Beauchamp began working for the department in 2015, and most recently served as the director of security, special program oversight and information protection within the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force. In that role, he oversaw the Air and Space Forces’ highly-classified special access programs (SAP) and worked on insider threat mitigation.

But Beauchamp’s 29-year career spans across multiple positions at the Department of the Air Force, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). By and large, he either led or was involved in several critical events within the national security space — so much so that someone once described him as “the Forrest Gump of the national security world.”

“He goes, ‘You were kind of there in all the big happenings of your time of your career. You were right in the middle of all these things that were the big developments. Sometimes you were there in the background of the scene, and sometimes you were there front and center doing the thing,’” Beauchamp told DefenseScoop in an interview on July 3, his last day at the Pentagon, recalling how a colleague described his tenure.

After graduating from Lehigh University in 1992, Beauchamp was hired as a systems engineer for General Electric Aerospace’s programs with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). He would eventually move to the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) — the precursor to the NGA — after it was founded in 1996 as an operations analyst supporting work to collect imagery and targeting data in the Balkans during the Yugoslav Wars.

In 2000, Beauchamp became NIMA’s senior technical advisor for studies and analysis when he was 29 years old, making him the youngest person to be hired for a senior executive position within the agency since it was founded. Almost immediately, he was tasked with developing a congressionally mandated strategy that would convince the government to purchase imagery from commercial vendors.

At the time, the IC held a monopoly over space-based imagery and data, and the industry market was only just beginning to take hold. Beauchamp described the assignment as “trying to sell milk to people with their own cows.”

“Why would the NRO want to encourage the government to buy commercial imagery? They’re the judge to build and operate imagery satellites,” he said. “So I figured out what it would take in terms of investment to get industry to buy and build satellites sufficient to meet the government’s demands, because the national satellites were not meeting all of the government’s demand for mapping data.”

But after developing a business case for the strategy, Beauchamp said the government was largely opposed to implementing it. He decided to shelve the strategy after one final unsuccessful meeting held on Sept. 10th, 2001, he said.

“On the 11th of September, [Congress] called me up,” he said. “I’m in my office, we’re watching pictures of the [Twin Towers] smoking, and my phone rings and it’s the congressional staff saying, ‘You’ve got your money. Could you spend more?’”

Beauchamp’s $830 million plan was funded by one of Congress’ post-9/11 supplemental packages and created ClearView — the first program that allowed commercial companies to provide satellite imagery to the IC. Once U.S. forces had entered Afghanistan, Beauchamp also moved to purchase all of the overhead imagery of the country, he said.

“What we really wanted to do was make sure that this imagery that was being collected wasn’t being used by the Taliban to target our forces,” he said. “So I basically stitched a camouflage net made out of $100 bills over the country of Afghanistan in order to keep our forces safe.”

Today, commercially derived imagery is one of the fastest growing markets in the world. Companies like Maxar, BlackSky and Planet Labs all have several lucrative contracts with the federal government to provide space-based data for national security, weather and other needs. 

“So this industry, would it exist? Maybe. But would it have blown up the way it did? Probably not, if we hadn’t done this,” Beauchamp said.

The next several years of Beauchamp’s career would be spent at the NGA in various roles focused on strategy and acquisition. In 2012, he began a joint duty assignment as the ODNI’s director of mission integration under then-Director of National Intelligence Gen. James Clapper — a job he noted was one of the highlights of his career. During his second day on the job, U.S. government facilities in Benghazi, Libya, were targeted by militant groups, leading to the death of four American citizens.

Once Beauchamp’s team finished the assessment of the attack, he was immediately thrust into the fallout of the classified document leaks by Edward Snowden in 2013. His oversight led to a massive reform of the IC’s compartmented access programs and yet another overhaul of the government’s policy on commercial imagery.

“All of a sudden, now I’m convening people on the analytics side [and the] collection side, trying to figure out how to make up for the losses and capability that Snowden revealed,” he said. “And part of that is doing a reform of the IC’s compartmented programs, because they had way too many of them in overlap.”

Toward the end of his three-year assignment, Beauchamp started working with former Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work on a “side project” focused on standing up a new organization to pivot the Defense Department away from counterterrorism operations in the Middle East and towards great power competition, he said.

Beauchamp’s time in the intelligence community came to an end in 2015, when he was picked to be the Department of the Air Force’s deputy undersecretary for space and director of the principal DOD space advisor. There, he had two critical tasks, he noted.

“One, I’m working with all the international relationships with other countries who want to cooperate with us in space,” Beauchamp said. “At the same, I’m trying to convince the Americans to shift from space as a sanctuary from which you provide services, to space as a domain for warfighting.”

At the time, the Pentagon was reluctant to expand operations in space out of fear of being the first to weaponize the domain. But Beauchamp argued that the idea wasn’t about weaponization, and instead protection of critical space-based capabilities.

“It’s almost like before then, we were deliberately not protecting them so as you didn’t look like you wanted to start something,” he said. “And I was like, ‘This is not an option anymore.’ The Chinese had already demonstrated they could shoot down their own satellites, what’s to stop them from doing the same thing to us?”

Part of Beauchamp’s work was to develop a plan for how the Pentagon could make its space systems more resilient — many of which have become central to the Space Force’s operations, he noted. And when the first Trump administration decided to stand up the Space Force, Beauchamp was at the forefront of the effort to convince officials to approve the new military service.

Beauchamp would then transition to the Department of the Air Force’s office of the CIO, first as its director of enterprise IT in 2018 and later as the deputy CIO in 2020. His main focus was preparing the DAF for transitioning to telework operations as the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the globe, as well as consolidating the department’s enterprise licenses and creating a plan for modernizing base-level infrastructure, he noted.

“The overall trend line was eliminating the county option of uniqueness that was taking place at every base, and replacing it with a core set of enterprise services that were provided centrally,” Beauchamp said. “Big things like moving to zero trust — you can’t do those things if every base and every two-letter has their own architecture independent of everybody else’s.”

Today, the DAF has a strong path forward on modernizing its IT infrastructure, but Beauchamp said the true challenge will be convincing the department’s major programs to rely on enterprise services instead of building their own networks.

“It’s going to allow them to consolidate and collapse multiple redundant networks and really reduce the amount of money we’re spending on sustaining all this infrastructure,” he said. “When you modernize those networks, you also improve your cybersecurity, because the more deviation you have, the more gaps are created between the different baselines and different versions of software.”

Moving forward, Beauchamp said he will be taking time off but is open to other opportunities in the future.

“I’m excited for whatever the next challenge might be,” he said. “I’m interested in talking to folks who do exciting things, and to see who needs somebody like me to solve big problems.”

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This development marks the first public report of the second capability focus area under the Replicator initiative — a high-profile effort that underpins the Defense Department’s multifaceted plan to deter China.

According to a memorandum signed by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Sept. 27 and viewed by DefenseScoop ahead of publication Monday, the Pentagon “will tackle the warfighter priority of countering the threat posed by small uncrewed aerial systems (C-sUAS) to our most critical installations and force concentrations” under Replicator 2.0.

“The expectation is that Replicator 2 will assist with overcoming challenges we face in the areas of production capacity, technology innovation, authorities, policies, open system architecture and system integration, and force structure,” Austin wrote in the memo.

Austin has directed Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks and Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Christopher Grady to oversee the development of a Replicator 2.0 plan that will be proposed to Congress in the Pentagon’s budget request for fiscal 2026, according to the memo. 

The Defense Department aims to field the C-sUAS systems selected through Replicator 2.0 within two years after lawmakers approve their funding, the secretary wrote.

A defense official declined to provide details regarding what systems, specific capabilities or quantities will be included in the Replicator 2.0 plan. However, the official noted the Pentagon will focus on fielding C-sUAS systems at locations both within and outside the continental United States.

The department sees opportunities to work with state governments, local communities and interagency partners to “burn down risk regarding domestic authorities needed for safe and secure base protection,” the official told DefenseScoop. As for overseas locations, the Pentagon will work with allies and partners to ensure the protection of military bases and surrounding communities, they added.

Hicks first launched Replicator as a key military technology and procurement modernization effort in August 2023. 

At the time, she billed it as a strategic initiative to confront China’s massive, ongoing military buildup by incentivizing U.S. industrial production capacity and the Defense Department’s adoption of advanced warfare technologies en masse — through replicable processes — at a much faster pace than has been achieved before.

Tranches within the first capability focus area — Replicator 1.0 — broadly encompass the purchase and making of loitering munitions, and other technologies associated with what Hicks refers to as “all-domain attritable autonomous systems” (ADA2) to counter China’s anti-access/area-denial A2AD strategy by August 2025.

DefenseScoop has reported that the first two tranches of selections — dubbed Replicator 1.1 and 1.2 — include a variety of maritime and aerial drones and associated counter-drone assets selected for mass production.

Austin noted in the new memo that the Defense Department is “on track with the Initiative’s fielding plan for next summer,” adding that Replicator has “helped ignite our efforts to scale autonomous systems across the force more generally.”

Pentagon officials have secured roughly $500 million from Congress for fiscal 2024 to fund the first Replicator technology batches. The department has requested an additional $500 million for fiscal 2025.

Since Replicator’s inception, Hicks and other defense leaders have been expressly secretive about their full vision, select capabilities and concepts of operation that are foundational to realizing this effort, often citing security concerns.

Lawmakers, however, have also steadily questioned whether the department has allowed Congress and oversight bodies enough access to adequate information about the implementation of this initiative.  

The defense official emphasized that Austin’s memo for Replicator 2.0 serves as an endorsement of the broader initiative, as well as a reflection of his commitment to delivering counter-unmanned aerial vehicle systems for warfighters. 

“In marrying that commitment to the Replicator oversight and delivery model, the department will be well positioned to accelerate progress in this critical area,” the official said.

The forthcoming activities are envisioned to complement and advance “the significant C-sUAS work already underway in the Defense Department in delivering modular and mutually reinforcing solutions to sensing, AI-enabled decision support, and defeat capabilities appropriate to the range of environments in which those most critical installations and force concentrations operate,” the official added.

Doug Beck, director of the Defense Innovation Unit, will take the helm on Replicator 2.0 efforts in collaboration with Pentagon Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment William LaPlante, who also serves as the department’s C-sUAS principal staff assistant, according to the memo.

Austin wrote that work under Replicator 2.0 will leverage efforts by the Counter Uncrewed Systems Warfighter (C-UXS) Senior Integration Group, which was established in March to identify capability gaps and potential technology solutions for countering threats posed by UAS.

The defense official told DefenseScoop that this team has since “been the body responsible for executing ‘fight tonight’ solutions to combat this threat.”

“Lessons learned from the C-UXS Senior Integration Group’s work regarding the ongoing threat posed by unmanned systems will help inform solutions for the Replicator 2 effort,” the official explained.

The defense official further pointed to real-world evolving conflicts in multiple regions abroad that they said “demonstrate the warfighter need for increased focus on” drone-disrupting technologies.

“The secretary has made clear that countering uncrewed assets is one of his top priorities. As a result of the Ukraine war and engagements in the Middle East, the department has learned a lot about the dynamic pace of the threat and the accelerated pace of emerging sUAS technology — all of which informed leadership’s thinking on where to focus Replicator 2,” they told DefenseScoop.

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Beauchamp has been tapped as the new director of security, special program oversight and information protection within the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force. In this role, he will be responsible for the Air and Space Forces’ special access programs (SAP) — a security protocol given to highly classified programs within the Defense Department — personnel security and declassification issues, Beauchamp told DefenseScoop in an email.

Notably, the Security, Special Program Oversight and Information Protection office is set to become part of the new Office of Competitive Activities by October. That organization is one of several new ones being stood up as part of the Department of the Air Force’s broad plan to reorganize for large-scale conflicts in the future, and will combine multiple disparate efforts to oversee and coordinate sensitive activities under one roof.

Beauchamp has served as the DAF’s deputy CIO since December 2020, where he assisted in leading the department’s directorates responsible for enterprise IT, data, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity. He provided insights that informed the Air Force’s IT investment strategy and modernization efforts related to cloud computing, data management and more.

“Winston has been the steady hand and seen the Office of the CIO through significant change, always keeping the organization on track,” DAF CIO Venice Goodwine said in a message to the workforce announcing Beauchamp’s departure. “He has been instrumental in the DAF’s digital transformation efforts, in right sizing the POM (5-year budget), in the standup of the US Space Force, integration of the office of the Chief Data and AI Office into the DAF CIO family, and more recently on reoptimizing for Great Power Competition.”

Jennifer Orozco — current director of the Security, Special Program Oversight and Information Protection office — will serve as the new deputy CIO for the Department of the Air Force beginning Monday, Beauchamp said.

As the DAF continues to work on modernizing its IT enterprise, Beauchamp told DefenseScoop the most pressing challenges moving forward will be the adoption of a zero-trust cybersecurity framework, as well as delivery of the Base Infrastructure Modernization program. The $12.5 billion effort looks to overhaul and modernize existing base area network infrastructure across the department.

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Multiple sources who spoke to DefenseScoop on the condition of anonymity indicated that the selected drones are those under development for the Enterprise Test Vehicle (ETV) program — an effort being run by the Air Force’s Armament Directorate in collaboration with the Defense Innovation Unit aimed at designing and fielding an unmanned aerial vehicle capable of mass-production at low cost and high volume.

The Air Force and DIU referred questions specific to the ETV program’s relation to Replicator to the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

“We have nothing to announce or confirm regarding Replicator tranche two selections at this time,” Pentagon spokesperson Lt. Col. Garron Garn told DefenseScoop in an email Thursday evening.

Spearheaded by Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks, Replicator looks to respond to China’s ongoing military buildup in the Indo-Pacific by fielding thousands of “attritable autonomous” systems across warfighting domains no later than August 2025. The Pentagon plans to choose technologies for the program in continuous tranches, selecting more proven capabilities in early batches before considering emerging capabilities down the line.

While Replicator is considered a top modernization effort, Hicks and other leaders across the Pentagon have kept many details about specific systems and other aspects of the project behind closed doors. DefenseScoop previously reported that the first tranche of selections — known as Replicator 1.1 — included Switchblade loitering munitions, counter-drone assets and a range of unmanned surface vehicles.

In August, Hicks confirmed that all three military departments were working with the Defense Innovation Unit on narrowing down systems for the follow-on Replicator 1.2. Shortly after, DefenseScoop reported that Anduril’s Dive-LD underwater drone — a Navy program — would be included in the effort’s second tranche.

DIU announced in June that Anduril, Integrated Solutions for Systems, Leidos Dynetics and Zone 5 Technologies are currently developing prototypes for the ETV program, which is being run in collaboration with the Air Force’s Armament Directorate.

The ETV prototypes will leverage commercial and dual-use technologies to better understand how the Pentagon can quickly produce and field drones in the future. Companies are expected to keep their prototypes affordable with commercial off-the-shelf parts, as well as utilize open systems architecture approaches to enable upgrades and subsystem integration. 

Under the contract, the four companies are expected to develop UAV prototypes and conduct flight demonstrations by the end of 2024, after which DIU will down-select to one or more systems for continued development.

The original solicitation for the program published in 2023 noted that prototypes should have a range of at least 500 nautical miles; a minimum cruise speed of 100 knots; be capable of delivering a kinetic payload; and be able to demonstrate an air-delivered variant — such as being launched from the back of a cargo aircraft, for example.

A spokesperson for DIU confirmed to DefenseScoop that three of the four vendors are scheduled to conduct test flights for their ETV prototypes no later than September 2024. The fourth company will fly by the end of November 2024, they added.

Results from the test flights will inform decisions about the number of contractors DIU will be able to work with on the program after demonstrations, as well as what activities will be included in ETV’s continued development, the spokesperson said.

Brandi Vincent contributed to this report.

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This news marks the first public report of technologies that made the Defense Department’s cut for Replicator 1.2 — and it also follows the company’s recently revealed plans to launch a new factory in Rhode Island to speed-up the manufacturing of these advanced uncrewed platforms.

Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks unveiled the Replicator initiative one year ago as a strategic effort to deter China by incentivizing and accelerating industrial production capacity and the military’s adoption of attritable, autonomous systems in multiple combat domains — through replicable processes — by mid-2025.

Hicks has been frank about DOD leaders’ aims to be deliberately tight-lipped and secretive about certain aspects of the project as it comes into fruition. Ahead of the Pentagon’s official announcement, DefenseScoop reported in April that the first tranche of capability selections to be expedited through this initial pursuit — referred to as Replicator 1.1 — included loitering munitions, counter-drone assets, and multiple types of unmanned surface vessels.

Hicks mentioned during a conference keynote last week that the Defense Innovation Unit and all three military departments are “working on a second tranche of [all-domain attritable autonomy, or ADA2] systems together.”

Sources who spoke to DefenseScoop on the condition of anonymity this week confirmed that Anduril’s Dive-LD autonomous underwater vehicles were put forward for Replicator by the Navy’s program office for advanced undersea systems — PMS 394 — and ultimately selected alongside several other technologies for the second tranche.

According to Anduril’s website, “the 3-ton Dive-LD is able to autonomously conduct missions for up to 10 days with an architecture that scales for multi-week missions,” and it’s “ideal for a variety of missions such as undersea battlespace intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, mine counter-warfare, anti-submarine warfare, seafloor mapping and more.”

The platforms have a 3D-printed exterior and are equipped to conduct missions at up to 6,000 meters of ocean depth.

One source told DefenseScoop that the Dive-LD systems cost about $2.5 million each.

“We have nothing to announce or confirm regarding Replicator 1, tranche 2 selections,” Pentagon spokesman Eric Pahon told DefenseScoop in an email Wednesday.

An Anduril spokesperson declined to comment on the Replicator initiative. The Navy has not yet provided comment.

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A memo formally establishing the organization was signed off in June by Ruth Youngs Lew, the program executive officer for digital and enterprise services. Neptune will be part of PEO Digital.

Within the department, the new cloud management office will have two components: one for the Navy and another for the Marine Corps. The Navy component is expected to start operations “at or around the start of” fiscal 2024, Louis Koplin, leader of the platform application services portfolio at PEO Digital, said in an email to DefenseScoop on Tuesday. The Marine Corps component is already operational.

Neptune is intended to serve as “the single point of entry” for the acquisition and delivery of cloud services across the Department of the Navy and facilitate the “digital transformation to cloud-native and zero-trust enterprise services,” according to Lew’s memo, which was obtained by DefenseScoop.

Notably, the office is expected to play a major role in the department’s accessing the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) contract vehicle, the Pentagon’s $9 billion enterprise cloud effort that replaced the ill-fated Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) program. Google, Oracle, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft were all awarded under the contract last year and will each compete for task orders.

“Neptune cloud management office will guide and assist Marine Corps and Navy mission owners to appropriately leverage JWCC, to eventually include centralized and automated ordering from the cloud portal on the Naval Digital Marketplace,” officials involved in the effort said in a statement to DefenseScoop.

Justin Fanelli, acting chief technology officer of the Navy, told DefenseScoop: “If we do this very right with our new partners and existing strong partnerships within DOD, the best way will also be the easiest way. Our service to our warfighters will be measured by drastically reduced friction and improved mission outcomes.”

Neptune has been tasked with establishing enterprise capabilities in coordination with the sea services’ deputy CIOs, Marine Corps Forces Cyberspace Command and U.S. Fleet Cyber Command/Commander, U.S. 10th Fleet. It is also expected to improve the “customer service experience” for components seeking to consume cloud services, automate repetitive work and eliminate duplicative work, according to Lew’s memo.

The creation of the new office comes as the Defense Department is embracing the cloud as a key component of its IT modernization plans.

Policy guidance signed out in 2020 by the Navy CIO and assistant secretary for research, development and acquisition stated that the Department of the Navy “shall maintain its global strategic advantage by harnessing the power of data and information systems through cloud computing. Cloud computing is the primary approach to transforming how the DON delivers, protects, and manages access to data and applications across all mission areas. Cloud computing … shall be adopted and consumed in such a way as to maximize its inherent characteristics and advantages,”

Per Lew’s memo, the new Neptune office is tasked with maintaining the portfolio of available and authorized cloud service offerings on the Naval Digital Marketplace and managing the department’s consumption across that portfolio via an integrated cloud Financial Operations (FinOps) capability. It will also deliver a cloud solutions “guidebook” that tells people who buy and build information systems how to best employ the Navy’s cloud portfolio.

The organization is expected to “describe, automate, and enhance the customer journey for those seeking to consume cloud services from the DON Cloud Portfolio, following IT service management (ITSM) best practices” for the cloud when it comes to engaging, procuring, provisioning, migrating, operating, defending and decommissioning. It will also establish “additional plans and/or process(es) to execute those Cloud ITSM phases” as necessary, according to Lew’s memo.

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But as that marketplace has matured, federal agencies have increasingly turned to multicloud arrangements, looking to take advantage of offerings from multiple providers rather than locking themselves into the products of a single vendor.

Recognizing this appetite for more choice in the federal cloud marketplace, Google recently spun off its public sector-focused business line from Google Cloud to launch an independent division focused purely on federal, state and local governments and the education sector that can serve as an alternative, multicloud-friendly provider.

Karen Dahut, a federal technology industry veteran who spent a large part of her recent career leading Booz Allen Hamilton’s defense business, was named the first CEO of Google Public Sector in September.

Now, just more than two weeks into the job, Dahut spoke with FedScoop in an exclusive interview about her vision for delivering more of that choice into the federal marketplace and how Google hopes to inject the innovative DNA it’s known for in the commercial world into the federal government.

Editor’s note: This transcript has been edited for clarity and length.

FedScoop: You’ve been in the CEO role now for roughly two weeks. How are you settling in with Google?

Karen Dahut: I will tell you that Google is such an American, iconic brand that the privilege of being able to take the great work that they’ve done for consumers, for commercial entities, for citizens, and apply that at a global level for federal government, state and local governments, educational institutions, is just, honestly, the privilege of a lifetime. You know, the last 20 years, I’ve been with Booz Allen, and I held a lot of different roles there. And there were two things that became very apparent to me in my 30-plus years in this industry. The first is that the advancements in technology have really demanded a different approach in government. And what I mean by that is, most government leaders find that their data is held captive in these very large, vertically integrated, monolithic systems. And it has less utility to them because they can’t integrate it at a more substantial level. The second thing is that most of our leaders in government, either they do have the experience of working with the ease of use of Google products and solutions or their kids have. And they’re demanding that same ease of use. And so when I thought about this role at [Google Public Sector], I thought, wow, it’s the perfect opportunity to really bring the power and magic of Google engineering into the federal government, because they’re ready for that transformation, and to really help them drive those digital transformations.

FS: You’re very early into your tenure as CEO, but what is your vision for this new organization? What’s the biggest thing you want to achieve as this organization is essentially getting off the ground and up-and-running?

KD: Well, it’s a great question. And I’ve given that a lot of thought, obviously. I mean, yes, I just started, but I had been thinking about this for a while. First things first, Google Cloud, and all of the tools that they have available on Google Cloud … it’s just a brilliant platform, right? It is scaled at planet-level scale. It has remarkable tools that it can leverage: Google Earth, Google Maps, these tools that we have become very accustomed to using. So the first principle of strategy is how do you bring not just cloud, but all of those additional incredibly accessible tools to significant federal, state, local challenges. The state of West Virginia is a good example. They switched from a Microsoft product to Google Workspace … primarily to enhance collaboration, because Workspace is truly a collaborative tool born in the cloud, native to the cloud, and it’s less expensive. They saved $11.5 million by making that switch. Another great example is that the [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] worked with Google to bring in Google Analytics and Google Cloud to help understand the potential impacts of climate change and predict those changes. So I share those examples with you because I think the opportunity for Google Public Sector is to listen to our clients, provide and enhance the choices they have available to them, and solution in partnership with them. Because all of these products that I’m talking about are already scaled tools accessible to the world. And our opportunity is to tailor them for specific use cases for our public sector clients.

FS: It’s no secret that the cloud market in the federal government is very competitive. How do you look to differentiate yourself from those companies that have come to dominate the federal cloud space?

KD: Yeah, it’s a reasonable question. And one, I suspect that I’m going to answer a lot. It’s certainly not a surprise to me or not unknown to me that we were a little bit late to the cloud game in government. And I think what we really want to focus on is, first of all, the government really wants choice. They don’t want to be emboldened to a single provider. So that’s important to understand. We also believe in the power of choice and the power of multicloud. Most government organizations are going to choose different clouds for different applications. We want to be one of those that they consider — we want to provide that choice. And in fact, our Anthos tool and solution really allows governments to switch workloads between different clouds, so you’re not wedded to a single cloud. And that is going to be our approach: to understand that government wants choice. We’re one of those providers, we believe we have some very unique capabilities, to provide them that choice, and then solution with them.

FS: You’ve spent much of your career focused on the defense space. How do you plan to use that experience as a guide in this new role, particularly as the Department of Defense has place great focus on moving to the cloud, namely though the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) contract and others?

KD: I am super proud to be a Navy veteran and having served. I follow in the footsteps of my father who served for 42 years, and my sister who served, so super proud of that service. I think that for defense specifically, there is so much opportunity to bring the power of data analytics and AI to bear on their big challenges like JADC2, Joint All Domain Command and Control. That is a data challenge. I’ve had the opportunity to talk to many people across the department and in the services and they are looking for ways to integrate that data that gives them better perspective and insight into the world and the threats that they face. And I truly believe that using Google’s products and capabilities, whether it’s Cloud, Maps, Earth, or all of those great capabilities in combination to solve for some of the challenges — not just in defense, but in civil agencies and the like — is super exciting. And I really have a fervent belief that once we can unlock the power of the cloud and the power of data and AI from that cloud, the sky’s the limit in terms of what we can do to support government.

FS: Are there other public sector-specific mission sets or problem sets that come to mind that Google’s solutions could be a good fit for?

KD: I think it’s always instructive to go back to some of the work that we’re doing in commercial because there are direct applications In government. So for example, Ford Motor Co. hired us to use data and AI to predict maintenance. You have probably heard this is a significant issue across the military services — how do they maintain their fleet or their tanks or whatever it may be … We believe we have a solution that can help them easily do that. One of the things that [Google Cloud CEO] Thomas [Kurian] said to me as I was assuming this role is: ‘There is a world of opportunity. Our challenge is going to be to focus in on the top areas where we believe we can, with rapidity, really help government.’ And so I think that’s what I’m going to be focused in on: What are the best use cases that we can solution with clients to bring to bear on their challenges?

FS: With security such a major focus in the federal government right now, particularly with zero trust, how does Google Public Sector plan to make that a key element of its work with agencies?

KD: Google pioneered the idea of zero trust and built the first-ever zero-trust architecture. So we are a cloud provider that has security built in from the outset. And that’s really important. We know that our government clients, and the degree of sensitivity of the data that is housed in that cloud, absolutely has to have assurances around security. And so we fundamentally understand that and have always built that into our products. The second thing that’s really exciting is the acquisition of Mandiant. You know, Kevin Mandia, is a force for good. He built an amazing company that is really based upon understanding the threat landscape, providing true, no-kidding incident response capabilities, has built an incredible threat landscape library and is building a security-as-a-service platform within Google Cloud’s architecture. So the combination of all of those components of security will beautifully serve, I think, all aspects of government, but more importantly, ensure citizens that may be using that cloud or enterprises within government that are using that cloud, that their data, their information is secure.

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