Defense Innovation Project - Eileen Vidrine

Welcome back to the Defense Innovation Project, the podcast for the thinkers and doers shaping the future of national security. This series explores what transformation really looks like inside the defense enterprise from breakthrough technologies and policy shifts to the leaders pushing innovation beyond the PowerPoint deck and into action. In each episode, we bring strategic conversations with the people building, leading, and executing the future of defense. And I'm really happy to say that today's guest is Eileen Vadreen.

As a former chief data and AI officer of the U.S. Department of the Air Force, Eileen led efforts to modernize data infrastructure, promote AI adoption, and foster a culture of innovation. She's also played a major role in bridging the gap between government and Silicon Valley, helping federal agencies unlock public-private partnerships.

In this conversation, we explore what it takes to modernize at mission speed and how we can empower the next generation of leaders to turn ideas into impact. Eileen, it's a true honor and pleasure to have you join us. Thank you so much for your time. I'm very excited to learn from you, to hear your insights.

you bring such a wealth of knowledge and experience to this sector. So really excited to hear what you have to say. And I wanted to start off our conversation with kind of your view on the current state of innovation inside the government and to ask you, so what has happened in the recent years and what excites you most in what you're seeing? Well, first, thank you for including me today.

I'm really excited to be here. And I am excited and passionate about innovation because it's happening inside government today. And I think the trajectory is just the ops tempo continues to accelerate. The bottom line is today, government is changing and we expect emerging tech capabilities that can actually make efficient government, specifically in the defense and national security sector?

Part of the answer. So when I look at innovation inside government, I look at it that it's the ops tempo. You have to be able to go at the speed of relevancy. You have to be ready.

And so we all read the news and we see that there's a lot of change going on. So what I typically ask leaders are, are you ready for that change? Are you ready to accelerate, to bring great capabilities now at that speed of relevancy? Many organizations have playbooks.

Are your playbooks up to date so that they align with the new ops tempo? Or is somebody else going to leapfrog over you because you're just not ready to go at that speed of mission? So innovation all in, it's here to stay. And I think it's always exciting because innovation allows every member of the ecosystem to have the potential for impact.

And I think impact is really where we're going. Yeah, definitely. So it's really about the readiness. And so from your experience working at this intersection of emerging tech, leadership, strategy, so what are those three ingredients that companies need to be able to use those technologies and truly modernize defense at scale, unlock those opportunities that innovation offers?

Well, first it begins by asking, do you have a dual tech capability? You might have a great capability that's being leveraged in industry today, but you've never thought creatively to say how I can repurpose that to make it a dual tech capability. And if you do, I think the secret ingredient is grit. You actually have to have great patience because it's not always fast.

So and you have to be able to roll up your sleeves and really do the work. And so I would say that patience grit ingredient is really important working with the defense sector because the acquisition and security components can not always go as quickly as we would like them to go. And then I also said that you have to have really strong storytelling. You can have great capability and you may go into the government and into the defense space and you're doing really great work.

But you have to be able to communicate the value to senior leadership. make it easy for them to say yes we should continue to invest in it because this is the return on investment we're getting with that particular capability or not so that strategic communications and storytelling is really important because you asking you know you asking the U taxpayers to make you know make a great investment in your capability And that accountability side is the way to make sure that it's it, that accountability happens is through great storytelling.

And we, what I have seen through my career is that we've had some great capabilities, but have not scaled because they haven't communicated the value to the leadership that needs to, you know, that's really being held accountable to make sure they're being great stewards of U.S. taxpayer dollars. So it's not about having just great capability, but you have to make sure that the senior leadership sees that value.

And so it's about that true partnership. kind of um focusing in on the partnership that you've just mentioned i know you've had a lot of experience working with startups and seeing some of their game-changing technologies as well as vc-backed companies and solution providers of emerging technologies and obviously they will be playing a vital role but in your perspective what role should these vc-backed companies and game-changing technology providers play in the defense ecosystem, which has been traditionally kind of focused on the original equipment manufacturers and some of the larger companies building platforms.

So what role will these disruptors play? Well, I would say the defense sector needs great emerging technology capabilities now. And so I see the VCs as being great teammates. I like to say that data and AI are team sports.

You can't do this alone. So VCs have done a really great capability to really identify some dual tech opportunities that can be leveraged. And that gives them, I'm going to say that fiscal viability because they can make, if something is working really well in industry, that it could potentially be brought in as a dual tax solution so that it could be a springboard to go faster. so many times some of the best technologies that have that I've seen come out of the VC components are actually winning technologies in those fortune 100 fortune 500 companies and it's you know they've I'm going to say been for all intents and purposes a little bit battle tested where you can use that as a springboard to go faster coming into government first can't you know can hit some speed bumps so being able to test drive and show that value up front and I also think that that the VCs help these companies with dual tech capabilities so that when they're I'm gonna say peaks and valleys of procurement cycles it allows it to be more sustainable that I'm gonna say more stable across the life cycle.

But dual tech with, you know, with our VC partners have helped us to really leverage great capabilities and really be fast followers where it's appropriate. Yeah, and that, in my opinion, brings some very groundbreaking opportunities. Something we discussed in the previous episode with General Groen was that you can't really take the tech bros and parachute them into a defense context. There has to be work done around that to facilitate a successful partnership.

So I wanted to ask you, so from your experience and generally speaking, your vision, what does a good public-private partnership look like that we'd be able to scale? So how does the government and government agencies better engage with industry to make use of those dual tech, dual use technologies? So when I talk about public private partnership, I always want to emphasize that it's not just about the VC and the vendor community. It's all we can't forget about academia because academia has some really great ideas.

They can be great incubators and some of, you know, and then we need to scale that capability out so that first that public private partnership, it's an ecosystem where everybody is welcome at the table. And when we look at government, we've seen great capabilities where we've seen the government put together industry days to literally get feedback from the product community, the emerging tech community, the academic community to kind of do a vector check. Like, do we have the requirements right before it even goes out on the street?

And so I going to say that that sharing of knowledge throughout the life cycle to make sure that the capabilities that are present are actually known So that because it really hard to know everything that going out there So when I look at events like government led industry days, emerging tech conferences, like Cranium does, et cetera, allows, I'm going to say that open sharing of great capabilities. And I also think it also creates new levels of synergy, not just about capabilities, but about talent.

And so it gives the talent across these workspaces an opportunity to share great lessons learned, to get tips and tricks to be able to so that we can all accelerate together. It comes back to the team sport concept. But I think the other piece that I really love about partnerships is that it allows you, you know, earlier I just talked about storytelling. It lets you as a leader sometimes let your teammates shine.

It's very hard to be a 10 at everything. And it's amazing what you can get done when you don't worry about who's getting credit. And so part of my leadership journey when I worked in the defense and national security space was really making sure that I was a great teammate and I was a great partner. So that because when my partner shines, my team is also shining too.

And so it's really about when it works to actually share those, you know, I'm going to say amazing lessons learned so that we can all go faster together. Because at least in my space, we're talking about technologies to help us keep our country safe and defend our nation. And I think that that's a shared responsibility for all of us. Yeah, definitely.

And I think we've talked a lot about how people, we forget sometimes we focus on technology, but it's actually the people who are enabling those transformative processes. So on that note, are there any people, programs, trends, or technologies that make you hopeful about the future of defense innovation? I think that any capability now has the potential to be repurposed as a dual tech capability. I love working with our service personnel because they are some of the most creative, innovative people on the planet.

They find ways to take an existing capability and turn it upside down to like truly go faster, leverage the heck out of something to to meet their mission. And so getting to work with, I'm going to say that, you know, people where that are truly aligned to a a mission, but they can use their creative, innovative approaches to really get stuff done. I think that's what's for me really exciting because every day when I go out to different organizations, I see that creativity happening.

Dual purpose capabilities that I might not have seen or another senior leader might not have seen. But the person that's closest to that mission really understands what they need and how they can leverage those capabilities. So I'm always optimistic about working with our uniform personnel because they're just a gift. That's really fantastic to hear.

We're hearing a lot in the news that AI-enabled technologies should be incorporated, and we're focusing on the real-time data, enhanced decision-making, ways to improve command and control through a large language models and AI. And as we kind of settle into a level of comfort with AI, what is the next surprise that we should anticipate and what will the impact of that surprise be? well it wouldn't be a surprise if we just but i think it goes back to the beginning where we have to be ready so some of the areas where i'm you know leaning forward in most people are talking about quantum but um and because quantum is is you know in some respects here and it's continuing to evolve forward.

But other areas that I'm looking at is what I call digital biological convergence. It's the boundaries where digital systems work. It's not just biotech. It's really programmable biology that can compute and evolve.

So I think that whole biotech arena really for true digital convergence is something that we on the cusp of seeing more and more capabilities moving forward And the other area where I sometimes talk about is ambient intelligence, where, you know, it's, we're all talking about artificial intelligence, some people We'll call it augmented intelligence. But when the intelligence becomes ubiquitous and invisible, and it's just part of, I'm going to say, that core DNA, that paradigm shift is, I think, one of the things that we're going to see moving forward is helping us work smarter.

And so it comes down to readiness. um it you know those may be topics that you may may or may not be interested in but is your organization ready for the next you know investment coming down the line is your organization willing and ready to deal with um the culture change because sometimes we can have great capabilities, but one of the pain points sometimes is the change management side of it. So part of being ready is making sure that your organization is ready for whatever is next so that you can really adopt it when it's proven, you know, go from pilot to scaling at that speed of relevancy.

And I think that's also pretty interesting. So I come back to, at the beginning we talked, are you ready? Is your team ready? Is your organization ready?

Because that embracing of the change, I think, is the harder part than being ready for the technology. because we all know that there will be something that comes out very quickly that we didn't plan for and we're going to have to adapt at that speed of relevancy. Do you think the DOD is ready to adjust quickly enough to those changes that we anticipate? I'm excited about it because we're seeing some, I'm going to say game changing processes.

So I'm going to point to the DOD SWIFT program, software initiated fast track. So when we, you know, some people will say the pain points are acquisition and security. And in May of May of this year, the DOD CIO announced the Swift program to fast track and streamline both software acquisition as well as security authorization processes. So I was really excited to hear that because I always hear from my community that those are the two of the biggest pain points.

And we have very senior leadership saying they want to break down those barriers now at the speed of relevancy. I think that's exciting. So, yes, I'm very bold that, yes, we're going to be ready for this new tech because they're looking at changing and modernizing processes to ensure that they're ready. That's really fantastic to hear.

These days we talk a lot about the Chinese threat and the DoD not moving fast enough to adapt to the ever-changing requirements of the operating environment. So it's really refreshing to hear such a positive outlook. And it gives all of us hope that the DoD is really moving in the right direction. And there are really phenomenal projects and initiatives that we should watch out for.

So Eileen, thank you so much for sharing these insights today. It's really a powerful reminder about how important innovation is and a reminder that we should be ready for change. The change comes from within the organizations. And as a reminder to our listeners, more in-depth discussions will be happening at our upcoming CDAO Defense Conference this September in D.

C. Eileen will be co-chairing the sessions and the event is hosted by Carinium Defense and we'll gather senior decision makers focused on some of the themes that we've addressed today. So Eileen, thank you so much. I really look forward to seeing you at the CDAO Defense Conference in a couple of weeks time.

And I really appreciate the time you took today to speak to me and about some of these critical topics. Thank you so much. well I appreciate you including me and I hope we see everybody in just a few weeks because it's going to be an amazing uh collaborative environment for people to share and learn from each other so I'm I'm really excited about it so looking forward to seeing everybody likewise thank you so much Eileen thanks Thank you.