← T-Minus: Space-Cyber Briefing
T-Minus: Space-Cyber Briefing
Building resilient space at speed.
00:28:59
Learn how public-private partnerships are transforming defense innovation by accelerating procurement timelines and opening the door to emerging tech.
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You're listening to the N2K space network.
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Navigating US Federal government contracts often gets compared to navigating the valley of death. Not a great sign, no. So what is the US government doing to build resilient space at speed? How can we accelerate procurement timelines and open the door to emerging tech providers without them getting stuck in that dreaded valley of death? Well, NSTXL has a few suggestions. This is T minus Deep Space. I'm Maria Varmazes. National Security Technology Accelerator, known as NST xl, manages rapid acquisition consortia for the US Space Force, the Navy, and other national security agencies. And we spoke to NSTXL's founder and president, Tim Grief.
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I'm the founder and president of the national security technology accelerator NSTXL, a 501c3 nonprofit that I founded back in 2014. So we're just over 11 years old. My background was always kind of in policy and tech. So I've never actually worked inside the federal government, but always worked at what I call that intersection of business policy and politics. And you kind of need all three to be able to engage. I've always been at that periphery of government, but my background technically, if I have a technical background, is really in energy and energy policy. I spent 10 years in D.C. see, working on federal energy policy mostly around new technology. So advanced energy focused on renewables, efficiency, but also small modular reactors, advanced natural gas, advanced coal. And that's where I kind of I started to really develop my relationships with Silicon Valley and the innovation economy. And when I ended up sort of leaving the energy sector, came upon this idea of helping to get better. And it started with energy better energy tech into the federal government primarily Department of Defense and had some success there. And it just sort of grew. And so now we are a much larger organization and we've done to date about nine, just over $9 billion in technology prototypes over our career. And we've expanded from originally just doing energy specific technologies to we run the Microelectronic Commons, which is the Department of Defense side of the Chips and Science act, which is to re onshore microelectronics electronic component manufacturing and assembly. We've been a spearhead on that on the Department of Defense's side. And we also run the State Enterprise Consortium, which is the space source, under transaction authority. And we can dig into what OTAS are because it's tied directly to the founding of sort of our large space mission as a country. So it's a very relevant story. But that's kind of how I fell into this. If future me went back in time and told past me that I'd be focused on government acquisition 10 years from now, I probably would have punched myself in the face a number of times until I went on a different track. But you know, life is a very interesting adventure. And so, you know, the work is challenging, it's never boring. I get to talk to cool innovators on a regular basis and see that next gen in tech and also help the taxpayers get a more efficient return on their investments in technology. So it's been kind of a fun ride.
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That is so awesome. Well, thank you so much for telling me your story. I'm super fascinated. So let's dig into this nstxl. You started talking about it a little bit just now about the mission. Maybe give me a bit of an elevator pitch for what it is, because it's fascinating, honestly.
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Yeah. So our vision is to revolutionize the way that government innovates. And when you look at how the US government engages with and invests in technology, it is roughly the same blueprint that it's been doing for over 100 years. But what has really changed is the pace of innovation is so much faster now, exponentially. So that oftentimes you get these situations where the technology that the government has attempted to acquire because the contracting and the paperwork has taken so long is outdated by the time they actually get it into the field. Because now if you walk out of an app of an iPhone, it's pretty much old technology within a week. And you know, we're seeing that on the commercial side, but on the government side, it's far more impacted by a sort of traditionally very slow innovation cycle. Now back in the 1930s and 1940s where it took five years to develop something, well, if the contract took a year to do, didn't really impact the development timeline that much. But now we just got to move much quicker. And so that's one thing that we've really focused on is the systemic problems of how the government goes about acquiring technology. But the other part of the equation is how the government engages as a customer to business. So it used to be the government was competing against other nation states primarily for these technology races, like the space race with Russia or what we're competing now with China, et cetera. But what's really changed is that the government is actually now competing with these huge multinational corporations that many of them are larger than nation states from an economic standpoint. And so if you want the most advanced robotics technology, if you want the best programmers for modeling and simulation, if you want the best new space tech, you're competing with Google, you're competing with Apple, you're competing with Meta, you're not just competing with China. And it's incumbent upon the government to become a better business partner if it wants to play, because now it's not oftentimes going to be the highest bidder. And this sort of this nice notion that a US based company should put everything aside for God and country is just not how the economy works. I wish it did. But we want innovators to be fighting for that growth. We want them to be fighting for market share. And so the government needs to enter the arena as a competitive business. And part of doing that is to be able to innovate at the speed of business and to be able to provide commercial scale, not only purchasing, but also terms on contracts, turnaround on the paperwork. And if we can do that, and that's a lot of what our platform does, we've seen the government be far more competitive in the marketplace for these, particularly for new space technology, because it is a very consistent customer. You know, it was largely like those of us with government contracts. It was largely Covid proof. I mean, there are a lot of benefits and advantages to doing business with the federal government, if you can figure out how to deal with the longer timelines and some of the other challenges, which again is kind of our business, we're a facilitator of opportunity, kind of a point guard, if you will, of making sure that we're getting the ball to where it needs to be in an efficient manner so that the government can compete on commercial terms.
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Yeah, that's fascinating. And it occurs to me, when I was first learning about the space sector specifically a few years ago, that for many of the smaller, the tech innovators who are looking to either be acquired or get that buy in so they could grow, it was seen as you needed the government stamp of approval to sort of to mature, like the market was looking for that. And I think in many cases it still is, but then it becomes that sort of tricky situation of if you become really dependent on government contracts and they don't move fast enough, then, or do you stagnate? And it's. I, it's fascinating that you are in that, that, that really interesting area of speeding up the lagger, the lagging indicator, I guess there. What does that look like? Can you walk me through maybe an example me anonymized, if must be like, what does that look like?
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Yeah, well, and let me take you back because the, the, the Federal Acquisition Regulations or the far, for sure, that is what largely governs government acquisition. And you know, there's a lot of folks out there that all they do is dash the far. And I think that the FAR has its place. You know, we, you do need rules. You need, you need rules about competition, fairness, et cetera, because these are public sector dollars that are going to technology and we want to make sure that the competitions are transparent and they're fair. But over years and years and years, what tends to happen with large bureaucratic institutions? It's not, you know, US isn't the only one that deals with this, but it is something that we deal with a lot. You just get rules stacked upon rules stacked upon rul. Rules stacked upon rules. And a lot of them are, you know, there's a certain amount of the FAR that is based on just sort of avoiding the appearance of impropriety. But that still sort of happens anyway. Sometimes, not often. It's not rampant, but it does still happen. So obviously taking two years is not the solution. And there's a lot in the process we have across the life cycle of any acquisition you have from, you know, sort of the program office to contracting to legal to the potential performer in the industry. The incentive structure is so misaligned and everyone has a different chain of command and a different set of rules. I mean, when you sit back and look at it, it's like, well, no wonder it doesn't work because we kind of just tweaked and changed and none of it, it doesn't sound like a symphony. It's just a bunch of instruments playing their own tune. And.
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Yeah, and let alone Trying to figure out how to navigate that, which is a very specialized knowledge set, that is hard.
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It's complex, it's hard. The government is a hard customer. And there are some things about the process that probably do need to exist. Just like with the legislative aspect of government, you don't want things to move so seamlessly that you kind of get lost in the shuffle and the pendulum just swings and you're changing policy all the time. There are certain parts of government that make sense to move a little bit more deliberately and at a slower pace. But in the sense of technology acquisition, we've kind of gotten to a point where there's just delay almost for the sake of delay. And you're getting, you know, a process, yet someone checks a box wrong on a form and now it's a four month wait until you kind of get that next bite at the apple. And there's really no, no reason for it. And so we work specifically with a type of contracting authority called other Transaction Authority or OTAs. And the reason these are specifically relevant is that their DNA is actually in the original space race. So it's a congressionally approved contracting authority that Congress approved in 1958. And so if you're familiar with DARPA, it was DARPA's foundational contracting authority. Now they have many others, but they use OTAs today. But even back in 1958, Congress knew that if we were going to win the space race against the Soviet Union, we had to get out of our own way. And so they created OTAS as a non far based acquisition vehicle, specifically based for prototyping to be able to get technologies into the federal government and acquired for this mission faster than the federal acquisition regulations would permit. And so they'd existed for decades and it wasn't until 1990 that the authority was expanded. Up until that point, it was DARPA and NASA that was using it and sometimes DoD, but it was expanded across Department of Defense. And then it was at the turn of the century that externally managed OTAs that are done by groups such as NST XL really became a model and that's proliferated and that's expanded to where there's upwards of over 30 different types of what are called consortium based OTAs that acquire these technologies. And so we run the Space Enterprise Consortium, which is the OTA for Space Force. But the entirety of this platform and the model itself and the contracting authority goes back specifically to right after Russia launched Sputnik. Knew we had to do better. And so we love the story of that because we're at another inflection point on AI and drone technology and microelectronics, where again, hypersonics, we've fallen way behind. And we used to always talk about our near peer adversaries and now we're the near peer adversary. We've been surpassed by China primarily in a number of these technologies and we need to play catch up. And so these technology, these acquisition vehicles that we use are very useful in the prototyping stage to be able to do commercial term contracts to move very quickly. So a traditional far contract can take between 12 and 18 months, if not closer to two years to just get on contract. We can do the same thing in 60 to 90 days, including an open competition. And how we do that, our platform is based on having this ready made consortia. We have over a thousand members at any given time, but we're always out there. Also doing technology prospecting to make sure that we can turn in as many qualified submissions to a government need statement as possible. And when we do that, it allows a more transparency. But we average three to five times the number of qualified submissions through our platform for the government to choose from than the government gets if they just go post an opportunity on their websites.
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Yeah.
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And so we're increasing competition, which, you know, gets you better technology, brings in new players and also reduces the overall cost of the taxpayer.
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We'll be right back after this quick break.
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That's a fantastic turnaround time. My goodness, that's many orders of magnitude faster. That alone is a huge impact right there. And I'm wondering what you want people in the industry to know. I mean, aside from obviously that you are Here and what you are doing, which is an important thing to do. If they don't know that already, how can they work better with you? What should they know?
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I mean, the easiest thing for government, and this is specifically to nsxl. I still believe we were the only ones that do it this way. I think we're still the only ones that do it this way. But if you wanted, if you were a new space tech company and you wanted to look at what the opportunities were that, that we had available, you can simply go to our website, nstxl.org we want to make sure that we're bringing in companies and performers that have a technology that is relevant to what we're looking for and that they're capable of performing. Because not every company is cut out to do business with the government. And that's another role we play is to help figure out, look, are you actually a good fit for this? Particularly we have a charge of finding what are called non traditional defense contractors. So it's typically small businesses that have never done business with the federal government before. Doing business with the federal government is a different animal. And again, there are a lot of advantages to it, but you have to kind of have the stomach to do it. But that's another part of our platform is that the way our contracting vehicles work is that companies actually contract us, not the federal government, and we just flow the terms of our contract with the government down, but they get to use our back end system. So we're doing the invoicing right. We're dealing with the government systems and wider workflow and some of these things that are really complex. We have a facility clearance that if there are some flow down security provisions needed, we can do that so that these companies aren't having to take on the massive overhead cost of ramping up for what could potentially only be one contract. And so the entire ecosystem we've built is again to make that commerce easier so that the government can open its aperture to a larger group of competitors, which that comes with all sorts of advantages. But then also we make it easier to do business with the federal government for those companies that traditionally wouldn't necessarily be looking to do business with the federal government. But when it comes to space tech, there's a real advantage to national security and to the country in operating more commercial terms, but also really leaning into commercial space solutions so that the government isn't footing the whole bill and the only customer and owning the space shuttle and that kind of stuff, as we've seen with private space Launches. There's some real advantages to this shift that's going on, but it is critical that the US Government gets back on track with our investments in space technology. It's something that China is rapidly engaging in. Russia has ramped back up and you're seeing more and more countries. India is now involved. There's this next sort of domain of commerce. But also potential conflict is going to be in space. And it's imperative that we maintain our technological edge.
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Yeah, absolutely. And for some people I've spoken with, for them it's also like a moral imperative. But for many people it's, you know, and it is also a good business sense. And I'm wondering what you see as sort of for these companies that are trying to maybe play in both the commercial sector and have the government as their customer, maybe many companies are trying to do both. Challenges and opportunities. There is. Does it make things more complicated? Does it make things easier in the long run? I mean, what are your thoughts on that?
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You know, it's always going to introduce some complexities, but I think with complexity also comes opportunity. So you don't ever really get one without the other. And I think that's just the way that industry and technology and innovation work. But overall, I think it's most advantageous even to companies to be able to have the federal marketplace as a potential source of revenue and business because, you know, the government does fund certain areas of the commons, such as space, better, oftentimes in the private sector because the government is really good at funding problems of the commons that an individual company or the economy itself is not going to be incentivized to do, but is still a need. And so the way that we approach space technology and the way that we work closely with our partners at Space Force and we think that the government has a really good and an increasingly forward looking be on how this should be done is that industry really needs to be a partner. But we need to be, we, the government, need to be customers of the commercial industry and space tech. And by getting the best performers out there and being able to open up government purchasing power to the full art of the possible across the commercial ecosystem, that's really where we get our solutions from. Because the one thing that the United States still does better than anyone else is innovate. But we have to provide the incentives and we have to provide the landscape and the rules and the ability to really embrace that innovation and become a market player. And so if the government, through these OTAs and through our platform, if we can start to operate more commercial terms. I think private industry in particular are going to be shocked at the number of opportunities that open up to them because one of the other great things about the government as a development partner is they're not looking, traditionally they're not really looking to go capture your ip. They're very good and it's something you're never going to get from China. The US government respects ip. They will not try to incumbent upon that. And typically, even if they help you develop IP to that next iteration, they want government purpose rights. They just want to be able to access what they helped you develop. You will still own the ip. And so if you're a startup and you're a young company and you have a really good idea, the government can produce oftentimes what we consider non dilutive capital to help you reach that next tier. And quite frankly, if you are a problem solver, which most of these innovators are, you want interesting problem sets. The federal government's where you're going to find them. The number of interesting problems and challenges, particularly that the Department of Defense and NASA and Department of Commerce bring to the table in these technologies, that's where we start to see our members light up. Because there are just, there are types of problem sets and threat spaces and emerging threats and stuff. Yeah. That just aren't conceived of in the commercial space because that's just not where companies in the economy play. So there's also these nice challenges that develop not only new lines of business, but create new applications for a technology and even new functions of that technology that then can go back and have a new application in the commercial marketplace. Because another thing that we always push the government to think about and we're starting to increasingly see as the norm is no longer are we trying to buy and source technology that only the government's going to use. We need to be looking at stuff that has a commercial application because that's when you get your real bang for the buck. And then you get that added benefit of real economic growth, job creation, GDP being driven based on the government being an active cooperative player in our technology ecosystem, but for the broader good of both the commercial space and the public sector space.
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Tim, I want to make sure that we get to wrap ups. If there's anything that we didn't get to that you wanted to cover, I want to give you the final words. So over to you, if there's anything you want to mention.
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Yeah. Just for your audience. It's something that I like to talk to any innovator about any private sector. You know, the government and the country need your technologies and they need you to engage. And we've been in this line of business for over a decade now. We've lived the frustration of long contract timelines, of delayed invoices, of some of the headaches that you can have and some of the horror stories that you hear about doing business with the federal government are true. But there are methodologies, there are platforms, and there is a huge amount of talented and willing project managers, contracting officers throughout government that we work with hand in hand every day that are eager to make the government a better business partner. And so if you haven't considered doing business with the federal government before, it's something that you should really look into because it's different now than it was even five to 10 years ago. And part of it is that the NSCXL platform is something that we work on, but we need the technology to the commercial space and we need these innovators engaging not only for the good of national security in the country, but also from a self interested standpoint, the government can be a really great customer. And engaging on these government problems and developing dual use technologies can be a hugely impactful thing for your own business. And so come to our website ncxl.org to see the types of opportunities that are through Stack or some of our other OTAs. Start to look at the government websites and figure out what are the opportunities for you, because it's going to be something that we're going to see increasing. This current administration has made a real investment in space and in other technology areas like hypersonics that we cover. And also the President put out an executive order back on April 6 that pushed out other transaction authority OTAs as being a primary vehicle that the DoD should use. So we're going to start to see even more opportunities come about. So you know, keep your, keep your ears open, keep your eyes up and if you haven't considered doing business in federal government, you really should. They can be a tremendously impactful and positive partner if you can get in the right paradigm. And that's what we spend our time trying to do.
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That's T minus Deep Space. Brought to you by N2K CyberWire. We'd love to know what you think of this podcast. Your feedback ensures we deliver the insights that keep you a step ahead in this rapidly changing space industry. If you like our show, please share our rating and review and your podcast app. Please also fill out the survey in the show notes or send us an email@space2k.com we're proud that Nature N2K CyberWire is part of the daily routine of the most influential leaders and operators in the public and private sector. From the Fortune 500 to many of the world's preeminent intelligence and law enforcement agencies, N2K helps space and cybersecurity professionals grow, learn and stay informed. As the nexus for discovery and connection, we bring you the people, the technology and the ideas shaping the future of secure innovation. Learn how@n2k.com N2K's senior producer is Alice Carruth. Our producer is Liz Stokes. We are mixed by Elliot Peltzman and Trey Hester with original music by Elliot Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Ivan. Peter Kilpe is our publisher and I am your host, Maria Varmazes. Thanks for listening. We will see you next time.
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Sam.
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