Biden taps DIU head for top Pentagon acquisition post

President Joe Biden will nominate the director of the Defense Department’s innovative acquisition arm to be the Pentagon’s top buyer, the White House announced April 2.

Michael Brown has been the director of the Defense Innovation Unit, which helps DOD prototype and field new technologies with rapid acquisition techniques, since 2018.

DIU recently celebrated its five-year anniversary and has expanded its portfolio under Brown’s leadership, fielding 26 new capabilities.

Brown was previously a White House Innovation Fellow for the Defense Department and was the CEO of two Silicon Valley companies, the cybersecurity firms Symantec and Quantum, which is one of the biggest suppliers of drives for personal computers.

Brown’s selection was one of three key Defense Department posts announced from the White House late on Friday. Biden also nominated Ronald Moultrie to be the undersecretary of defense for intelligence and security and Michael McCord to be DOD’s comptroller.

McCord previously served as DOD’s comptroller and chief financial officer during the Obama administration. Moultrie, a retired operations director for the National Security Agency, was previously on the Biden-Harris national security transition team and is the president and CEO of Oceanus Security Strategies.

This article first appeared on FCW, a Defense Systems partner site. Photo credit: DOD, Michael Brown as DIU director.