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It takes about 12 minutes for a ballistic missile fired from Iran to impact in Israel, and less than half that time to be in range to be destroyed by interceptors launched from ships at sea or batteries on land. On October 26, 2024, hundreds of missiles screeched towards Israel, touching the edge of outer space, and then descending, over 60 tons of warheads and high explosives aimed for Israeli cities, intending to cause mass casualties.

This was the largest ballistic missile attack in history, and few predicted that Israel would go unscathed. But as the dust cleared after both attacks, integrated defensive systems at sea, on land, and in space, proved flawless. No Israelis died, their cities defended by American and Israeli military teams employing defense technologies developed over decades with bipartisan support in Washington. Nobody working on these technologies decades ago knew whether they would work, or be deployed in combat, but their innovation through public-private collaboration saved lives and deterred broader conflicts.

Years from now there will surely be another attack, whether against the United States or its friends, and with even more sophisticated offensive systems. Missiles are getting cheaper and more accurate, drones are now plentiful and available to rogue states and terrorist groups, and adversaries will continue to develop lethal means to defeat even our most advanced defenses. The field known colloquially as “defense tech” is today the front line of this competition and the future determinant of war or peace.

This technological race is most consequential across the Pacific, where China isn’t just building its own missile capabilities but racing ahead in emerging fields like quantum computing, AI, and biotech. It is in this contest that technological superiority may determine not just battlefield outcomes but the future of global power – and America itself.

As leaders from Washington and Silicon Valley gather this week for the third annual “Hill and Valley” symposium, the cooperation between the private and public sectors in a shared endeavor of national defense is today as important as any moment in our history.

In recent years, Washington and Silicon Valley have kept each other at arm’s length. Many national security officials viewed the tech world as idealistic and disconnected from real-world power politics, while entrepreneurs dismissed D.C. as a place where innovation went to die, slowed by bureaucracy and burdened with outdated thinking. 

That divide is no longer sustainable. Negotiating international agreements and securing our interests around the world may have once been the domain of soldiers and statesmen. Today, our interests are intertwined with semiconductor R&D, AI governance, biotech supply chains, and maintaining America’s entrepreneurial edge in emerging tech. 

Technology is now the essential currency of power, and one the US can't effectively exercise without close coordination between its private and public sectors.

China gets it. In 2015, it launched “Made in China 2025,” targeting global dominance in high-tech including AI, quantum computing, and advanced manufacturing. This is a coherent strategic plan aimed to displace American technological leadership.

Unlike the United States, China integrates its private sector with state goals. Companies like Huawei, DJI, and ByteDance are expected to advance national strategic objectives, creating an integrated approach that leverages China’s entire innovation ecosystem toward state objectives – including military and intelligence objectives, aimed at us.

America’s comparative advantage is its venture-backed entrepreneurial and innovation base together with global networks of partners and alliances. Washington and Silicon Valley can either learn to join forces in our common defense, or risk being overtaken by a deliberate and determined strategy driven by the People’s Republic of China.

As these two American power centers prepare to come together later this month in Washington, they must focus together on this common challenge, and with the urgency that defined public-private partnerships during the Cold War. On the agenda are three strategic questions now playing out in Washington, and without clear answers:

1. How can we best harness innovation for national defense?

Silicon Valley moves at breakneck speed. The U.S. government can be risk-averse and bureaucratic. This clash is bursting into the open through the efforts of DOGE, where a worthy effort led by the culture of the Valley to cut government waste may inadvertently jeopardize our national security. Insignificant savings from cuts to the National Institute for Health or National Science Foundation, for example, may carry longer-term costs of ceding scientific leadership to Beijing and other foreign competitors.

We can at least agree on what we are all trying to achieve: winning a global technology arms and innovation race. The Valley must better understand the reasons for bureaucracy and prudence in national security affairs – matters of life and death, war and peace – while Washington can better understand how to promote startups with national security potential at the pace of the market and rapid advances of determined adversaries.

2. Should we build walls or grow advanced tech partnerships?

Lines are being drawn globally between a western and eastern tech ecosystem, one led by the United States or one led by China. American partners, to include partners in the Middle East, are investing massively in this space and have recently made a public choice to align with us. Silicon Valley has generally embraced this trend, exemplified by the announcement of Stargate – a $100 billion conglomerate backed by sovereign funds in the Middle East to support America’s comparative advantage and AI build-out.

There is a debate in Washington, however, on how much we really want these partners, or trust them, leading to rules promulgated by the Biden administration and now under review by the Trump administration to restrict the level of compute power in countries even with long-term American security and defense partnerships. More broadly, recent moves towards protectionist trade policies, including the Trump administration’s stated intent to utilize tariffs to address trade imbalances and bolster domestic industries, add another layer of complexity to the pursuit of sci-tech diplomacy. The strategic choice remains: whether the United States prioritizes unilateral measures to safeguard technological edge, potentially at the expense of global partnerships, or actively cultivate deeper alliances to collectively advance and secure its interests in the face of determined competitors. The question is whether the United States is so far ahead that we can protect our advantage by building walls, or whether this ultimate race will require the joining of forces with global partners. 

3. How do we win the talent war, attracting global minds and developing our own?

The Cold War was won not just through military might, but by attracting the world's brightest minds—Einstein, von Neumann, and the wave of Soviet defectors who helped create Silicon Valley and develop the technologies that helped the west prevail in the Cold War. Today, while immigrants have founded half of America's billion-dollar startups, the reality is we are now engaged in a critical talent war. China has strategically invested in STEM education to build a formidable talent advantage, now graduating 5x more engineers than the U.S., and producing 47% of all AI undergraduates globally.

Alarmingly, our share of international students, a vital source of innovation, has dropped significantly from 23% in 2000 to 15% today. While Silicon Valley generally agrees on creating pathways—not obstacles—for the next generation of innovators to build their futures here rather than in Beijing or Shenzhen, whereas Washington is increasingly looking to erect new barriers. This debate has also recently burst into the open over the merits of H-1B visas, but without clear answers and direction the debate alone risks further steering away the world’s brightest minds. 

We do not pretend to have the answers to these questions. But with combined decades of experience in Washington and Silicon Valley we believe answers can't be deferred. The gathering later this week in Washington is a start. What makes America great is both the tradition of service as exemplified in our diplomatic and military cadres and the tradition of innovation and entrepreneurialism as exemplified in the board rooms and garages of Silicon Valley. The United States must focus now and urgently on joining these uniquely American traditions in a common effort to secure America’s future defense.