Yahoo Finance Homeland Security official: How to get Silicon Valley to stop building dating apps and solve real problems
Reginald Brothers, the Department of Homeland Security’s undersecretary for science and technology, shared an anecdote at the Concordia Summit in New York on Tuesday that managed to connect Silicon Valley innovation, cybersecurity threats, and… dating apps.
Brothers was on a cybersecurity panel with former Homeland Security secretary Tom Ridge, retired US General Keith Alexander, and Dr. Greg Rattray, director of cyber partnerships for JPMorgan. The conversation turned toward the need for better collaboration and information-sharing between government departments and private sector businesses.
To solicit ideas and business proposals from tech entrepreneurs in places like “the Silicon Valleys and Austins and Bostons of our country,” Brothers and Homeland Security organized a Homeland Security Day in Menlo Park, Calif., in April. But it wasn’t as simple as creating a special day and then greeting a flood of willing tech developers; Brothers said one challenge was that, “our problem has to be somewhat aligned to their business case.”
In other words: executives and developers at hot Silicon Valley tech companies aren’t automatically going to want to help Homeland Security develop its technology—not unless it fits their own needs and priorities. It’s a problem, Brothers said, “of getting their attention and getting their interest in solving these really hard problems.”
So: How to get them on board?
Brothers said a conversation he had with a “top VC” sheds some light. The investor asked Brothers, “Why do you think there are so many dating apps? Why are there so many restaurant-finding apps? Because there are a lot of young guys doing these apps. And that’s what they care about. But if you present some really hard, important problems, they’ll go for that too.”
Brothers found that when he explained the importance of the work, and the cyber threats (more numerous than ever before, and from not just hacking groups but other nations too) at play, there was better buy-in from the tech community. For one particular project, Homeland Security put out a solicitation, chose a proposal and locked down a vendor within two months. “That’s pretty good, for government,” Brothers said.
He is continuing to make tech developers an “ask” to get them on board with helping Homeland Security. But it sounds as though it may be tough to convince tech entrepreneurs that helping the government is sexier than helping build the next Tinder, Bumble, or Yelp. “So my ask is about… ‘Listen, these are some really important problems, important to your families, to your communities, and we need your help.’ That’s my ask.”
—
Daniel Roberts is a writer at Yahoo Finance, covering sports business and technology. Follow him on Twitter at @readDanwrite.
Read more:
Tom Ridge: Cyber attacks are worse now than physical attacks
The biggest bitcoin hack since Mt. Gox revolves around ‘cold storage’
Libra Group CEO tells Holocaust story to warn against building walls
