Ask anyone who lives outside of the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area (WDCMA) what type of business is in DC, and the answer is always government. Of course, that is true. We are home to the US Federal Government. However, that is where most people stop.
Ask them to name another industry outside of the government? You’re normally met with a sea of blank stares and a real struggle to answer the question. The truth is DC is so much more than government and always has been.
When people think of tech and America’s tech capital, they immediately think of Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area. There is no denying that the best known of the social media tech companies from Facebook and Instagram (META), to LinkedIn and Twitter (to name a few) call Silicon Valley and San Francisco home. Most people and Wall Street have a myopic view that tech is only social media and posting to Facebook or Instagram or Twitter. But tech is broad and wide ranging and encompasses numerous industries and categories. In fact, every industry has been touched by tech. There is no escaping tech in every aspect of our lives.
Expanding one’s views and understanding of tech is how we arrive at DC’s tech dominance. But before we get there, we must acknowledge that tech companies are in every major city and state in this country and are expanding. Another thing that is abundantly clear is that every major American city believes they are poised to be the next Silicon Valley. If you were to read any local hometown paper or their local business journal, they are filled with articles about their ever-expanding tech sector and the increase of tech jobs.
The national press loves to pit California against Texas and write about Austin’s emerging tech scene created by an exodus of Silicon Valley companies. While those stories are plentiful and make for entertaining reading, the Washington, D.C. metro area status as the “Tech Capitol of the US and the World” continues unabated and truly unchallenged.
Let me say as loud as I can – the Washington, D.C. Metro area does not need to be the next Silicon Valley. Our region already outpaces Silicon Valley and every other region in the United States with our deep and diverse field of tech orientated government agencies and private sector businesses. In fact, being like Silicon Valley would be a step backwards, not forward.
Would our region welcome more tech companies relocating to our area? Absolutely! Both things are true and not mutually exclusive.
Riddle Me This.
Now at this point, it would be fair to ask yourself, what in the world am I smoking to make the assertions and claims I’ve made thus far? Well, stay with me.
I started this article by talking about people’s perceptions that the WDCMA is all about government. Well, government is the exact reason for our dominance in the field of tech. Almost every single invention of major consequence has been created and enabled by the US Federal Government. Specifically, the Department of Defense. It is the number one funder of tech and innovation.
This seems like a great time to bring DARPA into our conversation. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) based in Arlington, Virginia is the lead driver of tech and innovation. The agency has evolved over the years, but its creation and implementation of technology is unmatched and unrivaled. Period. No other company or government agency in the world comes close to its prevalence in tech fields.
We all take for granted both our daily dependence and our constant use of the Internet. Well, how did the Internet come into existence?
The story of the Internet began in the 1960s, as a way for government researchers to share information. Computers in the early days were incredibly large and immobile, and the government needed to have a way to share information between facilities that didn’t require travel and magnetic computer tapes. It was during this time that the first “Internet” was born.
With the advance of the Cold War, the super charging of the first “Internet” went into overdrive by the US Department of Defense after the Soviet Union launch of the Sputnik satellite. The long and short of the story was that the US government needed to make sure that they could disseminate information after a nuclear attack. That initiative led to the creation of ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) which in its early days was limited to academic and research organizations who had contracts with the Defense Department.
Although the Internet was born in the Washington, D.C. metro area, the technology created by the government was opened to civilian applications in efforts to create other networks and information sharing. DARPA’s creation of ARPANET is the reason that we all enjoy the Internettoday.
January 1, 1983 is considered the official birthday of the Internet. It was on this day that the implementation of a new standard uniformed communications code allowed different computer networks that didn’t have a way of communicating prior to start talking to each other. Hence, the Control Protocol/Internetwork Protocol (TCP/IP) was born. ARPANET and the Defense Data Network officially changed to the TCP/IP standard and all networks could now be connected by a universal language.
The Internet Becomes Available for the Masses.
Do you remember the famous catch phrase, “Welcome! You’ve got mail”? That catchy chime turned into a cultural phenomenon and was immortalized in films, tv shows and songs. There really wasn’t an American in the 1990s who didn’t have an AOL account.
America Online was created and based here in the WDCMA. AOL’s journey started in 1985when it was founded by Jim Kimsey and Steve Case – who are today DC icons today – and named Quantum Computer Services. Based out of Northern Virginia, AOL offered nascent online services to the first “regular” users of the Internet.
In less than a decade, Quantum was renamed America Online. The company experienced explosive growth and for the first time allowed everyday people to connect over the Internet, bringing millions of users an ability to communicate in real time through their Instant Messenger service.
Can you imagine a world today without text messaging? I dare say no. It is the primary method by which parents and kids communicate. You can thank AOL.
As James C. Dinegar, president and chief executive of the Greater Washington Board of Trade told the Washington Post in 2015, “At the time, Northern Virginia was the center of the Internetuniverse and AOL was the shining star.” AOL’s Washington operations helped turn quiet and quaint Loudoun County into a flourishing hub for the Internet which continues to this day.
Speaking of Loudoun County, right now (and with no changes seen in the foreseeable future) the county is monikered as “The Center of the Internet” and “Data Center Alley.” You are forgiven in thinking that online data is stored in a cloud as we have all been sold this ethereal concept. But the cloud and Internet functions actually require a physical location for the networked computer servers in a data center. The “cloud” all began in Ashburn and its surrounding Northern Virginia region, in the late 1990s when data centers were erected for the storage of the tremendous amounts of created data.
Today, our region is the leader of data storage and roughly 70% of the world’s Internet traffic flows through it every second of every day. (Google, Microsoft, META, Amazon, and Oracle to name a few all have stakes in the Data Center Alley.)
Oh, DARPA.
It’s time to return to DARPA once again. If you own an Apple phone and use Siri, you guessed it… the technology was created by DARPA in Arlington, Virginia. I drive by DARPA headquarters all the time and always give it a smile and big thumbs up as so much of what I use in my daily life has come from that building.
Apple’s digital virtual assistant started life as a DARPA project in the early 2000s known as CALO – Cognitive Assistant that Learns and Organizes. The name says it all. The research that gave birth to the voice-controlled assistant was created to provide soldiers in the field a technology that could learn from experience, take instructions, explain what it’s doing, and reflect on the experience it just had. The CALO project lasted five years, from 2003 to 2008 and launched various technologies, including Siri.
Siri launched on the iOS App Store in February 2010 and was acquired by Apple just two months later. Just over a year later, it was integrated into the iPhone 4s and is now a key part of Apple’s device ecosystem.
At each turn, we find daily reminders of tech tools and applications that we use whose origins are traced back to the thousands and thousands of hardworking tech innovators based in the WDCMA working for a host of government agencies. These innovators work for agencies beyond DARPA like the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), the Office of Naval Research (ONR), the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and so many others. And all call the WDCMA home.
On a side note, these government tech workers don’t get counted in tech industry numbers because they are assigned to government instead of the private sector. But one thing is clear, they are tech wonks. Their innovations, research and technology have given rise to expanded tech uses and have created new private sector companies.
Two Tales of One City
The WDCMA is the story of two worlds – the Federal Government and private industry. They come together to make the region the true tech capital of the United States and the world.
If one was to go by the stats provided by countless business journals and Wall Street entities, the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan area, depending on the source, has the 2nd or 3rd highestconcentration of private sector tech workers in the US. (I think we have established their narrow view and their counting of tech jobs leaves the story untold, incomplete, and frankly false.)
Now you can see – the foundation for my declaration is coming into a much clearer focus. The private sector relies and depends on government to be the driver and catalyst to fund the R/D to innovation. Government funded innovations find private sector applications and thrive. Those two worlds come together seamlessly in the WDCMA like no other.
Two crucial components for tech to thrive and flourish require a diverse and highly educated workforce.
The recent 2020 Census revealed what we in the DC region already knew. We have become more culturally diverse. For the first time, D.C. and Maryland were ranked amongst the most diverse places in the country and Virginia’s diversity moved up considerably. When you look at Northern Virginia area separate from Virginia as a whole, it’s the most culturally diverse in the Commonwealth and numbers are in line with the region. The region’s population includes 27% international residents representing more than 120 countries. This diverse population encourages a unique merging of cultures, backgrounds and identities.
The Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Area is one of America’s most educated areas in the country. So much so, that the population of Arlington County, which has been ranked as the most educated city in America, is home to a population where 75% of residents have at least a bachelor’s degree and 40% have advanced degrees.
The WDCMA is home to some of the most prestigious schools in the country, including George Washington University, Georgetown University, Howard University, American University, and Virginia Tech. Our region has been called the brain trust of the nation and provides access to one of the country’s best and brightest talent pools.
On November 13, 2018, the same day Amazon announced it had picked Arlington, Virginia as the location for its new HQ2 location, Virginia Tech also announced plans to build a billion-dollar campus in Alexandria, Virginia. It would be called Innovation Campus, and the idea for the new campus centered around Amazon’s initial HQ2 search in 2017. They saw the need to develop more tech talent to feed a growing ecosystem expected to sprout around Amazon, the university said to the Washington Business Journal in August of 2021.
For many, the DC region as a tech hub really wasn’t clear until Amazon’s announcement that shocked many as they never thought of DC as a tech hub. The shock can be easily attributed to alack of knowledge and understanding of our region and the ties between government and private industry.
So many cities, counties and states lined up together to entice Amazon as its new HQ2. They offered every incentive and tax break they could put on paper in their proposals. I remember countless conversations with business associates from around the country who told me they were “getting” Amazon. I would smile and politely disagree.
For those of us here in Washington, there was never really any doubt that they would pick the DC region as their new HQ2. The fact NYC’s Long Island City was a part of the new HQ2 formula initially was a surprise. Amazon killed the NYC part shortly after it was announced. Jeff Bezos claimed it didn’t have to do with politics or growing opposition to the plans according to CNBC in July of 2019.
Brad Stone wrote a book titled Amazon Unbound and writes that Bezos disregarded all the information his team had compiled and went with his gut in the final selection. If true, we are certainly glad he did. The facts and case were clear that the DC region made the best business decision for Amazon. The DC region is strategically located on the east coast. It’s a gateway to Europe. And it’s a dynamic growing area with a highly educated and diverse population in what is constantly ranked as one of the best areas to live in America. Our region’s transportation and infrastructure are some of the finest in the nation. All that coupled with… do I dare say it again, the best and brightest tech innovators in the nation who work for government agencies in our area sealed the deal. It gave them an amazing pool of talent from which to recruit.
The disgruntled naysayers can roll their eyes. In the immortal words of Taylor Swift, “the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate. Baby, I’m gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake, I shake it off”. To many, hating the DC region is sport and railing against it is fodder. Our region followed Swift and just shook it off.
But how did we know that Amazon HQ2 would land here? Do I know Jeff Bezos? No. Do I have deep contacts in the worlds of politics, real estate, and business both in the DC region and nationally? Yes! I sell real estate for a living and there will never be a substitute for boots on the ground and talking with people. I personally encountered numerous inbound folks associated with the upcoming decision.
Then we take into consideration that Jeff Bezos was already jetting into DC and spending an expanded amount of time here. He purchased the Old Textile Museum in DC’s most exclusive neighborhood of Kalorama in 2016 and began turning it into his DC compound. Bezos purchasedThe Washington Post in 2013. He was becoming a Washington insider and was cultivating his growing clout in the city.
Bezos had a long-established relationship with many DC elites, including the Graham familywho owned The Washington Post prior to Bezos, and he was a regular attendee of the summer camp for billionaires in Sun Valley, Idaho held yearly by Allen & Co. This event regularly plays host to many DC power players and politicians who have presidential aspirations.
Bezos was friends with David Rubenstein, the co-founder and co-chairman of the private equity firm The Carlyle Group, a global private equity investment company based in Washington, DC. Mr. Rubenstein interviewed Bezos as his Special Guest at the Economic Club of Washington, DC’s Milestone Celebration Event. The interview was wide ranging on many topics.
As mentioned before, Bezos is said to have chosen the region through his gut. In the past, he has claimed that his biggest decisions are made on intuition.
“All of my best decisions in business and in life have been made with heart, intuition, guts … not analysis. If you can make a decision with analysis, you should do so. But it turns out in life that your most important decisions are always made with instinct and intuition, taste, heart,” he said to Rubenstein in September of 2018 – just a few weeks before the company announced its HQ2 decision.
So Much More Than Social Media
As I mentioned, tech is more than Facebook and social media. But if I was to do a social media post for this article it would be “Come Discover the DC Region. The parts you know and theparts you don’t. America’s True Tech Capital!”
As I was writing this article, I ordered food, did online banking, and sent flowers to a client, all on my smart phone. Tech is truly everywhere! There are more categories than one can imagine in our area ……. E-Commerce (Amazon), Internet and Software (Microsoft), Fintech (Capital One), Consumer Electronics (Apple), Telecommunications (Verizon), Legal Tech (You can’tmove in DC without hitting a lawyer.), Cybersecurity (SAIC), Defense Tech (Lockheed) and Biotech. The categories are endless.
Our regions dominance is seen in the areas of Defense Tech and Biotech. One of the world’s most important tech alleys in located in Montgomery County, Maryland, where the North I-270 Technology Corridor is located. Lockheed Martin is corporately based in Bethesda, Maryland and employs high skilled tech innovators throughout our region.
In fact, no region of the country is home to more defense contractors. Northrup Grumman (Falls Church), Boeing (Arlington), Raytheon (Arlington) and General Dynamics (Reston) to name just a few all call the WDCMA home. While these companies’ employ highly skilled tech workers throughout the country and the world, many of them reside right here.
These private sector companies interact and intersect with government agencies daily and therefore being centrally located in our region is paramount. As everyone knows, we are home to the CIA, the FBI, and countless other agencies who rely on the technology that these companies build.
Thank the NAS, NIH and the DOE for Your At-Home DNA Test
Have you taken an Ancestry.com or 23andMe DNA test? I have and wow, I learned someinteresting stuff about my family heritage and health. If you haven’t, you should. Where was the technology created that allowed these private sector companies to flourish? If you said the WDCMA, you are correct. To be fair, the Human Genome Project involved countless countries and scientists worldwide. No one country or region can lay claim, it was a global discovery. However, as home to the National Institutes of Health, our region is home to the preeminent medical institution in the world.
A special committee of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences outlined the original goals for the Human Genome Project in 1988, which included sequencing the entire human genome in addition to the genomes of several carefully selected non-human organisms. The HGP was initiated in 1990 under the leadership of American geneticist Francis Collins, with support from the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Dr. Francis went on the be The Director for the NIH and help create the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) on the campus of NIH in Bethesda, Maryland.
The outcome of the project was the first true mapping of the human DNA. From that discovery, Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) genetic testing companies flourished and now offer ancestry, health risks and other genetic information to all of us. So back to the North I-270 The Technology Corridor, and biotech discoveries. The research has spawned countless private sector startups and biotech jobs throughout the corridor from NIH alum.
Of course, there are dark moments in biotech too. Shortly after 9/11, the country was rocked by a series of an anthrax attacks, lasting for several weeks beginning on September 18. Letters containing the anthrax spores were mailed to several news media offices and to democratic senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy. By the end five people had been killed and 17 others were infected. The ensuing investigation became “one of the largest and most complex in the history of law enforcement” according to the FBI.
The FBI concluded that the attacks were perpetrated by Dr. Ivins, a scientist at the government’s biodefense labs at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland. According to the FBI, saving the anthrax vaccine program was the reason for the attacks. “The anthrax vaccine program to which [Dr. Ivins] had devoted his entire career of more than 20 years was failing. Following the anthrax attacks, however, his program was suddenly rejuvenated, and a possible motive was his concern about the end of the vaccination program, and one theory is that by launching these attacks, he created a situation, a scenario, where people all of a sudden realize the need to have this vaccine.”
In 2008, the Gaithersburg (Maryland) biotech company, Emergent BioSolutions, developed and now manufactures the only anthrax vaccine approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), called BioThrax. In December 2022, the company announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had accepted for review its supplement New Drug Application (NDA) for NARCAN (naloxone HCI) Nasal Spray, as on over the counter (OTC) emergency treatment for known or suspected opioid overdose. These discoveries were made possible by scientists and biotech inventors, right here in the WDCMA.
The Gang is all Moving …. to the WDCMA
I’ll say it again, tech is so much more than social media and tech jobs are both private sector and government related. For the record, META (Tysons Corner), Google (Reston), Apple (Washington, D.C.) have offices in our region with expanding workforces.
Microsoft paid $73 million for 332 acres of land in Leesburg, Virginia back in 2018 and are in the process of building two new data centers and a campus. They are also building a third data center campus in Loudoun County in Arcola Business Park. These developments will add hundreds of new tech jobs.
And the future of tech in the DC region is bound to become only brighter.
So, Let’s End This Back with DARPA. With One More of Their Developed Gems.
Getting from one place to the other today is seamless thanks to GPS. The products and uses for it are endless. Whether in our cars, using our phones, tracking our runs and bike rides, or even finding a lost pet – we can thank DARPA.
The technology that we all take for granted started as Automatic Radar Plotting Aid (ARPA). The idea of using a constellation of satellites for navigation and tracking originated in the 1940s, but GPS really took hold in 1973. It was solely dedicated at the time exclusively for use by the US military. But in 1983, the USSR shot down a Korean Airlines Jet that accidentally strayed into their airspace, prompting the technology to be made freely available for civilian use. Today, it’s the most widely used satellite navigation system in the world. It was designed and made possible right here in the WDCMA.
So, do yourself a favor, use your DARPA created GPS and plug in the DC coordinates in your car or on your phone and – as Oleta Adams sang in her iconic song “Get Here” …
You can reach me by railway, you can reach me by trailway
You can reach me on an airplane, you can reach me with your mind
You can reach me by caravan, I don’t care how you get here, just get here if you can.
Come join us here in the WDCMA.
Information Sources:
Arlington County Economic Development Website:
https://usafacts.org/articles/which-states-are-the-most-educated/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL
https://www.itpro.com/technology/34730/10-amazing-darpa-inventions
https://www.usg.edu/galileo/skills/unit07/Internet07_02.phtml
https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2021/05/17/amazon-hq2-selection-brad-stone.html
https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/taylorswift/shakeitoff.html
https://nationallanding.org/our-downtown/virginia-tech
https://workinnorthernvirginia.com/live/diversity/
https://www.ggchamber.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/270N-Corridor-Tech-Report.pdf
https://qz.com/1600084/the-rise-of-companies-like-23andme-and-ancestrydna
