SAN FRANCISCO–Defense Secretary Ashton Carter made a pitch to a crowd of Silicon Valley technology professionals at the RSA security conference on Wednesday: Work for the Pentagon and help the nation solve some of its toughest problems, from cyber operations against the Islamic State to protecting its networks against foreign adversaries.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter. Photo: Pentagon
U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter. Photo: Pentagon

“The idea that you’re a cog in the wheel isn’t the spirit of people in this room,” Carter said. “You can come in and make an enormous difference” in the Defense Department.

As a young elementary particle physicist out of Stanford University, Carter himself had no plans to work permanently for the Defense Department, he said. Inspired by older scientists he worked with, who labored during the era when the atomic bomb was developed and advised him to “give back” to the government in some way, he decided to spend a year at the Pentagon helping to figure out the best location to house ICBMs.

“Those are the two best feelings in the world, that you’re working on an important problem and you can make a difference,” he said.

Carter hopes that technology professionals will do the same, he said. During the speech, he plugged the department’s new Digital Defense Service, which aims to place tech professionals at Pentagon positions for short, yearlong stints where they can tackle interesting problems.

Another option is working with Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx), the outreach office Carter stood up last year to act as a bridge between Silicon Valley and the department. The effort is still in its nascent stages, he said, but one metric he will use to gauge DIUx’s success is whether it is able to buy products from emerging Silicon Valley firms that wouldn’t have done business with the department otherwise, he said.

Ted Schlein, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers venture capital firm who moderated the discussion with Carter, noted that the department’s acquisition and procurement processes “are so hard to deal with,” sometimes the best technologies don’t end up in the hands of the department in a timely matter.

“I’m just completely intolerant of that excuse. We can’t do things that way,” Carter responded, adding that’s why initiatives like DDS and DIUx are so important for fostering innovation and connecting companies with defense agencies that regularly fund cutting edge technology, such as Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency [DARPA] and the Strategic Capabilities Office.

The Pentagon also must aggressively reform its acquisition policies and become less bureaucratic.

“I’m determined that we meet you halfway. I know we need to look at ourselves and become more innovative ourselves,” he said. “I promise you if you take a step [toward the department], we’ll take a step back in the other direction,” away from burdensome regulations.