Pentagon Sets up Advisory Board to Access Silicon Valley High Tech

US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter is setting up an Advisory Board to access the best work of IT specialists, including those in Silicon Valley, the Pentagon statement reads.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Ashton Carter is launching a Defense Innovation Advisory Board to access comprehensively the work of IT inventors in the US private sector, Department of Defense Press Secretary Peter Cook said in a statement on Wednesday.

"Just as the Defense Business Board provides advice to the Department on best business practices from the private sector, the Defense Innovation Advisory Board will provide advice on the best and latest practices in innovation that the Department can emulate," Cook stated.

The Defense Innovation Advisory Board will provide senior military officials with advice on innovative ways to use technology alternatives to solve problems the Defense Department faces, according to the statement.

"The Defense Innovation Advisory Board will seek to advise the department on areas… 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," Cook explained.

The new board will be chaired by Eric Schmidt, the former chief executive officer of Google and author of "How Google Works," and will be comprised of up to 12 individuals from America’s most innovative industries, according to the statement.

Schmidt, who is currently the executive chairman of Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google, said that the board will help bridge the gap between the US military and the American tech industry.