BZZZT: MIT administers Lincoln Labs just like the University of California administered Los Alamos and Laurence Livermore (exclusively from the beginning, now in a consortium). And there are many other examples of this method the Federal Government uses.

You simply can't consolidate the pass-through budget of Lincoln Labs with MIT proper and I gave up on this article after that tendentious attack.

The mission of MIT seems to be: gather together lots of smart ambitious people and get them to work on problems of DOD interest.