In-Q-Tel, the strategic venture investment unit of the US intelligence services, has opened its first international offices and hired Peter Tague as executive vice-president from bank Citi. Tague will lead the international investments teams to be based in London, UK, and Sydney, Australia.
He was previously vice-chairman and co-head of global mergers and acquisitions at Citi and he follows a number of former investment bankers into the strategic venture industry in recent years, including Chris Bartlett, head of Verizon Ventures, Wendell Brooks, head of Intel Capital, and Vicente Vincent, head of Deutsche Telekom Capital Partners.
In-Q-Tel said in a statement: “Our core strength is our ability to identify and deliver insights and access to new commercial technologies on behalf of our government partners in the intelligence and national security communities. Innovation knows no boundaries, and a physical presence is a continuation of our efforts to obtain a better understanding of technology and market developments outside the US.
“These offices will take advantage of the world-class science and technology, and venture capital ecosystems available within each region to continue In-Q-Tel’s national security mission for the US and its allies. These offices will support a partnership between US, UK and Australian intelligence and national security communities.”
Separately, Andre Lanata has joined as head of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation Allied Command Transformation unit to find startups to help the alliance pick up the pace of innovation. This month 10 startups and small companies gave the unit the third of a series of pitches. The latest in the series was looking for ways to defeat large clusters of airborne and land-based drones in a challenge won by Belgium-based ALX Systems.
Other western government agencies, such as the UK’s GCHQ intelligence agency, have set up cybersecurity accelerators, while VC firms, including C5 Capital and GovTech, have raised funds targeting government and security.
All these moves reflect the impact technology is having on existing military theatres – air, sea, land and space – as well the increased recognition of the emerging fifth – cyber – to disrupt and alter the balance of military power. In a rapidly-changing sector, taking lessons from strategic corporate investors and applying them to military fields makes sense.
US concerns about China’s military-industrial complex and Russia’s disruption and expansionist methods mean it is no coincidence that the UK and Australia were chosen for In-Q-Tel’s new bases.
A new book – Unrivaled, by Michael Beckley, a political scientist at Tufts and a fellow at the Kennedy School – is sanguine that the US’s “unipolarity is not guaranteed to endure but present trends strongly suggest it will last for many decades”.
But the book ignores the challenge even a unipolar power will have in tackling multiple crises. Victory is rarely seen in a dramatic battle or denial of core services, such as the electrical grid, but in incremental pushes to limit freedom of movement and power projection into others’ perceived areas of control, whether that is parts of central Asia and eastern Europe, the horn of Africa or the 3.5 million square kilometres of the South China Sea.
Ultimately, while In-Q-Tel can help with tactical disruption, the battle is likely to be won or lost before any shots are fired or viruses sent. As Jeffrey Sachs and Robert Kagan argue in their new books – respectively A New Foreign Policy and The Jungle Grows Back – avoiding isolationism – US exceptionalism or being first – is sensible. There is a reason after two world wars that some of the finest politicians in the US chose to build a liberal order of nation-states bound by treaties and international institutions, favouring democracy, capitalism and the rule of law.
If In-Q-Tel’s move abroad indicates a desire for more of “a partnership between the US, UK, and Australia” then so much the better.
