The Pentagon Is Building a Dream Team of Tech-Savvy Soldiers

Nicole Camarillo was touring the Army base at Fort Meade, Maryland in early 2017 when a young captain--I'll call him Matt, due to the sensitivity of his position--crossed her path. I've got to talk to that kid, Camarillo remembers thinking. Just weeks before, she'd seen Matt deliver a presentation on a tool he was developing to counter enemy drone strikes in the Middle East. The technology, he explained, was being developed on a "shoestring budget." As executive director of talent strategy at the US Army Cyber Command, a relatively new branch of the Army, Camarillo's job is to convince top employees in Silicon Valley that they should sacrifice their stock options and six-figure salaries and apply their technological know-how in the Army instead.