An official website of the United States Government 
Here's how you know

Official websites use .gov

A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS

A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

David Hirko

Deputy Assistant Secretary of War for Science and Technology Program Protection

 

David Hirko is the Deputy Assistant Secretary of War for Science and Technology (S&T) Program Protection in the Office of the Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering (OUSW(R&E)). He is responsible for overseeing technology protection initiatives within the Department’s Defense Research Enterprise.

Mr. Hirko is the principal advisor to the Assistant Secretary of War for Science and Technology (S&T) on technology protection related to early-stage basic research, developmental research, acquisition programs, and the defense industrial and innovation base. He serves as the lead for the governance body overseeing technology protection across the Department. His responsibilities include developing resilient systems, establishing and implementing protection methodologies, mitigating the loss of critical technologies and information to determined adversaries, and determining technology industrial base health and needs to support modernization.

Prior to joining the Department of War, Mr. Hirko was a member of OpenAI, where he supported the application and operationalization of AI within the U.S. national security community.

Before his time at OpenAI, Mr. Hirko served as Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for Peraton's Defense Mission and Health sector, a multi-billion-dollar portfolio.  Mr. Hirko was also founder of Zectonal, a data observability software company. Earlier, Mr. Hirko co-founded B23, a data analytics software company serving financial institutions. Mr. Hirko was a founding and PMC member of Apache Metron, an open-source cybersecurity platform adopted by Fortune 50 financial institutions.

Mr. Hirko was an early member of Amazon Web Services' Public Sector business unit, where he led the day-to-day, multi-year effort—from concept through technical development to delivery—of a unique national security capability, Commercial Cloud Services (C2S).

Mr. Hirko holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Virginia and an M.B.A. from the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business.

All Biographies