As The FBI Fights Apple, The DOD Schmoozes Silicon Valley

“It would be better to work this out than have a law written.”

That was the message from Defense Secretary Ash Carter when he and a contingent of officials from the Pentagon dropped by Silicon Valley for a friendly chat on Wednesday (March 2), The Wall Street Journal reported. As Apple and the FBI continue to seek appeals to court orders that support one side and sandbag the other, Carter’s conciliatory tone marked a departure from the only stance yet heard from the federal government pressuring SV companies: comply, or else.

But it seems as if the Department of Defense doesn’t share the Department of Justice’s antipathy for the tech innovators of today, and a press release also issued on Wednesday confirms the fact. While cynics would point out that it leaves the door open for strong-arm tactics down the road, the Pentagon announced the newly constituted Defense Innovation Advisory Board, which would be tasked with advising military and intelligence officials on “the best and latest practices in innovation that the department can emulate.”

The kicker? The board will not only be chaired by Silicon Valley darling Eric Schmidt, but it’ll be exclusively comprised of 12 other similarly qualified and dyed-in-the-wool tech barons outside of the DOD’s direct control.

It’s worth noting that Schmidt won’t be consulting the DOD as a representative from Google. Rather, WSJ noted, the Pentagon-sanctioned group is just that — a Pentagon initiative through and through. Anonymous sources explained that if Schmidt and other well-known Silicon Valley faces choose to participate in the board, it’ll be of their own volition as private citizens.

Even though Schmidt might not wear his Google work anniversary fleece into meetings with Pentagon staff, it’s misguided to couch his and others’ involvement in a DOD consultancy thinktank as an unrelated detail in the larger tug of war between the old halls of power in Washington, D.C., and the new ones in the Bay Area. Is Schmidt’s appointment a sign that Google is now in the back pocket of federal authorities? Of course not, but the mere indication that top executives and defense officials are willing to coordinate in an intermediary space, somewhere between a boardroom and a courtroom, echoes Carter’s earlier plea. Like a tough negotiation, Silicon Valley might think it “better to work this out than have a law written.”

It’s easier to see Google, Schmidt and other Silicon Valley tech companies as the pliable party in these interactions, and while the government does have subpoena power on its side, it’s arguable that the DOD has more to lose than Apple or any other company would if it guesses wrong or fails to adequately prepare. In that light, Carter also took time during his visit to San Francisco to announce several new initiatives aimed at engaging the best and brightest of the IT community: a second “outreach office” in Boston to complement the existing one in Silicon Valley and a special “Hack the Pentagon” pilot designed to find faults in the DOD’s cybersecurity that it knows it can’t find itself.

“We don’t assume that we’ve thought of everything that we need to protect our network,” Carter said in San Francisco. “No one has, actually. You’d much rather find the vulnerabilities in your networks in that way than the other way.”

This is the symbiosis that federal defense agencies find themselves in — without help from technologically superior private parties, there’s a chance they could be toast on the global stage. But does that call for unilateral court orders and legislation that could poison the waters between the two sides for good?

At the moment, without a crisis to force action, the question is easily answered with a “no.” But when the chips are down, how much stress can this nascent collaboration between the private and public sector withstand when it’s built not on profits or politics but shared goodwill?