Pentagon Mobilized to Support Tech Startups After Bank Failure

In the hours after Silicon Valley Bank collapsed on March 10, Pentagon officials who work directly with startups that develop national-security technologies grew increasingly concerned.

Would startups that had money in the bank need to stop work? If that happened, would there be supply-chain disruptions? Would a company under financial stress put its intellectual property at risk? 

Officials prepared different courses of action to get cash to companies, if needed.

“It was a busy weekend, for sure,” Michael Madsen, acting director of the organization that acts as conduit between startups...