Blockchain's potential for government with SIMBA Chain's Joel Neidig

Joel Neidig joined me on the Acquisition Talk podcast to discuss how blockchain technology can support the military across a wide range of use-cases including supply chain management, financial transactions, additive manufacturing, secure communications, digital engineering, and much more. He is the co-founder and CEO of SIMBA Chain, a startup that won an early DARPA grant back in 2016 exploring blockchain's potential for secure communications. The dual-use company has branched out into the military services, providing customers with low-code tools to build a diverse set of applications on top of several blockchain protocols. For those unfamiliar, blockchain is basically a shared ledger that makes an immutable record of transactions, verified through a peer-to-peer network. The network nodes check and validate transactions for consistency, making it incredibly difficult to attack. Of course, Bitcoin and the use-case for money is a popular application. But Joel explained how SIMBA Chain is working with Boeing and other companies to create a trusted supply chain. Any digital or physical item can be given a unique identifier on the blockchain, creating a trusted record of the transfer of goods throughout the supply chain, such as from a producer to a shipping terminal, then to a ship, delivery truck, storage at another supplier, integration onto a component or subsystem, and so on until an end-item is delivered to the customer. This not only protects the supply chain from cyber risks emanating from counterfeit or tampered hardware, but also non-malicious problems due to non-conforming parts that may be the wrong version or spec. Supply chain is just one blockchain application among many that could help revolutionize the way government does business and fights a war. While the US government is only putting a million dollars here and there into blockchain, China is putting billions of dollars into their own blockchain capabilities. China is forcing US suppliers like Starbucks and Wal-Mart onto their national blockchain, which is soon be the only way they are able to do business in China. The Pentagon cannot afford to slow-roll its adoption of blockchain because it will be a crucial factor in securing and automating workflows for additive manufacturing, artificial intelligence, financial transactions, and much more. This podcast was produced by Eric Lofgren. Soundtrack by urmymuse: "reflections of u". You can follow us on Twitter @AcqTalk and find more information at AcquisitionTalk.com.