[killjoywashere]

I'm going to go out on a limb and propose a hypothesis:

The DoD's hyper-innefficient contracting system rewards DC insiders and effectively limits the department's ability to invest where investment is needed while draining the public coffers of unfathomable amounts of money.

The DoD's hyper-ineffective personnel system inhibits personal development while at the same time making it nearly impossible to move laterally within the organzation, thus preventing thousands of experts in many fields (that is, many thousands of experts) from self-organizing into effective functional units.

These two issues have made the DoD ripe for attack in the digital domain, an area that has nothing to do with their other core missions areas which are all organized around delivering kinetic energy to adversaries.

[SomeStupidPoint]

Contracting instead of developing in-house capabilities is completely destroying the DoD and American military effectiveness. The corruption around that is posing a real, impactful threat to national security.

Fuck these people and their "free market" lies as a cover for outright theft of public funds.

It's not just in the cyber domain that this is a problem, but the cyber domain is one in which the corner-cutting, half-assed nature of the corruption is most visible because the damage is most easily exploited by foreign powers.

[rdtsc]

Was selling to the DoD before and agree with you. We just sold a product but interacted with contractors and various agencies. It's a hot mess, the corruption, nepotism, stuff like request for quotes for a project and specs made to meet exactly only one vendor and nobody else and so on.

[zghst]

The power on the inside is more of a effective deterrent and great asset than a deficit for the DoD.

Economically how it works is that the DoD secures assets and locations around the world relating to the means of production of consumer components. American interests, especially the interests of the American consumer are definitely protected and represented for.

Where this model has failed for us is put a huge deficit in our self reliance with regards to consumer production. Due to globalization, American politicians have no urgent need to educate the workforce more than they already have, they can provide security and investment to produce a source of worldwide talent, all thanks to the contractors playing their crucial role in the ecosystem of American security.

What people fail to understand is that no organization or system is perfect. The DoD isn't organized for the new kinds of warfare being performed. The main job of the DoD is to protect American interests abroad, not operate in the background on American soil against hundreds, thousands of nation-state and criminal organizations.

The FBI does this job, they successfully work with hundreds of private contractors. You'd be surprised by the scale on which they are resourceful and helpful.

[killjoywashere]

> not operate in the background on American soil against hundreds, thousands of nation-state and criminal organizations.

Actually, this space, this sphere of influence, is well recognized and the problem has been well described by the senior folks involved since at least 2001:

* Ash Carter (SecDef) Keeping the Edge: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/keeping-edge

* Michael Hayden (chief of NSA and CIA): Playing to the Edge: https://www.amazon.com/Playing-Edge-American-Intelligence-Te...