DIUx: Capturing Technological Innovation

By Cynthia Cook

Dr. Cynthia Cook is director of the Acquisition and Technology Policy Center, part of the RAND National Defense Research Institute, and a professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. Since joining RAND in 1997, she has led and worked on a wide range of studies for the U.S. Air Force, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Army, the Australian Department of Defence, and the UK Ministry of Defence on subjects including defense acquisition, cost analysis, the defense industrial base, weapons production weapon systems sustainment, and contracting practices. She was formerly the associate director of Project AIR FORCE. Prior to joining RAND, Cook was a research specialist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, working on the Lean Aerospace Initiative. Before her graduate studies, she worked in New York as an investment banker, specializing in high-yield finance. She holds a Ph.D. in sociology from Harvard University and a B.S. in management from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Since Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work discussed the Third Offset at a talk given in January of 2015, the concept has been the focus of numerous discussions and interpretations. It has generally been defined in defense literature as a path to a new and enduring competitive edge over America’s adversaries based on advanced technology. 

To find new sources of this advanced technology, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter created the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx) in August of 2015. Carter has said the DIUx experiment is prodding the Pentagon to take a closer look at how it engages with technology companies and the tools it uses to get new technologies into the hands of America’s fighting men and women.

“The Cipher Brief has become the most popular outlet for former intelligence officers; no media outlet is even a close second to The Cipher Brief in terms of the number of articles published by formers.” —Sept. 2018, Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 62

Access all of The Cipher Brief’s national security-focused expert insight by becoming a Cipher Brief Subscriber+ Member.

Subscriber+

Categorized as:InternationalTagged with:

Related Articles

How Safe Would We Be Without Section 702?

SUBSCRIBER+EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW — A provision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that has generated controversy around fears of the potential for abuse has proven to be crucial […] More

Search

Close