Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is joining the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Advisory Board and will become part of a group of tech leaders who will now advise the U.S. government on innovations in the tech sector.
Bezos, who also heads up the private space company Blue Origin, which hopes to develop reusable rocket technology, and owns the Washington Post, is among 10 new members of the board founded in March by Defense Secretary Ash Carter, according to CNET. Famed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has also joined the board, the Pentagon announced.
When the Department of Defense announced the formation of the board in March, which is chaired by Alphabet (Google’s parent company) Chairman Eric Schmidt, it said the board was an “effort to enhance [Department of Defense’s] culture, organization and processes by tapping innovators from the private sector, in Silicon Valley and beyond.”
“The board’s mandate is to provide department leaders independent advice on innovative and adaptive means to address future organizational and cultural challenges, including the use of technology alternatives, streamlined project management processes and approaches — all with the goal of identifying quick solutions to DoD problems,” Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said in a statement announcing the board’s formation on March 2.
The Defense Innovation Advisory Board will advise the Department of Defense on issues “deeply familiar” to Silicon Valley, such as “rapid prototyping, iterative product development, complex data analysis in business decision-making, the use of mobile and cloud applications and organizational information sharing.”
The board will not take part in discussions on military strategy or operations, the Pentagon said at the time it was formed.
July’s been quite the month for Bezos. Amazon’s stock is way up on a strong quarterly earnings report, and he also had a brief cameo as an alien in the latest Star Trek movie, “Star Trek Beyond.”
Here’s hoping that Bezos lives long and prospers at the Pentagon, too.
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