Monday, November 25, 2024

Her family fled mainland China after the civil war. Now she helps US outrace PLA

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The world got a glimpse of the brain behind one of the American military’s most secretive and important initiatives when she gave a rare interview just over a month ago.

A US Senate committee had criticised the Rapid Defence Experimentation Reserve (RDER) initiative and Taiwan-born US undersecretary of defence Heidi Shyu stepped into the spotlight to defend the programme.

Shyu is the Pentagon’s chief technology officer, in charge of research and engineering, and RDER – which is meant to help the United States hold its hi-tech edge over China – has been described as her “brainchild”.

In an interview with US-based news site Breaking Defence, Shyu said “the whole idea [of RDER] was started three years ago when I first walked into the Pentagon”.

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