Revolving Door
By In my latest WPR column, I try to think through specifically who gets hurt by the migration of retired generals and admirals into the defense industry:
For a variety of reasons, traditional defense suppliers have huge advantages over newcomers, even when the technologies in question are non-traditional, because they already have an understanding of DOD requirements and a feel for the DOD procurement process — and because they employ many, many retired members of the armed forces. New suppliers lack these advantages, even when they have a superior or more-innovative product, and as a result have a hard time breaking into the defense business. This limits innovation to the small number of traditional defense suppliers, which in turn limits potential competition for even those products that civilian firms could theoretically supply.
The increasing number of senior military officers who have taken jobs in private-sector defense firms exacerbates this problem.