This article by Financial Times’ Richard Waters explores the complex relationship between the U.S. Government and Silicon Valley, the pace of technology adoption in the face of unprecedented geopolitical risks, and the business prospects for today’s AI innovators engaging with the Pentagon to support the U.S. national security mission.
Read: Tech Start-Ups Struggle to Break into the Pentagon, Richard Waters, Financial Times, 03/17/2022
Primer CEO Sean Gourley and AE Krissy Holst, a former CIA analyst, were interviewed for the story. Waters opened his article citing Holst:
“…’Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is ‘probably going to be the most documented war we’ve seen.’ The deluge of real-time information online, including from social networks and messaging apps, could yield important intelligence – not just for military analysts, but for companies and other organizations concerned about the safety of staff or reliability of supply chains… Separating signal from noise in the fog or war is overwhelming.”
Waters continued, Primer “is one of many young tech businesses that have seen the business opportunity in national defence. It trawls thousands of sources online, using natural language processing to read and try to make sense of the vast amount of ‘open source intelligence.”
Gourley commented on the speed of the military’s procurement process, which, as Waters noted, “does not match the speed at which start-ups need to move. It takes two years to land a serious contract…meaning entrepreneurs seeking out military business essentially have to bet their company on being right on target.”
Previous coverage about Primer by Waters explores the growing role AI software plays in helping U.S. intelligence analysts – and increasingly many other knowledge workers – sift through vast amounts of data and prepare reports that analyze and synthesize the most important new events “to make sense of a complex world.”
Read: ‘Natural Language Understanding’ Poised to Transform How We Work, Richard Waters, Financial Times, 12/02/2018
For more information about Primer and to access product demos, contact Primer here.
