As the world celebrates the victory of good over evil this Diwali 🪔, we’re reminded of the power of transformation in the face of adversity. In his latest article, The Defense Reformation ↴, Shyam Sankar, CTO of Palantir Technologies, calls for a profound shift to reclaim strength and resilience in the U.S. national defense. Reflecting on past victories and reimagining a more robust, adaptive defense, Sankar advocates a ‘reformation’ to fortify the American industrial base. Let’s harness this festive energy⚡️ toward impactful change. Read how Sankar envisions revitalizing a system that defends freedom and fosters global peace.
The United States is an undeclared state of emergency. Our Defense Industrial Base is broken. Everyone knows it — including our enemies. This is a hot Cold War II. The West has empirically lost deterrence. We must respond to this emergency to regain it. So today, I’m calling for a Defense Reformation. This treatise explains how we got into this mess and lays out the reforms we need to upend the system and rebuild the American industrial base. Here are my top 5 theses for reform: Monopsony is the root of what ails us. The root of our pathology is a lack of competition inside of Defense. We need to break the Monopsony at all costs by approximating market mechanisms as a key principle of design at DOD. What looks like duplication is insurance against complacency and unpredictability—there’s nothing more costly than losing because your one, hyper-expensive program turned out to be a lemon. Cost-plus contracting makes the nation dumber, slower, and poorer. Maybe it’s the right way to buy an aircraft carrier, but it’s the wrong way for 95% of things. Cost-plus robs companies of any reward for going faster or innovating on process, so they don’t. Compare that to the commercial market, where speed and innovation are king. SpaceX brought launch costs 1,000x cheaper. Give companies market incentives, they will give you market results. A budget is a plan, and no plan survives first contact. Our fiscal OODA loop is unsurvivable. No company could survive if it took two years to POM budget for projects internally, but we expect that to fly in government all the time. We must be able to reprogram money inside of 2 months, not 2 years. We must invest in closing the Cash Chain to close the Kill Chain. The person is the program: the primacy of people. The Defense Officer Personnel Management Act (DOPMA) must be reformed. Talent is not fungible. The great military projects of the last century were led by individuals (Groves, Rickover, Schriever, etc.), not committees. Instead of rotating officers every 2-3 years, we need long-term leadership and accountability. That’s how you get heroes, heretics, and madcap innovation. The only requirement is winning. The most important projects don’t come from requirements. They are born of America’s fundamental genius and creativity. The requirements process tries to look into the crystal ball and see the future. But the only requirement is winning, and that has to be fought for, discovered, and earned. Leave it to the innovators to do that. They’re better at it. I nail this treatise to the Pentagon Metro entrance not because I hate the DOD, but because I love America and want us to win. That will require us to empower the heretical Founders and Builders who can unleash commercial innovation in defense. And it will require us to smash the centralized, command-and-control system that’s holding us back. Read the full thing here. Then join the Defense Reformation to save America: https://www.18theses.com
