On November 16, 2022, Silicon Valley came to Washington—specifically, to the airy, upscale Italian restaurant Piccolina da Centrolina, where the evening’s co-host, Andreessen Horowitz general partner Katherine Boyle, was waiting. It was the night before Andreessen’s American Dynamism summit, and Boyle had helped convene around 30 founders, investors and politicians for cocktails, dinner and light conversation about rising tension with China and the valley of death.

Attendees at the dinner, which has not been previously reported, included Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Republican Sen. and presidential candidate Tim Scott of South Carolina, Reps. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), and Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.) and buzzy defense tech CEOs like Anduril’s Brian Schimpf and Hadrian’s Chris Power.

There were also a handful of Andreessen partners at the restaurant—most notably the firm’s co-founder, Marc Andreessen. But the event served as something of a coming-out party for one particular investor: Boyle, a 37-year-old former journalist who had spent the last several years trying to get the upper echelons of tech and government—two groups long skeptical of each other—to work in concert.