New Spin on a Revolving Door: Pentagon Officials Turned Venture Capitalists (nytimes.com) 25
Retired officers and departing defense officials are flocking to investment firms that are pushing the government to provide more money to defense-technology startups. The New York Times: When Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and other top officials assembled for an event this month at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, they walked into a lesson in how the high-stakes world of Pentagon lobbying is being altered by the rise of defense technology startups. Inside, at this elite gathering near Los Angeles of senior leaders from government and the arms industry, was a rapidly growing group of participants: former Pentagon officials and military officers who have joined venture capital firms and are trying to use their connections in Washington to cash in on the potential to sell a new generation of weapons.
They represent a new path through the revolving door that has always connected the Defense Department and the military contracting business. Retiring generals and departing top Pentagon officials once migrated regularly to the big established weapons makers like Lockheed Martin and Boeing. Now they are increasingly flocking to venture capital firms that have collectively pumped billions of dollars into Silicon Valley-style startups offering the Pentagon new war-fighting tools like autonomous killer drones, hypersonic jets and space surveillance equipment.
This new route to the private sector is one indicator of the ways in which the United States is trying to become more agile in harnessing technological advances to maintain military superiority over China and other rivals. But the close ties between venture capital firms and Defense Department decision makers have also put a new twist on long-running questions about industry access and influence at a time when the Pentagon is under pressure to rethink how it allocates its huge procurement budget.
They represent a new path through the revolving door that has always connected the Defense Department and the military contracting business. Retiring generals and departing top Pentagon officials once migrated regularly to the big established weapons makers like Lockheed Martin and Boeing. Now they are increasingly flocking to venture capital firms that have collectively pumped billions of dollars into Silicon Valley-style startups offering the Pentagon new war-fighting tools like autonomous killer drones, hypersonic jets and space surveillance equipment.
This new route to the private sector is one indicator of the ways in which the United States is trying to become more agile in harnessing technological advances to maintain military superiority over China and other rivals. But the close ties between venture capital firms and Defense Department decision makers have also put a new twist on long-running questions about industry access and influence at a time when the Pentagon is under pressure to rethink how it allocates its huge procurement budget.
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I don't disagree. You go into government to get in the way, to get paid to get back out of the way. It has ever been this way since thousands of years before someone tried to clean it up by adding "The People" to it. And even that was more about a new local minima in meme power grabs than about actually cleaning things up.
Each side thinks it's the other guys. Hint: It's all of them.
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TDS is what keeps people going to Trump rallies.
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What's your problem? Trump monetized the government for his own gain. He was sending his kids around the world looking for handouts, while winking and saying there is no quid pro quo.
Trump's net worth and income went down while in office. So put up some proof of your assertion.
Re:So (Score:4, Insightful)
How do we know it went down? He spent so much effort keeping all his financial details secret. The tax returns that eventually showed up don't tell the much of the story. And his lying about overvaluing his properties makes it uncertain if he was ever as rich as he claimed.
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Vague posting but I assume you mean Solyndra, the program that ended up turning a profit and is helped for a lot of the solar success we see today?
After Solyndra Loss, U.S. Energy Loan Program Turning A Profit [npr.org]
This can't be good (Score:3)
Just what we need - still closer ties between those who fight wars and those whose profits increase drastically when wars are fought. Is there any potential conflict of interest here? Nah, that could never happen. Right?
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It's not exactly new... [history.com]
This gave us Theranos (Score:2, Interesting)
They stacked their board with Generals and politicians to raise VC money
You'd think a medical device research company would have a Board stacked with experts in medical research and medical devices.
But it looks like Theranos's board had none.
Instead it had a board full of politicians and rich bankers that seemed from the beginning structured to abuse use their political connections to pump a stock.
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Boards get stack mostly based on who owns the most stock. Those people are also not good at understanding what a company actually does, they're not doctors, engineers, etc. But usually they have some corporate or board experience, they know how to make money and keep the new company in line. But also, toss a couple luminaries into the mix to provide some sense of gravitas. I think most board members are just proxies for the venture capital owners.
Ie, a company I was at used to have an ex vice president on
Where else COULD experts come from? (Score:2)
Of course the military industrial complex exists. An effective military industrial complex is a requirement to win modern nation-state wars. (Constabulary follies are unwinnable because establishing democratic institutions inherently cedes initiative to the enemy.)
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The MIC is inefficient in the US. Mostly a jobs program, truthfully, that produces subpar results.
See how Russia or China does it for more cost-effectiveness and better results.
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How do we define "cost effectiveness" in this case?
Russia actually spends a higher percentage of its GDP on it's military than the US (4.1 vs 3.5) China admittedly less (1.6) but China also I would assume has state control over all it's military manufacturing and development.
Also the US is the military hegemon of the world, it's trickier to compare it to other countries because they just don't operate at the scale we do. China or Russia barely have what we could class as a blue-water navy, the US operates
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Don't be so sure of that. Our fighting force has holes like swiss cheese in it. Those engaged in the effort know this.
Those vaunted carriers are sitting ducks for modern missiles, for example. Our ground forces are light, as you would need for expeditionary - actually colonial - service. Unsuitable for a continental battlefield. And it's small - the entire 10 active duty divisions would be a drop in the bucket by Eurasian standards. The Russians you mention raised 500k new troops last year *not* for d
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Those vaunted carriers are sitting ducks for modern missiles, for example.
I have heard both sides of this but in reality this is all war-game theory stuff since there hasn't been a modern conflict with a force that would come close to that capability, Russia and China are the closest things to that but there are huge question marks and still, it is unquestionable the US is able to exert force projection farther and stronger than either of those nations and hypersonics for all their hype have been less than realistic in reality. There's a lot of big "ifs" in getting through to t
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The fact is we DO have a need for knowledge transfer between geeks and soldiers right now, maybe more than ever. It's in our best interest to reward startups who do that best. But how to keep it honest?
Popcorn time (Score:3)
Honestly this should be rather fun to watch and will probably do wonderful things toward further disabusing the public of the idea that our bureaucracy is staffed by people who know better than they do.
If you look at retired generals etc they have pretty lousy track record here... Hopefully we will get some more spectacular Theranos and IronNet level failures to watch!
App Mythology (Score:2)