Holt is the head of acquisitions for the Air Force, which means he oversees the buying of everything from drones to nuclear missiles. And in a fascinating and spicy speech, he said that if the U.S. doesn’t get better at buying weapons, America will lose in a future conflict to China.“It’s simply math,” he argued.
The reason is that China is better at procurement. China is getting weapons “five to six times” more rapidly than the United States. “In purchasing power parity,” he said, “they spend about one dollar to our 20 dollars to get to the same capability.” This problem is directly related to market power in the U.S. Holt went over the business strategy of U.S. defense contractors, noting their goal is to lowball contracts but keep control of intellectual property. Then, he said, they create vendor lock-in, and raise prices later. In other words, they underprice upfront so they can eventually exploit pricing power over the Pentagon. Chinese acquisition strategies are more efficient and less brittle, which means over time their military will overtake ours.
Defense is just one sector in which value & cost is out of wack. Health care & higher education are two other broken systems. Defense, health care & and a university education are bloated wasteful systems.
The wealth of the nation has been squandered via special interests that has subverted our government & economy for their personal gain. And this largely occurred in the past 3 decades via globalization in which a significant portion of the US manufacturing base & infrastructure has been off shored. And quite a bit to a nation which we eventually might be in conflict.
Globalization has also short shifted the working class & increasing income inequality within the nation. Thus changing an economic system in which most benefited to a nation is tilted to benefit the professional class & those of wealth. Unions crushed as union members job moved to other nations. All the while we sat in front of our cheap flat screen TVs listening to the bought 4th estate distracting our attention with their version of the truth.
Ok my rant is over. Back to your normal programming.
Another question is … who was in charge while this all happened? Was it the “ignorant” and “dumb” people - or the well educated and well connected in charge in key jobs and agencies? Last I checked, high level government jobs and academia required more than a truck driver certification…
Another question is … who was in charge while this all happened? Was it the “ignorant” and “dumb” people - or the well educated and well connected in charge in key jobs and agencies? Last I checked, high level government jobs and academia required more than a truck driver certification…
This is not an argument for putting truck drivers in charge of corporations and the government.
Truck drivers who have gained experience and credible managerial skills through the years? Of course.
But setting up professional and academic credentials as being a negative is the game of a know nothing populism that seeks only to destroy the very institutions that have enabled America to achieve the envied status that it has.
And this growing effort to overthrow institutional guardrails (in addition to being the antithesis of “conservatism”) is the main force behind the world’s worry that the US is losing its mind
Nope, not advocating truck drivers running the Treasury or EPA .
Just asking - who was in charge… and who wasn’t.
And perhaps one can deduce that a better mix of mindset it needed.
“Diversity” - only real.
Just because one wishes to question - who was in charge and truly mean “accountability is important” doesn’t mean they are denigrating education or smarts. Just putting out there that attitudes, methods, accountability - because as someone on the thread so eloquently pointed out - so much is screwed up - and was that way well before any recent populist movements or swelling of ignorance.
Absolutely want smart minds in America - all for it. Be it government, or not wanting to limit high tech immigration - as some do. Just wanted to point out that in a large diverse experiment as America - solely one mindset and one cookie cutter set of credentials - where the riches and positions are a revolving door between government, academia, think tanks , defense companies…- is not enough and at very least, must be questioned.
"Defense is just one sector in which value & cost is out of wack. Health care & higher education are two other broken systems. Defense, health care & and a university education are bloated wasteful systems.
The wealth of the nation has been squandered via special interests that has subverted our government & economy for their personal gain. And this largely occurred in the past 3 decades via globalization in which a significant portion of the US manufacturing base & infrastructure has been off shored. And quite a bit to a nation which we eventually might be in conflict.
Globalization has also short shifted the working class & increasing income inequality within the nation. Thus changing an economic system in which most benefited to a nation is tilted to benefit the professional class & those of wealth. Unions crushed as union members job moved to other nations. All the while we sat in front of our cheap flat screen TVs listening to the bought 4th estate distracting our attention with their version of the truth.
Ok my rant is over. Back to your normal programming."
Well said. Many of the cultural trends, and economic and trade policies led to some of what you said in that paragraph - some blindly promoted them - others didn’t. I am pleased to see, be it semiconductors in Ohio, or unions at Starbucks or Amazon - maaaaaybe some are coming around.