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”.