Discussing Defense and Drones

The legal industry isn't the only one in a period of change. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey (the highest-ranking military officer in the US Armed Forces), says that the armed forces need to unpack the words agility and innovation. (The Secretary of Defense recently convened an off-site to discuss issues of agility; they'll soon have one on innovation.) We snapped Gen. Dempsey at the Atlantic Council recently, where speakers expressed many of the concerns we've heard from law firm managing partners—from having to be more innovative in management to accommodating hiring and retention to young employees who are no longer interested in sticking around for a 30-year career.

We are going to have to "ride this tiger of change," said former National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley (foreground, with former Under Secretary of Defense James Miller), because if you get off, you get eaten. He gave Silicon Valley as the model of a place that thrives on change, and said we're going to have to find a way to modify our processes so Washington can look more like Silicon Valley.

Since the legal and defense industries have more similarities than we thought, let's get drones too—we can have them drop off interoffice memos. Down the hall was a room displaying new technologies, like a 3D printer churning out plastic gadgets (eg, a bracelet, a chain, and interlocking gears). This drone we snapped in mid-air was piloted by remote-control, but another version has the user wear goggles—think virtual reality—through which they see what the drone's camera is seeing.