to solicit national security ideas from start-up firms with little or no history of working with the military…

There is a precedent for the initiative. Startled by the Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite in 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower created the Advanced Research Projects Agency, or ARPA… Now, the Pentagon has decided that the nation needs more … to find new technologies to maintain American military superiority… Stephen Welby, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for systems engineering, visited a dozen Silicon Valley start-ups that are pursuing new technologies … Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/27/science/pentagon-looking-for-edge-in-the-future-checks-in-with-silicon-valley.html?ref=topics&_r=0

See also: Roads and Crossroads of the Internet History

1957: Sputnik has launched ARPA
President Dwight D. Eisenhower saw the need for the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) after the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik.

1957 – October 4th – the USSR launches Sputnik, the first artificial earth satellite:
1958 – February 7th – In response to the launch of Sputnik, the US Department of Defense issues directive 5105.15 establishing the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA).

The organization united some of America’s most brilliant people, who developed the United States’ first successful satellite in 18 months. Several years later ARPA began to focus on computer networking and communications technology.

In 1962, Dr. J.C.R. Licklider was chosen to head ARPA’s research in improving the military’s use of computer technology. Licklider was a visionary who sought to make the government’s use of computers more interactive. To quickly expand technology, Licklider saw the need to move ARPA’s contracts from the private sector to universities and laid the foundations for what would become the ARPANET.

The Atlantic cable of 1858 and Sputnik of 1957 were two basic milestone of the Internet prehistory. Read more: http://www.netvalley.com/cgi-bin/intval/net_history.pl?chapter=1