in a crisis.
Ordinary ones watch their companies burn down.
I just had coffee with two co-founders of an e-bike company who were mentoring one of our student teams. In short order I realized they were great founders – creative, agile and still having fun building their company. Unlike other e-bike rental companies, their business model was unique, offering riders free rental time in exchange for looking at ads. We had a great conversation, and they talked about everything – except the dead moose on the table.
The Dead Moose
Before we met, I read they had just lost out to three other e-bike companies (including Uber) to operate in another major city. This meant they were now shut out of that market for the next four years. Being fourth in a group of three is painful, but good CEOs learn from failure and ensure that those lessons get baked in going forward so they never happen again. (And if not, their board hits them on the head until they do.) As we talked, I learned that wasn’t the case with these founders.
They casually mentioned they were again competing for the rights to operate in a major city, this time the one I was in.
I asked what I thought were obvious questions, starting with, “What did you learn from the loss? What did you change to ensure it won’t happen again?” And to me, most important, “What happens to your valuation and business if you lose this city?” The answers were vague, and if I had been on their board would have given me pause. (That’s a polite description of what I would have said.)
A Crisis – Ignored
While the founders were still talking about new product offerings, brand partnerships, and customer acquisition programs, they hadn’t processed what their past loss meant, and the potential consequences of losing this next city. Let alone that they were now in a life-and-death struggle for the survival of their company. If not for survival, at least in a fight for one- or two-orders of magnitude difference in their valuation.
The CEO just didn’t have the urgency of what would happen if they lost this next city selection. Having seen this movie before, I suggested that they needed to treat this competition as a four-alarm fire. This was a crisis, and they were treating it like any other day-to-day issue.
Recognize When It’s Not Business As Usual
Startups are inherently chaotic. Founders face a constant barrage of decisions, demands, and distractions. But they need to recognize when an event/outcome can have an order of magnitude/life or death impact on their company. When a crisis happens the CEO needs to marshal all resources and organize to deal with them differently than the multitude of other day-to-day “hair on fire” issues in a startup. Rather than making this “one more fire drill,” as a first step startup CEOs need to articulate why this is an existential threat to the survival of the company. I found the best way to do this is to draft a one-page memo laying out:
What’s changed
Why it matters
Why our current “business as usual” organization/process/product is insufficient as a response
And unless the building is on fire, test the memo with some trusted advisors (not your exec staff or board.)
Then, the CEO needs to personally lead the response:
With a team focused 100% on the problem
The CEO and team need a “War Room” – with a wall covered by visual representation of how the problem is being worked and progress to date
Move to the city/location to get the deal/fix the problem
Identify and remove all obstacles
Create a new strategy for sales, marketing, influence, roadmap, etc.
Finally, as I suggested to the e-bike company, you need new people of a different caliber, experienced in whatever issue is on fire who have a track record of success.
This was the hardest point to get across. Replacing or augmenting people who thought they were doing a good job but don’t see the need for change, is painful.
Lessons Learned
A competent founder can recognize when it’s a crisis, not business as usual.
A good founder knows how to build new skills and capacity to manage a crisis.
A great founder already has a plan B in place.
In a crisis if you can’t manage chaos and uncertainty, if you can’t bias yourself for action and if instead you wait around for someone else to tell you what to do, then your investors and competitors will make your decisions for you and/or you will run out of money and your company will die.
2025-09-10 21:00:06
宣布发布2025版的DoW PEO目录。在线查看 此处。
将此PEO目录视为一部“谁在政府中采购”的电话簿。
在国防部找到产品的客户非常困难：你应该联系谁？如何引起他们的注意？正确的市场进入策略是什么？什么是PEO，我为什么需要关心？
自从我与他人共同创立了 Hacking for Defense 以来，我的学生总是问：“我们应该联系国防部的谁来告知他们我们解决了什么问题？如何向他们展示我们构建的解决方案？”在近几年里，这个问题不断出现，来自新的国防初创公司及其投资者。
同时，我也收到新一波国防投资者的问题：“我们初创公司最好的市场进入（GTM）策略是什么？”
PEO、PM、PIA、PoR、联盟、SBIR、OTA、CSO、FAR、CUI、SAM、CRADAs、Prime、中层集成商、部落/原住民公司（ANC）、直接面向操作者、直接面向作战单位、实验室、DD-254……对于初创公司来说，这是一整套全新的语言、新术语、新合作伙伴和新规则，需要全新的“市场进入（GTM）”策略。
（注意：2025年，向国防部销售可能将发生变化——向更好的方向发展。）
向国防部销售需要时间，但一个精心制定的国防策略可以带来数十亿美元的合同、持续的收入和国家级的技术影响。现有的国防承包商知道这些国防部组织是谁，并有团队跟踪预算和合同。他们了解如何获得国防部的订单。但初创公司呢？
为什么要编写PEO目录？
大多数初创公司对从哪里开始毫无头绪。而向国防部销售与任何企业或B2B销售流程都截然不同，创始人和投资者可能并不熟悉。与商业世界相比，语言不同，机构不同，风险承担（在采购中）的文化也不同，最重要的是市场进入策略完全不同。
令人惊讶的是，在去年首次发布PEO目录之前，没有一个面向初创公司的国防部电话簿可供使用，以识别应该联系的国防部人员。在那个时代，国防部及其供应商是一个紧密联系的群体，彼此熟悉，技术革新以几十年为周期缓慢进行。（还假设我们的对手无法访问我们的国防部网页、LinkedIn和ChatGPT。）
这已经不再是事实。鉴于国防部外的技术革新速度加快，以及新的无人机、反无人机、自主、人工智能、量子、生物科技等供应商的出现，这种信息不透明已成为实现国家层面创新交付的障碍。
（这种信息缺失甚至延伸到国防部内部。我开始收到多个作战司令部工作人员的请求，要求访问PEO目录。为什么？因为“将PEO数据库与我们的需求、差距和跟踪技术数据库链接起来，会很有帮助。”）
这是一个典型的信息不对称案例，这对国防部日益紧迫的需求和新兴的国防初创生态系统都不健康。
我们的对手已经拥有几十年的国家层面创新交付机制。这是我们帮助国防部竞争的贡献。
2025版PEO目录说明
该文件的第一版最初只是一个PEO目录。其重点在于（并且仍然是）初创公司尽早与PEO沟通的价值，以获取关于作战人员问题的信号，以及国防部是否会现在或将来购买其产品。这些早期对话回答了“是否有需求？”和“是否有市场？”的问题。
（这不是美国政府的官方出版物）
（不要依赖此文件的准确性、完整性或商业建议）
（所有数据均来自国防部网站和公开信息）
感谢今年的合作伙伴协助维护和托管目录： 斯坦福国家安全创新 Gordian Knot 中心、America’s Frontier Fund 和 BMNT。
本版PEO目录在线发布，以便随着最新变化的出现进行更新。
发送更新和更正至 [email protected]
Announcing the 2025 edition of the DoW PEO Directory. Online here.
Think of this PEO Directory as a “Who buys in the government?” phone book.
Finding a customer for your product in the Department of War is hard: Who should you talk to? How do you get their attention? What is the right Go-To-Market Strategy? What is a PEO and why should I care?
Ever since I co-founded Hacking for Defense, my students would ask, “Who should we call in the DoW to let them know what problem we solved? How can we show them the solution we built?” In the last few years that question kept coming, from new defense startups and their investors.
At the same time, I’d get questions from the new wave of Defense Investors asking, “What’s the best “Go-To-Market (GTM)” strategy for our startups?
PEOs, PMs, PIAs, PoRs, Consortia, SBIRs, OTAs, CSOs, FAR, CUI, SAM, CRADAs, Primes, Mid-tier Integrators, Tribal/ANC Firms, Direct-to-Operator, Direct-to-Field Units, Labs, DD-254… For a startup it’s an entirely new language, new buzzwords, new partners, new rules and it requires a new “Go-To-Market (GTM)” strategy.
How to Work With the DoW
Below are simplified diagrams of two of the many paths for how a startup can get funding and revenue from the Department of War. The first example, the Patient Capital Path, illustrates a startup without a working product. They travel the traditional new company journey through the DoW processes.
The second example, the Impatient Capital Path, illustrates a startup with an MVP and/or working product. They ignore the traditional journey through the DoW process and go directly to the warfighter in the field. With the rise of Defense Venture Capital, this “swing-for-the fences” full-speed ahead approach is a Lean Startup approach to become a next generation Prime.
(Note that in 2025 selling to the DoW is likely to change – for the better.)
Selling to the DoW takes time, but a well-executed defense strategy can lead to billion-dollar contracts, sustained revenue, and technological impact at a national scale. Existing defense contractors know who these DoW organizations are and have teams of people tracking budgets and contracts. They know the path to getting an order from the Department of War. But startups?
Why Write the PEO Directory?
Most startups don’t have a clue where to start. And selling to the Department of War is unlike any enterprise or B-to-B sales process founders and their investors may be familiar with. Compared to the commercial world, the language is different, the organizations are different, the culture of risk taking (in acquisition) is different, and most importantly the go-to-market strategy is completely different.
Amazingly, until last year’s first edition of the PEO directory there wasn’t a DoW-wide phone book available to startups to identify who to call in the War Department. This lack of information made sense in a world where the DoW and its suppliers were a closely knit group who knew each other and technology innovation was happening at a sedate decades-long pace. (And assumed our adversaries didn’t have access to our DoW web pages, LinkedIn and ChatGPT.)
That’s no longer true. Given the rapid pace of innovation outside the DoW, and new vendors in UAS, counter UAS, autonomy, AI, quantum, biotech, et al, this lack of transparency is now an obstacle to a whole-of-nation approach to delivering innovation to the warfighter.
(This lack of information even extends internally to the DoW. I’ve started receiving requests from staff at multiple Combatant Commands for access to the PEO Directory. Why? Because “…it would be powerful to include a database of PEOs to link to our database of Requirements, Gaps, and Tracked Technologies to specific PEOs to call.”)
This is a classic case of information asymmetry, and it’s not healthy for either the increasingly urgent needs of the Department of War or the nascent startup defense ecosystem.
Our adversaries have had a whole-of-nation approach to delivering innovation to the warfighter in place for decades. This is our contribution to help the DoW compete.
2025 PEO Directory Edition Notes
The first edition of this document started solely as a PEO directory. Its emphasis was (and is) the value of a startup talking to PEOs early is to get signals on what warfighter problems to solve and whether the DoW will buy their product now or in the future. Those early conversations answer the questions of “Is there a need?” and “Is there a market?”
This 2025 edition of the PEO Directory attempts to capture the major changes that are occurring in the DoW – in organizations, in processes and in people. (For example, the PEO offices of the three largest new defense acquisition programs — Golden Dome, Sentinel and Columbia – will report directly to the Deputy Secretary of War, rather than to their respective Services. And the SecWar killed the cumbersome JCIDIS requirements process.)
What this means is that in 2025 the DoW will develop a new requirements and acquisition process that will identify the most urgent operational problems facing the U.S. military, work with industry earlier in the process, then rapidly turn those into fielded solutions. (That also means the Go-to-market description, people and organizations in this document will be out of date, and why we plan to update it regularly.)
What’s New?
This 2025 edition now includes as an introduction, a 30-page tutorial for startups on how the DoW buys and the various acquisition and funding processes and programs that exist for startups. It provides details on how to sell to the DoW and where the Program Executive Offices (PEOs) fit into that process.
The Directory now also includes information about the parts of the government and the regulations that influence how the DoW buys – the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR). It added new offices such as Golden Dome Direct Reporting Program, DIU, AFRL, DARPA, MDA, CDAO, OSC, IQT, Army Transformation and Training Command, SOCOM, and others.
To help startups understand the DoW, for each service we added links to the organization, structure, and language, as well as a list of each Service’s General Officers/Flag Officers.
Appendix B has a linked spreadsheet with the names in this document.
Appendix C has a list of Venture Capital firms, Corporate Investors, Private Equity firms and Government agencies who invest in Defense. In addition, the Appendix includes details about the various DoW SBIR programs, a list of OTA Consortia, Partnership Intermediary Agreement (PIA) Organizations, and Tribal/Alaska Native Corporation (ANC) Companies.
Appendix D now lists and links to the military and state FFRDC test centers where startups can conduct demos and test equipment.
Appendix E added a list and links of Defense Publications and Defense Trade Shows.
Appendix F has a list of all Army system contractors.
A few reminders:
This is not an official publication of the U.S. government
Do not depend on this document for accuracy, completeness or business advice.
All data is from DoW websites and publicly available information.
Thanks to this year’s partners helping to maintain and host the Directory: Stanford Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation, America’s Frontier Fund and BMNT.
This edition of the PEO Directory is on-line so it can be updated as the latest changes become available.
Send updates and corrections to [email protected]
You can access and download the full document here.