Slower Can Be Faster.
How defense keeps up with AI, cyber threats, and private-sector innovation.
In this episode of The Watchtower, Ash Hunt sits down with Jimmy Harrington, retired Air Force colonel and former Deputy CIO at U.S. Special Operations Command, for a conversation about cyber resilience, defense innovation, and what large organizations often misunderstand about speed.
From NATO and the Pentagon to AI-enabled defense systems and private-sector collaboration, Jimmy shares what defense can teach enterprise security leaders about resilience, leadership, mentorship, and building organizations that can operate through uncertainty.
0:00 Can organizations keep up with innovation?
1:14 Jimmy Harrington Deputy CIO
5:36 The pace problem inside defense institutions
6:50 Reframing cyber success: stop trying to stop everything
8:49 Run fast, trip less - operating under uncertainty
12:12 Threat-agnostic vs threat-specific cyber defense
14:09 Defense tech: from leading edge to catching up
15:14 Innovation theater: the $5B that never scaled
18:55 Slow is smooth, smooth is fast
21:16 Palantir, Anduril, and selling belief to the DoD
24:33 Building the plane while it's flying
27:23 Why CISOs and defense leaders don't collaborate enough
31:34 The military's leadership DNA corporate lacks
35:49 Mentorship and the replacement-first model
41:24 How leaders are actually built
43:10 The hardest part of leaving the military
46:28 What corporate underestimates about veterans