Gen. CQ Brown, speaking here on a panel at the Reagan National Defense Forum, said that he visited Silicon Valley recently and met with multiple companies and venture capitalists. While he didn’t identify specific firms, he said he “learned a lot this past week on semiconductors and artificial intelligence.”

“What we’ve got to do is actually pick some winners,” he said, pointing to rocket maker SpaceX as an example of an innovative company that has gained traction in the defense space.

“How we align and bring them forward — it’s going to take some nurturing,” Brown said of helping new tech companies move through the acquisition process. “It’s like hand-walking a staff package through the Pentagon to make sure it gets done.”

Once successful, Brown added, the military will have developed a “pattern of doing things a little differently.”

Commercial tech firms have become increasingly involved in the annual Reagan Forum, but the event’s panelists generally represent large firms, such as Microsoft or Google.

Indeed, speaking on the same panel, Karen Dahut, a former Booz Allen Hamilton executive recently tapped to run Google’s public sector business, said this is the most fruitful time for innovative companies focused on aerospace and defense, given significant VC investment.

“We need to get that capital working for us,” she said, referring to the military. “Those companies have not been able to get to a scaled program inside the department.”

Dahut advocated for picking several key technologies and giving them to troops for testing.

A group overseen by the deputy defense secretary is working aggressively to address the “pain points” faced by small companies who want to work with the Pentagon, according to Heidi Shyu, the under secretary of defense for research and engineering.

She said she presented to the deputy defense secretary a collection of issues she heard during meetings with small companies.

Kathleen Hicks, the No. 2 civilian in the department, said, ‘This is great. Let’s go tackle this,’” and then brought in other Pentagon offices, including acquisition and sustainment, the chief information office and the chief digital and artificial intelligence office, among others, Shyu said.

Now, those offices are tackling a variety of issues, from security clearance issues to workforce challenges. Hicks is holding monthly meetings on their progress, Shyu said.

The goal is to “simplify our contracting so we can award small companies much quicker, rather than taking many, many months,” she added. “We absolutely are trying to tackle a lot of acquisition pain points.”

Three industry associations — the International Stability Operations Association, the National Defense Industrial Association and the Professional Services Council — are slated to meet with Pentagon, State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development representatives.

Stephanie Sanok Kostro, executive vice president for policy at PSC, told Defense News the conversation will include special immigrant visas and other options for Afghan and third-country nationals who have worked with U.S. companies and are seeking safety elsewhere.

She said the group has long been trying to help, but that the urgency has dramatically increased following the Taliban takeover of the country this week.

According to the most recent Pentagon quarterly contractor census report, last updated in July, there were nearly 7,800 Defense Department contractors in Afghanistan, about 5,100 of whom were either third-country nationals or locals. That figure has been much higher in the past; in 2012, for instance, it totaled more than 88,000.

Kostro said companies, who want to help validate employment information needed for visas, are facing several questions, including whether they can assist the employees of subcontractors and vendors.

“To verify their employment has been a real challenge because [the companies] simply don’t have the names and … identifying material for folks who work for subs and vendors,” she said. “But the situation is dire for lots of these folks, and companies are doing everything they can to operate both within U.S. law and within humanitarian spirit.”

Howie Lind, president of the International Stability Operations Association, told Defense News his organization has helped with that employment verification process.

“It’s what we’ve been doing and will continue to do, but this is just an immediate crisis right now to get people out of there,” he said.

Julian Setian, the chief executive of contractor SOS International, a services contractor that first started working in Afghanistan in 2002, said he’s received no fewer than a dozen emails in the last few days from former Afghan employees and vendors who want help getting out of the country.

“Lots of people right now within the company are receiving stray emails from desperate Afghans,” he said.

SOSi has over the years helped about 400 employees or vendors apply for visas. He said about 15 of those have, after moving to the United States, become employees at company headquarters in Reston, Virginia.

Setian said that while some of the company’s contracts in Afghanistan are near completion or were not recompeted in recent months, the Taliban takeover has not ended any of its existing work in the country.

“Over the course of the last six months, programs have been wound down, options haven’t been exercised,” Setian said. “There’s been a lot of pressure on the military to reduce the footprint writ large.”

SOSi has operated and managed the media operations center in Afghanistan; that work will now continue from Qatar, he said.

In addition, “there are other classified programs that are going to continue that have been moved out of the country,” Setian added.