The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare

by Christian Brose

The defense world in Washington often did not help matters. It was repeatedly ambushed by many of the technological disruptions flowing out of Silicon Valley and the rest of the commercial world. It missed the commercial space revolution. It missed the move to cloud computing. It missed the advent of modern software development. It missed the centrality of data. And it missed the rise of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Of course, plenty of actors in Washington had a vested interest in ensuring that the Department of Defense never capitalized on these disruptive technologies, but it is hard to overstate the degree to which Washington missed these major developments because it simply did not understand them, or even that they were possible. But it is worse than that: When the Washington defense world eventually did become aware of these revolutions in commercial technology, it did not immediately embrace them. In many cases, it resisted them.