The British Are Coming!

In October, George Tenet, the last director of central intelligence, emerged from his mostly quiet retirement to announce he had accepted a new job. The British defense and intelligence firm QinetiQ (pronounced kinET-ic) snatched him up as a "nonexecutive director." To put matters plainly-as Tenet

For about 60 years, the brain trust behind QinetiQ has been the center of research and development for the British military, intelligence and security services. The firm was spun out of the United Kingdom's Defense Evaluation and Research Agency in June 2001. DERA was responsible for most of the country's defense innovations in the latter zoth century, from liquid crystal displays to radar technology. But it stayed largely locked within government hands. QinetiQ was born to take products to the commercial and other government markets, where the firm also could turn a profit and more quickly gin up advanced technologies. Five years later, QinetiQ is one of the world's biggest producers of software products for intelligence and security users. The U.K.'s Ministry of Defense-now one of QinetiQ's biggest customers-still holds a 20 percent share in the firm, whose annual revenues are about $2 billion.