UC BERKELEY • BERKELEY INSTITUTE FOR SECURITY & GOVERNANCE
→ Security & Resilience Accelerator – Hacking for Defense • A DIU NATIONAL PROGRAM
Work the nation’s hardest problems — beside the people who own them.
The Berkeley Security & Resilience Accelerator – Hacking for Defense (H4D) drops interdisciplinary teams of Berkeley students into real security and resilience problems – in the field, alongside the operators who live them – and teaches a first-principles, lean methodology way of solving them that you’ll carry for the rest of your career.
Taught by a former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security and a 20-year FBI counterintelligence and counterterrorism leader – operators, not just academics.
A grade is the least of what you leave with.
A method for life
First-principles thinking and the Mission Model discipline — a way of breaking down any hard, ambiguous problem that stays with you long after the semester, in whatever career comes next.
Real problems, real actors
A semester working directly with the warfighters, agents, and officials who own the country’s hardest challenges — not case studies from a textbook, the real thing with real stakes.
Time in the field
Visits to military, intelligence, and emergency-response units where the mission actually happens — seeing firsthand the environment your solutions have to survive.
A network that opens doors
Deep-tech founders, investors, and government stakeholders — plus a firsthand look at careers and opportunities in public service that most students never get to see.
Build a company, inform policy makers
The strongest teams don’t stop at a concept. Some spin out companies that deliver capability to the field; others hand decision-makers the white paper or recommendations that shape what gets built and funded next.
TAUGHT BY PRACTITIONERS
People who have carried the weight of the mission.
Janet Napolitano
FACULTY • GOLDMAN SCHOOL OF PUBLIC POLICY
Former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, former President of the University of California, and former Governor of Arizona. She brings the view from the top of the national-security enterprise into the classroom.
Jeff Fields
SENIOR FELLOW OF PRACTICE • BISG
A 20-plus-year FBI career in national security, most recently Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the San Francisco Division. He connects teams directly to the operators and stakeholders their work must serve.
From Classroom to Operational Understanding
Twelve weeks, one arc.
The semester is a single compressed loop — from a sponsor’s pain point to a solution grounded in the field. This is first-principles problem-solving under real constraints.
WEEK 1
The problem
A team takes on a real, sponsor-backed operational gap.
WEEKS 2-7
Discovery
Interviews and field visits with the warfighters, agents, and operators who live the problem.
WEEKS 5-9
Build
Hypotheses tested against mission reality — prototypes, concepts, and evidence, pivoting as you learn.
WEEKS 10-12
The deliverable
Something the sponsor can use — a prototype, a set of recommendations, or a delivered capability.
BEYOND
What comes next
A white paper, new interest in a public service career path, a transition and, for some, founding a company.
SPRING 2026 COHORT
What a semester can produce.
One cohort ran 300+ operator interviews, delivered a new OSINT capability for INDOPACOM, and briefed recommendations to sponsors across five agencies.
AND WHEN A TEAM’S WORK IS READY FOR THE WORLD – FIVE OF THEM CHOSE TO SPIN OUT A COMPANY.
KINETIC DRONE DEFENSE
Omnia AI · GUARD
Autonomous, low-cost interceptor that defeats FPV and Shahed-class drones.
< $1,000 / round
~50× cheaper · TRL 5→6 · DIU Fellow · Army CRADA
Counter-UAS
Parallax Defense
Low-collateral water effector that stops Group 1–2 drones at the edge.
Near-zero cost / shot
175th MRBC sponsor · DIU Fellow · $5M pre-seed
Electronic Warfare
Spectra
Fuses RF sensors into one real-time threat picture on the soldier’s ATAK.
Signed 1st Cav. LOI
Built with U.S. Army 1st Cavalry · DIU Fellow
Intelligence
Tessera
Connective layer that unifies siloed data into evidence-backed answers.
3,000-7,000 hrs/yr
Deployed by the Govt. of Belize · counter-narcotics · TRL 4
Industrial Resilience
R3SHORE
Command center coordinating manufacturers, states, and colleges to reshore.
$2T+ reshoring wave
Dual B2B / B2G platform · CHIPS & IRA aligned
The National Program Behind The Class – DIU
1,182
National-security problems addressed
4,280+
Students trained across 69 universities
$4.9B
In contract ceilings to dual-use companies
51%
Prototype-to-production transition rate
TWO WAYS IN
Bring your discipline. Or bring your problem.
FOR STUDENTS
Engineers, policy minds, scientists, founders.
- Open to both graduate and undergraduates across every school at Berkeley.
- Interdisciplinary teams — the strongest solutions come from mixed benches.
- No defense background required; curiosity, rigor, and hustle are.
- Leave with a problem-solving method, field experience, a network, and a real look at public-service careers.
- Cross-listed with Haas School of Business and Berkeley Law School
FOR SPONSORS
Government & operational stakeholders.
- Bring an unclassified capability gap; get a team on it for a full semester.
- Twelve weeks of structured discovery, plus recommendations and a working concept at the end.
- A low-risk on-ramp to Berkeley’s deep-tech ecosystem and future talent.
- Recent sponsors span NASA, U.S. Space Force, the Army, INDOPACOM, State, and local first responders.
SPONSORS & ECOSYSTEM
SPRING 2026 PROBLEM SPONSORS
NASA / U.S. Space Force · U.S. Army · INDOPACOM · U.S. State Department · Santa Rosa Fire Department
Ecosystem
Defense Innovation Unit · NSF I-Corps · Common Mission Project · Berkeley Risk & Security Lab · Deep-Tech Innovation Lab · Lawrence Livermore National Lab · Institute for Business Innovation · SpaceWERX
JOIN THE SPRING 2027 COHORT
Twelve weeks on the problems that matter most — a method and a network you’ll carry for life.
Security & Resilience Accelerator •
Berkeley Institute for Security & Governance
Hacking for Defense •
From Classroom to Operational Understanding