[ryporter]

The author seems to want to unearth some scandal about conflicts of interest, but there's not much here. The final quote of the article pretty much nails it.

“On the one hand, if you wanted really pristine independence, it means you are going to need people who don’t have commercial ties to the industry,” Mr. Gilson said. “On the other hand, if you have people without any commercial ties to the industry, they are not much use.”

If there were no conflicts of interest at all, then we'd be discussing an article about how horribly In-Q-Tel's investments performed, because they were made by bureaucrats in D.C. who had no idea how startups worked.

[kirubakaran]

In John Doerr's words, "no conflict, no interest."

[mmaunder]

Agreed. The list of companies is good data and if you're in the security space, the kinds of capability CIA is trying to foster is interesting too.

[slim]

> how horribly In-Q-Tel's investments performed

Not accounting for the value of the assets. Pun intended