Bigger India
Lesser-known Raj Shah, Obama appointee, quits as Pentagon-Silicon Valley liaison
Before he joined the Pentagon, Shah was the senior director of strategy at Santa Clara, Calif.-based Palo Alto Networks, joining this company after a stint as chief executive officer and co-founder of a cyber security company that acquired in 2014.
During the Obama years, the highest-profile Indian-American in the administration was Dr. Rajiv ‘Raj’ Shah, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development. In the Trump administration, it’s a different Raj Shah — the man who is the president’s principal deputy press secretary.
But there is yet another Raj Shah, an Obama administration holdover who until recently had been the Pentagon’s liaison to Silicon Valley. Shah, who flew largely under the radar for the past two years, recently quit his post as head of the Mountain Valley, California-based Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx), popularly known as the Pentagon’s innovation shop.