Purpose-driven exercises focused on ground truth understanding, threat identification, and tangible solutions.
DEFx exercises are purpose-driven: small, curated gatherings built around a single challenge, held over two to three days at home and abroad. By invitation, they bring select groups together — a lens drawn from across national security, intelligence, diplomacy, and entrepreneurship — to work a problem the way it actually needs to be worked.
Truth
and Outcomes
Every DEFx follows the same arc. We start with ground truth, from the people closest to the problem, describing what they actually see rather than what the reporting assumes. From there we work backward from the symptom to the cause, because most failed solutions solve the wrong problem well. Only then do we build: designing the solution or assembling the team to carry it forward, with a clear path to rapid, measurable, meaningful impact.
Two or three days. One challenge. People who can actually do something about it.
DEFx + Ethical Hacker Force
March 29th 2025
(Complete)
DEFx - Ethical Hacker Force was held to frame out what an unconventional ethical hacker capability might look like for presentation at the US Naval War College's Cyber & Innovation Policy Institute's (CIPI) Annual Sumer workshop 2025
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DEFx + Army DC
July 27th 2024
(Complete)
DEFx Army DC Objective: How might the Innovation Directorate reimagine how the Army deploys resources to positively impact recruitment and retention across the command beyond conventional inputs.
DEFx + Mexico
May 3 - 6, 2024
(Complete)
DEFx Mexico Objective: Develop a fellowship cultural exchange program to expose our younger enlisted, Junior Officers and national security civilians to the realities of working with our allies in an effective and culturally empathetic manner, which requires approaches outside of current training doctrine.
Follow us to learn more about the outcomes of the event.
