An array of new federal intelligence and military offices have been launched in recent years with one overriding goal: to connect the slow-moving federal bureaucracy to private, venture capital-backed companies doing cutting-edge work.
Several military services and intelligence agencies have launched venture capital offices, and the CHIPS Act that President Joe Biden’s team is implementing is premised on public-private partnerships to advance the US’s high-tech manufacturing sector.
All these efforts can pose a set of ethical quandaries given the blurry line between the public interest and corporate interests. And a recent career move illustrates those stakes.
This week, lawyer Linda Lourie announced that she was joining the Pentagon’s newly established Office of Strategic Capital, which is designed to connect military-tech companies with private investors, as a part-time consultant. She posted on LinkedIn how excited she was to “attract and scale private capital for emerging and frontier technologies in support of national security.”
What stood out, however, is that she would maintain her private-sector job at WestExec Advisors, the ultra-connected Washington consultancy that works with tech and defense companies. The work of the Office of Strategic Capital is remarkably similar to the services that WestExec provides. Now, she would be working in the private and public sectors at the same time.
The career shift for Lourie appears messy, but it is not illegal. “Outsourcing defense to a corporate adviser doesn’t seem like an ideal way to put the public’s interests first,” Walter Shaub, a top ethics official in the Obama administration, told me.
“My work for the different organizations cover different issues, and although I don’t expect any conflicts of interest, I will be very cautious to ensure that it doesn’t occur,” Lourie posted in response to Shaub’s reply on LinkedIn. (Requests for comment from Lourie and WestExec Advisors…
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