Of course, and it's been discussed on HN several times, but I can't recall seeing that students were being taught "how to sell to the [DoD/DoW]"; I'm pretty sure that's new (whether it was part of the course I have no idea, but I don't recall it being part of any materials or discussions).
From this article, it does sound like it’s a newer development:
> Goals for Hacking for Defense
> A decade ago, our goal for the class was to teach students Lean Innovation methods while they engaged in national public service. We wanted to familiarize students with the military as a profession and help them better understand its expertise, and its role in society. We also hoped the class would show our sponsors a methodology that builds problem understanding before writing requirements.
> The class still does all this, but now that the DoW is buying from startups and defense venture capital is abundant, the class has turned into a national security incubator. Most of our teams form defense companies.
That’s literally the whole point of the course if you read the original intent of the course it was to change the acquisitions approach of Silicon Valley to match or influence the way the Department of defense does acquisitions and they’ve been extremely successful in capturing the Department of defense as you can see
A tiny number of enormous companies capturing the department revolving around one specific technology doesn't sound like it's bridged the acquisitions gap between Silicon Valley and the military.
I primarily alluded to AI because of obvious reasons, but yes - Cloud computing and related service products are also good examples.
But there's a great deal of department needs that don't revolve around information processing infrastructure where there aren't many success stories to refer to. Especially relating to startups.
