The $1 Trillion Defense Budget will be Test Free.

But It Will Be Autonomous

The late Admiral Hyman Rickover, father of the nuclear navy, once suggested that the way to reform the Pentagon bureaucracy was to instruct the entire workforce to go outside and form two circles around the building, and then promptly fire the outer circle. The Trumpian leadership now installed in the military headquarters is clearly fearful that Elon Musk’s Red Guards will storm the building and implement draconian cutbacks in the spirit of Rickover. Hence the memo issued by Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg on April 7 ordering a sweeping overhaul of Pentagon management. The memo is replete with directions to clear away redundant positions and sprinkled with invocations of “streamlining” and “innovation.” This may or may not be enough to keep Musk’s minions at bay, but taxpayers should not expect that the end product will produce “the most lethal fighting force the world has ever known” - an aspirational pledge common amongst all factions of the war party, very much including Democrats.

The word “test,” as in testing weapons to ensure they are operationally effective, does not appear in Feinberg’s edict. Nor does it show up in Donald Trump’s April 9 executive order mandating a streamlined weapons-buying process, thereby promoting innovation.

Stockholm Syndrome in the Weapons Labs