The Pentagon fails its fifth audit in a row | Hacker News Reader

The Pentagon fails its fifth audit in a row

responsiblestatecraft.org

144 pointsrsj_hn136 comments

My senior year in college, I interned at a government contractor. I joined a project which was already 15 months behind schedule, and was expected to take another 12 months to complete. Everyone on the project seemed fine with these slips. I asked why the government didn’t cancel the project and award it to another company - “they could, but it would take just as long to complete as we have left, so they won’t save anything.”

I was disgusted by this attitude and swore I wouldn’t work for that company upon graduation.

Jump forward to the career fair at college, and I spoke with a recruiter from another large defense contractor. Told him that same story, and asked if I’d find a similar attitude at his company. He quickly pulled me aside and told me that I should never repeat that story. I took that as a “yes”, and I enjoy repeating that story as loudly and as often as possible.

I decided to never work for a government contractor. Not because I disagreed with the work, but because I realized that working in a company with such an attitude was going to change me. I was worried that in 15 years, if there was a layoff, I’d have a hard time finding a new job, and if I did, I wouldn’t be a world class engineer.

I see a system where excellence isn’t rewarded, and instead, gaming the system, is the most profitable.

I’ve thought quite a bit about this problem, and one thing which might improve it, is a bidding system, where historical project “on time, under budget” is a weighted factor in contact awards. Maybe that’s how it works today?

> working in a company with such an attitude was going to change me

As a person who witnessed and interacted with many people from such companies - your gut was right.

> I see a system where excellence isn’t rewarded, and instead, gaming the system, is the most profitable

Well, it is like that in any structure with enough bureaucratic levels.

> I’ve thought quite a bit about this problem, and one thing which might improve it, is a bidding system, where historical project “on time, under budget” is a weighted factor in contact awards. Maybe that’s how it works today?

Nope. That's would make papers to be signed on the date, but the actual work would just continue - because the work wasn't completed on the date. Been there, saw that, didn't got even a lousy t-shirt.

The main problem here is what "under budget" is a moot point in the first place - if the project demands N money, then doing it under less than N money means one of:

1. the budget was calculated incorrectly in the first place. Maybe there was some kickbacks included in it?

2. the budget was calculated correctly, but the implementor did cheap out on something to have a bigger revenue of the project. Maybe cheap ass chinesium parts instead of mandated approved parts, maybe outsourcing/outstaffing to people who takes less than a market value.

So both the time and budget isn't ... valuable metrics for gauging actual performance, especially if something changes on the way - imagine bidding and winning some project what relied on a cheap Huawei gear before the current situation?

You could think what relying on completing the projects objectives/targets would be a meaningful metric... see about signed papers up there.

And the most wonderful thing of that is what even if you do everything on time, on budget, with A+ quality - nobody would say "Yeah, that's good, here is your money", everyone would try to find a anything, however minuscule thing it would be, what would allow them not to pay you money, all of it or at least a part of it. It's like people are paying from their own pockets for these projects.

I got called into consult on a project like that. Among the first things I knew to ask was "how many here know the contract isn't going to get renewed and are just riding it out?" Just about all of them. Then the sub stiffed me on the consulting work after the manager bailed.

I mean we knew it was going to fail the audit. The reason it has failed five in a row is because it has only ever had five. It's a work in progress. The point now is to make sure they actually make progress instead of slow-walking or depending on our apathy to stop caring after the first few times.

It's actually beneficial for them to keep failing so a president isn't set that there is a chance that it could not feel because the Pentagon is in such a situation that the public cannot just boycott or dismantle it

> president

precedent

A manchurian precedent

It wasn't that long ago that I was hearing about how audits were impossible at the Pentagon and they would just give up whenever it was attempted. This sounds like progress.

You're just echoing the article:

> The news came as no surprise to Pentagon watchers. After all, the U.S. military has the distinction of being the only U.S. government agency to have never passed a comprehensive audit.

Although your argument that it's supposed to force them to make progress doesn't seem correct:

> But what did raise some eyebrows was the fact that DoD made almost no progress in this year’s bookkeeping: Of the 27 areas investigated, only seven earned a clean bill of financial health, which McCord described as “basically the same picture as last year.”

Yeah, I guess it's a complaint about the headline.

War is needed to test it in production.

A better article was linked some paragraphs in - https://www.defenseone.com/defense-systems/2022/11/pentagon-...

Much better review of the internal complexities of DoD and the audit itself.

And if you’re really into this stuff, the actual report can be found here - https://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/afr/fy2...

It would be interesting to see a breakdown of the sorts of issues that caused the 21 segments to fail their audits.

I was hoping to see sexy scandals like missing gold from Fort Knox that was used to bribe overseas warlords, or maybe billions of dollars that were spent on secret stealth weapons. But from skimming through, all I see is boring stuff: revised actuarial tables to more accurately determine pension liabilities? Yawn! The realization that official balance sheets had underestimated the costs of cleaning up the DOD's various environmental disasters. Guh

I like the idea of the pentagon adopting corporate financial systems. At the end of the day, the soldier will connect from the battlefield with his rugged laptop and itemise every single bullet shot in fucking SAP. Likewise the F35 pilot will do his diversity training from his cockpit since the thing is supposed to fly itself. If every army does the same, we will bring peace to the world by means of overwhelming bureaucracy.

I am a bit confused. The intro seems to suggest there is a problem with book keeping, i.e. accounting for assets and expenses. That's kind of a problem. But then most of the article is about programmes being over budget.

When dealing with a large project, whether it is a new plane, a big infrastructure, anything large and unique, you should take any budget with a big pinch of salt, there is no way anyone can predict precisely how a complex project, that involves a lot of research, millions of moving pieces, is going to cost from the outset. A ship programme being 10% over budget doesn't seem particularly problematic to me. F35 is a different story.

They should hire Elon, he would trim the fat in no time.

It is as if the same people who can't do proper accounting now confuse the difference between accounting and budgeting.

Issue with books is not budget overruns but that money is unaccounted for. Money has somehow vanished. Where did it go? Why can't they figure out such a simple thing? Use double-entry book-keeping. Money that comes from somewhere must go somewhere. This suggests they/somebody don't want to record in books where the money went. Smells like corruption and criminality. Who got the money?

> When dealing with a large project, whether it is a new plane, a big infrastructure, anything large and unique, you should take any budget with a big pinch of salt, there is no way anyone can predict precisely how a complex project, that involves a lot of research, millions of moving pieces, is going to cost from the outset.

You are talking about uncertainty -- e.g. risk. But that should lead you to overestimate as often as you underestimate so that you're average is on target but there is wide variation in individual results. If there is a systemic bias causing you to underestimate costs consistently, then you cannot blame uncertainty for that.

The collapse of the Russian military mobilization, in some measure from corruption, should make financial accountability at the US DoD more urgent. Of course , much of the US corruption is legal (political donations, uncompetitive contracts, buy-US rules, revolving door for govt->private sector staff) and we need functioning audits to get our arms around it.

$2.1 trillion dollars unaccounted for. This is clearly by design.

American taxpayers have a serious problem with the government. That's nothing new.

Do we think this "narrative" (not sure what else to call it, if we supposedly have facts to prove how broken it is) will change in our life time? Get better? Get worse? Stay the same?

Why does it matter who we vote for if the whole system is a sham?

Because we could vote out the the whole sham if we united one day. But the powers are always dividing us while giving us the illusion of choice which is their fabricated narrative. An independent could technically win and wipe out the whole system in a poof.

Wiping out the pentagon is not realistically possible. You can vote in whoever you want, they won’t be able to dismantle the DOD beauracracy

While any such system can be changed or dismantled by popular will, it certainly can't happen by voting. Look at how slavery was dismantled - it took decades of organizing to create any wide-spread negative sentiment against it to even begin to make it possible to have candidates who would oppose it.

Who do you imagine could suddenly unite the whole country behind them as presodent strongly enough that they would actually be able to dismantle something like the defense budget? Do you even know how much of the economy is currently financed by that, and would have to go through a painful re-org if that money would stop, or even if the way it was being received changes?

Slavery _could_ have been dismantled by voting, just look at other UK colonies. The reason war was required isn’t that voting wasn’t enough, it’s that there weren’t enough votes.

Weird how some people forget that the south loved having slaves

It's not the voting that would have done it - it's the organizations that worked hard to convince people to care. People aren't blank slates who decide their positions in front of the ballot. Politicians supporting an idea don't just appear because that idea exists.

That's my point - not that it took a war to end slavery in the South, but that it took decades for slavery to become unpopular in the North (and the other UK colonies). It didn't just happen over night, same as one candidate that is anti the military-industrial complex won't appear overnight and be able to dismantle it.

You can't "vote out" the apparatchiks who run state agencies like the pentagon. If voting was an actual threat to the system, they would have gotten rid of it a long time ago.

I mean isn’t this literally by design in that we have a black hole for a lot of the secret military projects?

all countries have that. and yes, by design.

I was under the impression that money for such projects was an all encompassing line item on the budget.

> American taxpayers have a serious problem with the government.

Perhaps, but every other department first passed its audit at least fourteen years ago. The defense department has failed all 5 of its audits. This is in the article. This shouldn't be an opportunity to bash HUD and the EPA.

> This shouldn't be an opportunity to bash HUD and the EPA.

Yes it should. They're all fundamentally similar. Housing and environmental policy is a wreck. Same with energy. Same with healthcare.

I find articles like this very frustrating in their internal contradictions and failure to report anything of substance.

Is it the Pentagon that failed, the DoD, or the military? It sounds like it's the DoD, except for 7 components, but we're never told which components passed and which failed, so there's no possibility of intelligent discussion of the nature of the problem or possible fixes.

But still; how can an organization fail an audit five times in a row and there not be repercussions and large investigations to ensure its possibility of repeating are vanishingly small going forward?

1.5 million people are employed directly by the Pentagon (fact check me plz). Trillions??? in capital assets (planes, boats, ??).

750 installations globally plus deeply integrated relationships with multiple allies (military and fiscal). Allies train in the US and visa versa.

I can understand the monumental undertaking it would be to audit the Pentagon.

Oh yes, I forgot the audit also has to prevent leakage of national secrets.

Any waterfall attribution of budgets can be made with an little more than an Excel spreadsheet ;) but, to keep secrets, maybe they have to invent a special decentralized protocol. I’m sure someone is getting the same budget from several entities, and perhaps owns an island to spend it all.

After the second or third time failing with no consequences, the people involved must realize that there are no consequences for failing a fourth and fifth time.

I understand that cutting funding may be unpalatable, but couldn't they instead incentivize passing the audit by offering bonuses to middle-managenent for departments that pass?

Retrofiting proper accounting controls into an existing (extremely) large organization that was built without them is difficult work.

That the audits are run consistently each year now is a big step. In past years, it's sounded like a lot of progress was being made, but this year's press releases are not as bubbly about progress, although it seems the wheels of progress are still turning.

AFAIK, there's been no allegations of fraud or wrongdoing in these failed audits, just that there are insufficient controls to validate the numbers.

You could tie future funding to passing audits in order to have repercussions, but there's a question of if you'd rather have an unfunded military or an unaudited military.

Depends on the goal of the audit. The purpose of the audit may indeed be just that.

"The Pentagon" is the standard metonym for the DoD, similar to "The White House" for POTUS. So it's about the DoD as a whole.

Here's the actual DoD press release[1], and the DoD comptroller's website[2].

[1]: https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/321964...

[2]: https://comptroller.defense.gov/odcfo/afr/

The group that wrote this is not exactly a reputable source in the first place: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quincy_Institute_for_Responsib...

The existence of a "criticism" section on wikipedia does not mean a journal isn't reputable. But if you want to censor your own information sources that way, go ahead. The Quincy Institute -- which publishes Responsible Statecraft -- is a realist foreign policy think tank, designed to oppose neo-con foreign policy and advocate for a rationalist approach rather than an ideological approach. They opposed many of the foreign wars the U.S. has recently waged. Here is their mission statement:

"The Quincy Institute promotes ideas that move U.S. foreign policy away from endless war and toward vigorous diplomacy in the pursuit of international peace."

That, of course, is enough to make a lot of the redditors very angry, but it's certainly a reputable outlet. You can read more here, which has their mission statement, list of board members, and major funders:

https://quincyinst.org/about/

Funders include The Carnegie Corporation of New York, The Open Society Foundation, The Ploughshares fund, Ford Foundation, Streisand Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Foundation. Examine their full list of donors here:

https://quincyinst.wpengine.com/our-financial-supporters/

There is also a podcast you can listen to, called "in search of monsters". If you are a foreign policy wonk, you will get the reference.

https://quincyinst.org/category/podcast/

I would also argue that wikipedia is not an unbiased source on anything that touches politics or foreign policy, and it would be quite foolish to trust it as a reputable information source on those topics.

Firstly, it's not a journal. It's a think tank.

There is nothing "rational" from a US point of view in opposing the supporting Ukraine in this war. It has basically infinite upsides with no downsides. They obviously have funding routes that come from the Russian government.

Also it seems hacker news isn't following their own policies as a different comment of mine got flagged simply for noting the background of this think tank.

The article is in the journal - Responsible Statecraft -- published by the think tank - Quincy Institute. This stuff isn't hard.

In terms of rational or irrational, it's irrational to fight wars that destabilize the world and that you cannot win. It doesn't matter that you really want to win. It doesn't matter if you think you should win. That's the difference between acting emotionally versus acting rationally. The Quincy Institute distinguished itself by opposing many of our middle east wars for this reason - wars that we lost and that resulted in millions of deaths. The US has attacked or invaded over 120 nations since 1991, and that's not even counting all the color revolutions and coups that we've sponsored to destabalize nations all over the world because we didn't like their governments or we want to create chaos along the borders of our rivals. I'm sure an argument could be made that each of these nations were led by a government that didn't share our values or that did some bad things, but nevertheless it was irrational to follow this course. For example, we destabilized Afghanistan by sponsoring Islamic terror there, incentivizing the Soviets to invade. That was covered in the book "The Bear Trap". The result was the radicalization and destruction of Afghan society, and it also led to the promotion of Islamic terror all over the world, including the creation of Al Qaeda. So this was irrational, even though it felt good to give the Soviets an L at the expense of destroying Afghan society. Similarly we are sponsoring Kurdish terror now to destabilize Iran and punish Turkey, but it is again causing a coalition of nations to form against the U.S. We are currently supporting Myanmar terror groups attacking the Junta in order to cause chaos on China's border, and also radical islamic terror groups in Pakistan that are attacking Belt and Road projects. We dismembered Libya with over 50,000 bombing runs because it was a Russian ally and now the nation which had the highest standard of living in Africa is a Mad Max scene of rival warlords and open air slave markets. We engineered two violent color revolutions in Ukraine to install anti-Russian governments and urged Ukraine to not negotiate and not implement the Minsk 2 agreement, and now we are pumping it full of weapons so that they will fight until the last Ukrainian. We supported contra terror groups in Nicaragua, mined their harbor, and blew up their oil pipelines. It is a wreckage of destroyed nations all around the world, which only hurts our long term interests, and this is why it is irrational.

Firstly, "millions of deaths" is inflating things. Even the most extreme estimates put deaths in the hundreds of thousands. Most estimates put them in the tens of thousands for Afghanistan and low hundreds of thousands in Iraq.

As to your other point a broken clock can be right two times a day. Just because they took the very easy and obvious position of being against the wars in the middle east does not make them a fount of knowledge. The fact that they effectively argue for Ukraine surrendering to Russia shows how little they care about "responsible statecraft". There's a lot of groups that I used to support that correctly opposed the middle east wars but then suddenly flipped to giving tacit support to Russia.

From what I can see they are a "tankie" organization as they borrow many of the talking points. If it's America doing it they're against it, which is the common tankie position and if it's some other organization that America is helping defend against, then America is still in the wrong.

Responding to your edit. Edit: You keep making your post longer and I'm not going to read your additional edits.

> In terms of rational or irrational, it's irrational to fight wars that destabilize the world and that you cannot win.

The US is not fighting the war. Ukraine is. Additionally, it is Russia that had no way to win this war. There would be a forever insurgency had Russia succeeded as they didn't have enough troops to maintain the peace, assuming they hadn't lost any.

> It doesn't matter that you really want to win. It doesn't matter if you think you should win. That's the difference between acting emotionally versus acting rationally.

I agree. There was little chance for Russia to win this war and so they shouldn't have started it.

> The US has attacked or invaded over 120 nations since 1991

You got a source on that? That's a pretty outrageous claim.

> For example, we destabilized Afghanistan by sponsoring Islamic terror there, incentivizing the Soviets to invade.

You reversed cause and effect here. The former happened after the latter. Soviets invaded and then we supported the Islamic rebels to successfully win out against the Soviets. If we hadn't history would have taken a very different course. And as usual, one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist.

And none of that is relevant to Ukraine. Supporting the democratically elected government against an invading imperialist power.

> The result was the radicalization and destruction of Afghan society

Afghan society was based on tribal warfare, and is still based on tribal warfare. Nothing was changed. I've even heard anecdotes from some of those tribesmen who thought it was still the soviets invading when Americans showed up.

> So this was irrational, even though it felt good to give the Soviets an L at the expense of destroying Afghan society.

You think the Soviets would have preserved Afghan society had they taken the place over and integrated it into the Soviet Union? Just as minorities suffered in Russia, they continue to suffer to this day. They are second class citizens with their culture slowly being erased.

And again, supporting Ukraine in fending off an invading empire does not "destroy their society", it preserves it.

Edit: One last reply as you added some nonsense to your post at the end.

> We engineered two violent color revolutions in Ukraine to install anti-Russian governments and urged Ukraine to not negotiate and not implement the Minsk 2 agreement, and now we are pumping it full of weapons so that they will fight until the last Ukrainian.

Yeah this is pure lies. There was no US engineering of the revolution in Ukraine. It was entirely done by themselves. This type of propaganda you have fallen for is the problem with the nonsense put out by responsible statecraft. They repeat Russian imperialist state-written lies.

Secondly, it is the actually the west (mostly Europe) who instead pushed Ukraine into Minsk 2. It is something that Ukrainians hate more than anything and why they push back against any US politician or European politican who says that something else like that is created. https://twitter.com/christopherjm/status/1592427657601650689 Zelensky hates the Minsk agreements and has vowed that he will never allow a "Minsk 3".

> You reversed cause and effect here. The former happened after the latter. Soviets invaded and then we supported the Islamic rebels to successfully win out against the Soviets. If we hadn't history would have taken a very different course. And as usual, one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist.

No, you reversed cause and effect. Russia didn't invade Afghanistan for no reason. Why did it invade? Because the nation was plunged into a civil war with armed islamic groups, funded by the U.S., pouring into the country attacking the existing government that had good relations with Russia. Strange how the U.S. always funds radical, destabilizing groups all along the borders of its rivals.

> You think the Soviets would have preserved Afghan society had they taken the place over and integrated it into the Soviet Union?

The Soviets didn't care about "preserving society" because they are not hysterical children trying to engage in a moralizing foreign policy with a huge body count. E.g., they are not the United States. What the Soviets care about -- what any rational nation cares about -- is stability. They do not want radical groups causing chaos along its borders. Which is exactly why the U.S. funds radical groups causing chaos along Russia and China's borders. The U.S. is now getting kicked out of Syria -- why? Because they have been funding and arming radical Kurdish groups that have been causing terrorism in Turkey, Iran, and Syria, and all the nations of the region are uniting in opposition to this US proxy, and are actually inviting China in to help them deal with the Kurds. So the Kurds are going to get screwed once again - just like the last time the U.S. urged them to rise up against Saddam. The U.S. uses these groups as tools to smash enemies, and then the tools are the ones that get smashed. The same thing happened to the Uyghers, which the U.S. was supporting in various terror attacks in China and Southeast Asia until China had enough and decide to crack down on them. Again, the Uyghers suffer as a result of this policy. All over the world, you see this pattern, whether it is supporting contras in Nicaragua, neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine, muslim separatists in China, Kurdish separatists in Syria, Turkey, and Iran -- the U.S. funds these groups to attack and weaken their enemies, but the result is always blowback, first on the tools of U.S. policy, and then on the U.S. itself.

This is not a rational foreign policy, nor a diplomacy-first foreign policy. This is a foreign policy based on destabilization and terror - of spreading chaos all over the world that ultimately weakens the U.S. and carries a great human toll.

> Yeah this is pure lies.

These are the facts. There is no defending the death squads and Georgian trained snipers of Maidan shooting police, anymore than there is no defending the violence of the Orange revolution. These are just violent coups to install puppet governments, using them as a tool to smash geopolitical enemies, and the result is great human suffering.

You can try to say bigfoot is real all that you like, but without evidence little will come of it. I suggest trying to understand things better rather than spreading conspiracy theories.

There were no "death squads", other than those on the Ukrainian government side.

Here is the explanation why: https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/pentagon-audit-bud... .

"... When the DoD submits its annual budget requests to Congress, it sends along the prior year’s financial reports, which contain fabricated numbers. The fabricated numbers disguise the fact that the DoD does not always spend all of the money Congress allocates in a given year. However, instead of returning such unspent funds to the US Treasury, as the law requires, the Pentagon sometimes launders and shifts such moneys ..."

Oh the busted processes and contrary incentives abound, with everybody at a defense industry having all the anecdotes you'd care to listen to.

Here's one: an Engineer friend worked on a classified project. It apparently had a rocket thruster. He designed the chassis to withstand the thrust.

Then they wanted 10% more thrust. He'd overdesigned by 15% so signed off on it.

Then they wanted 10% more thrust. No can do! Have to revisit the bracing etc, use different materials, different processes to machine it.

Boss visits, says "You can't obstruct this project! It has to go through without delay. So just sign off."

He didn't. Recalled materials from railroad siding where they were stored pending machining. Changed drawings and processes. Signed it all now that it was correct and safe.

He never got another promotion or raise. Had to quit and work elsewhere.

What happened last time when they failed? Oh, nothing? Then why not fail again when it could be lucrative.

Well atleast inflation is a catchall accounting mechanism. Also you can buy into some defense stocks. probably the real reason governments don’t want central cryptocurrency, because they love to embezzle themselves.

You can't have the SecDef talking about "climate change" as a national security threat and expect any sobriety in the accounting department.

Political instability / war / mass migrations, and associated interruption to food and energy supplies - how are these not national security threats?

How is climate change not a national security threat?

Unsure when climate was constant.

Likewise, there has never been a time when the US has not faced any threats to its security.

Oh, absolutely. For example, actual rivals triggering a waste of resources on climate change, DEI, and the rest of the contemporary follies.

Ok. And how does that make it not a national security threat?

Not on any reasonable time horizon, no.

this person has no idea what they are talking about and is stuck in the kind of denialist rhetoric that seems cute 10 or 15 years ago but is now competely embarrassingly wrong

Consider reading on how the Bronze Age ended. That international economy was brought down by local instability that might have been kicked off by migrants from a minor climate event that sent economic effects cascading all over the known world, like dominoes.

The US military is nothing if not students of history, they believe the scientists, they can tell what's happening diplomatically - we're missing our emissions targets.

To me, it is ominous how seriously they are taking it.

And, not for nothing, but the US military facilitates huge amounts of climate research, on the poles and elsewhere. They're a big part of the reason we even know how much trouble we're in.

> The US military is nothing if not students of history,

Tactically/operationally, I'll give you a 'maybe'..

"Personnel is policy", and the true dogs of war, the Pattons, are supplanted by the poodles of DEI.

Ah yes, diversity, equity and inclusion, concepts obviously opposed to the principle of a peacekeeping mission. Remember that war is not the goal, but a tool for peace.

I'm just not with you here. The fact that DEI and climate change are part of policy for the US military reflects an awareness of the times, not a lack of it.

To believe otherwise is to stand firmly on the wrong side of history, in my eyes.

As a veteran, all of this frippery is a distraction from the actual combat mission of the troops.

Combat isn't the DoD's mission. It's one of the tools to achieve the DoD's mission of furthering US interests.

Sure, humanitarian missions. However, let's be clear: the DoD's reason for existing is warheads on foreheads. Don't make me get all "Patton" on you. :-)

Anybody remember the $10,000 toilet seat lids[0]? It's practically an open secret that a huge chunk of the military budget is just giveaways to the "defense" industry. California's biggest export isn't "tech". It's airplanes. The backbone of the world's 4th largest economy is the military. It's why Microsoft and other tech giants are all slowly transitioning to be government contractors. Elon Musk has never run a profitable company in his life yet is the richest man on Earth. He knows that where the real money is to be made is convincing government officials to fund fantasy projects like underground tunnels and get heavy funding. Tesla is only around because of heavy subsidization and straight up scamming the government (anybody remember the time they pretended to have battery swapping figured out just to take advantage of a California bill but still have not swapped a single battery? It's been 4 years!!)

</rant>

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/capitalbusiness/the-...

When you remember that the DoD is really just a $800B jobs program for segments of the population that would otherwise blush at accepting welfare (including many of the fine commenters on this website), it becomes easier to understand why it's culturally incapable of passing a financial audit.

Do you get the impression that a large number of HN readers work for the federal government or defense contractors? I certainly don't.

Plenty work for companies that contract with the DoD, even if they are non "defense contractors" in the historical/industry scope sense. Google and Amazon, for example, do brisk business with the DoD.

And, to be clear: I don't have any particular problem with that, at least any more so than anything about the general business of defense! I'd just prefer we be a little more honest about the financial structure.

I would bet the majority (or maybe even the vast majority) of HN readers work for companies that do some business with the DoD. The amount of money the DoD invests in virtually every US industry can't be underestimated.

This is quite possibly dumbest thing I have ever seen written on this site. You are grossly underestimating the DOD, its purpose and its necessity at a time when it is more important than it has been in decades.

Obviously, there is waste, failed projects, and pockets of dysfunction. That happens in all large organizations.

Despite all its flaws, the DOD is putting on a clinic on superior training, logistics, discipline, technology and power projection. I shudder to think what the world would look like right now and in several years without the DOD. Europe would be getting steamrolled if not for the DOD and NATO and it wouldn’t end there.

These things are not incompatible. And you'd be incorrect to think that I doubt the value delivered by the DoD.

My point is a very simple one: the DoD is as large as it is because the US has a cultural aversion to accepting welfare. We can't make it obvious that we want to build a large, well-educated, and financially stable middle class by dumping money onto it, so we build it up by dumping money into the DoD instead and ensuring that just about every (genuinely innovative!) facet of American industry gets a piece of the pie.

When the DoD is built into the lifeblood of your middle class like this, it is culturally impossible to audit it, because auditing it would reveal the truth so many Americans find embarrassing or politically repugnant: that their livelihoods come from government-driven funding intended to give them decent lives, not the invisible hand of the market.

You’re making a lot of interesting assumptions based on nothing I can see.

It would be fascinating to hear more about where you get these ideas from.

Probably from growing up in one of said areas that obviously majorly benefit.

What they’re saying is very much true, I’m curious of your upbringing & knowledge of the topic if you really think they’re wrong

You couldn’t be further off base.

I'm happy to try and walk through my assumptions (although maybe not at this very moment, since it's late here). If you list out the ones that you think I'm making, I'll try my best to substantiate them.

Your assumption is that " the DoD is really just a $800B jobs program," because people are too embarrassed to accept welfare. I'm similarly interested to see evidence backing that up. Another specific claim, for example:

We can't make it obvious that we want to build a large, well-educated, and financially stable middle class by dumping money onto it, so we build it up by dumping money into the DoD instead

FWIW, the DoD employs 1.3MM active duty service members, 750k civilians, and 800k National Guard and Reserve service members [1]. That's about 3MM people, generously rounding up. If you consider the surrounding defense industry, that's about another 800k jobs [3], so let's super-generously round up to 4MM. Considering that there are 207MM working age people in the U.S. [2], I'd be surprised if there was broad support for the DoD primarily on the basis of the number of jobs it provides or as a welfare alternative. That's $800k a year per job created! Seems fairly inefficient as a job creation scheme given the median salary in the U.S. is about $54k a year [4].

And compared to the 4MM jobs in defense, in 2019 roughly 59MM Americans were the recipients of some sort of direct welfare program [5].

1: https://trumpadministration.archives.performance.gov/defense...

2: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LFWA64TTUSM647S

3: https://www.clearedconnections.com/security-clearance-news/s...

4: https://www.thebalancemoney.com/average-salary-information-f....

5: https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/99674/...

Veterans Affairs is also a big Chunk of change that also goes on in perpetuity. 412k employees and 10+ million on benefits

Depending on how you count, defense industry could be 3.5 mil employees.

https://siteselection.com/issues/2012/sep/sas-military-econo....

War is a racket - Smedley Butler Major General US Marine Corps https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket#:~:text=War%....

Awesome quote, but war being a money making scheme does not make it a jobs program.

Reddit oozes with ideas like this

I think this is a fascinating perspective, or at least one I haven't heard before. I can't say I have a lot of experience with the military though.

Although now that I think about it, that's what ROTC is right? They pay for your education, and pay you to gain experience using that education on Defense, then when your obligation is met you can keep going or do your own thing with a patriotism-boosted resume. It's a win-win

This perspective is also brought up somewhat frequently when discussing NASA.

I assume woodruffw is referring more broadly to what used to be called the military-industrial complex, in addition to direct military staffing.

The gist of the idea is that the Department of Defense is a (the?) major funder of all sorts of industry in the US, typically in the form of contracts for products and services.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military–industrial_complex

You're vastly overestimating the reach and impact of the ROTC program though

Maybe, maybe not. Nobody knows. Not even the military, as per the article.

The article doesn't mention ROTC, and none of its few links that I opened mentioned ROTC either.

Your hand waving pessimism seems clearly unwarranted in this case. You think scholarships are just getting fired off with no one knowing who, where, or when?

At a decent guess for upper bound size, I see an estimate of 56% overall AD officers coming from ROTC. 2018 DoD demographics report puts total AD O-1 population at 28000, which should be a two year rank, so cut it in half for your new officers per year of 14000. Add 10% for people failing out, and you get about 8600 officers per year in ROTC, or a total of 34000 since it's a four year program.

I meant it more like ROTC was an example of one such program, of which I'm sure there are many whether directly like that or indirectly through companies.

Of course, using companies as a medium for propagating welfare has its own problems

The first parts make sense, your third paragraph is the tinfoil part. Assuming it’s failing an audit because it’s a jobs program is dumb as hell. There are more concrete reasons for the failure and I can tell you, as a DoD employee, it’s mostly incompetence and extremely overworked people.

> My point is a very simple one: the DoD is as large as it is because the US has a cultural aversion to accepting welfare.

What do you base this idea on? Wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_social_we... puts per-capita and per-GDP welfare spending high into the list of developed countries,

> We can't make it obvious that we want to build a large, well-educated, and financially stable middle class by dumping money onto it,

More than is already dumped in by the vast welfare programs? Isn't government welfare expenditure greater than the entire defense budget?

> so we build it up by dumping money into the DoD instead and ensuring that just about every (genuinely innovative!) facet of American industry gets a piece of the pie.

> When the DoD is built into the lifeblood of your middle class like this, it is culturally impossible to audit it, because auditing it would reveal the truth so many Americans find embarrassing or politically repugnant: that their livelihoods come from government-driven funding intended to give them decent lives, not the invisible hand of the market.

How so? What kind of thing could an audit say that would cause the population to act in a way the ruling class or the DoD would consider undesirable? And what kind of action are you imagining?

"Despite all its flaws, the DOD is putting on a clinic on superior training, logistics, discipline, technology and power projection. I shudder to think what the world would look like right now and in several years without the DOD. Europe would be getting steamrolled if not for the DOD and NATO and it wouldn’t end there."

For every bit of good the DOD does it kills, destroys and spreads enough suffering to AT LEAST nullify it if not vastly put it in the negative. That is without considering how all the money the DOD wastes on killing people and overthrowing other governments could be used to massively reduce suffering if it was put towards something more useful like infrastructure or healthcare.

The suffering is generally not in America. For American tax payers, that is a factor.

And a disgusting convenience, that as long as it is "otherworldly" humans at the other end of the barrel, it suffices

Most countries tend to look out for their people first. I can’t really see a realistic alternative.

> Europe would be getting steamrolled if not for the DOD and NATO and it wouldn’t end there.

You don't need the current level of US DoD spending for NATO to be effective. There are 8 European NATO in the top 20 list of military expenditures, 5 more countries who are allies while not being NATO.

But yes, Ukraine would likely be screwed.

You are grossly underestimating the DOD, its purpose and its necessity at a time when it is more important than it has been in decades.

Right. It's a $200B essential service plus a $500B jobs program.

Exactly this! And the part I want to impress: jobs programs are good! Essential national defense is good! I'm not against these things; I'd just like it if we could (1) be a little more honest with ourselves, as Americans, and (2) maybe cut out the middleman and just admit that we'd like a healthy middle class.

Yes, but butter is better than guns (most of the time). Take our escapades in Afghanistan: a lot of jobs but what do we have to show for it?

If instead we had a modern day CCC or such where we'd actually invest in our communities, etc., we could have far more healthy and prosperous society. But no, that would be socialism if we spent it on something nice.

At the risk of sounding cynical, what we have to show for it is a military with actual fighting experience. It’s a big part of why we and the UK are able to outfit and train soldiers in Ukraine, and why we have nothing to fear from rivals like China or Russia for decades to come.

Believe it or not, I get that, and I respect the capabilities and dedication involved as well (despite not supporting their missions). That said, we don't need such a huge MIC to derive that (effectively a blank check).

2 Wars with nothing to show and a cost of over $6T. We can do better than that.

Nothing good to show, plenty of evil planted in those poor regions (Afghanistan, Iraq) which will be fucked for many generations to come. And if having a better trained military makes it justifiable for somebody I dare to ask what kind of human being is he/she.

Ukraine is so far another story but nobody has clue how it will evolve. And none of that military experience is getting to any actual use and is slowly evaporating, its so far just about minor logistics, some satellite espionage and some troops training (which are not negligible skills but they alone don't win wars).

US military is a force for good no doubt in as far as US is a force for good. That is not the question. The question is are there some simple ways which could make it better?

Based on the article(s) it would seem there is a very simple way to make them better: Teach them accounting and require them to implement accounting controls.

With the almost absurd defensive advantages of the terrain and neighbors afforded to the US, the only effective existential threat is nuclear ICBMs or nuclear hypersonics. That in mind, it baffles me that half the DoD budget doesn't go to development of missile defense technology.

Autonomous drone networks with integrated NFC credit-card payments to pick up 3am gasoline at local low-monitor gas stations will be a threat. A swarm will be hard to defend against, and probably can be deployed stealthily.

Seriously confounded by this?

The US Navy protects international shipping, the disruption of which would be an existential economic threat to the US and its allies.

Jobs programs are good when they are intentionally designed as jobs programs to get productive use out of the employees.

Tossing half a trillion dollars into whatever the hell is a very bad way to spend government money.

Jobs programs are never good. You are taking money from productive people at gunpoint and then "creating jobs" which are functionally equivalent to digging a ditch and filling it up again.

> You are taking money from productive people at gunpoint ...

I really think it would benefit libertarians to get away from this particular argument. It's applicable to everything. They're making me dispose of my trash in a receptacle at gunpoint! They're making me pick up my dog's poop at gunpoint! They're making me wear pants at gunpoint!

Of course, guns aren't involved unless things get bizarrely out of hand, but the same goes for paying taxes.

Currently it looks like many like being in it, but don't like to foster it and vote themselves into poverty.

$500B/year to fuel how many, and what non-essential jobs? They could just as well exist in infrastructure instead of defense if that were the case.

> Obviously, there is waste, failed projects, and pockets of dysfunction. That happens in all large organizations.

Is there a commonly accepted like... loss of producitivty/efficency number in % that is accepted at large organization scale?

Like is it just assumed "a large corporation is 20% inefficient compared to... a startup/quicker moving company" and there's nothing that can be done/it'll always be that way?

When you have the solution for inefficiency / corruption at large scale, 8 billion people can finally stop starting wars againt itself, reverse climate change and feed the hungry people.

In my opinion sound money is the best thing we have to coordinate better at scale, but we are already far above what any animal species can do.

Is it really not the case that without the DOD, Europe would simply just have to spend more collectively on it's on defense than it does now? We're outspending them 3:1, and as excellent as our logistics and force projection are, I think another $250 billion Euro would help close that gap pretty quickly.

And DOD has more than just technical flaws.. the history of it's conflicts over the past 20 years leaves _much_ to be desired and the development of the world in that time has not significantly been towards peace. I'm starting to wonder if continuously projecting force for 70 years after the last major war was a wise strategy at all.

The audits are frankly the least of it.

> Europe would be getting steamrolled if not for the DOD and NATO and it wouldn’t end there.

How? Can you please elaborate a bit?

America spends more on defense than probably most of Europe. Look at the amount of aircraft carriers, aircraft, tanks, helicopters, ICMBs, submarines, and soldiers we have. It's a lot and I have a feeling Europe leans on America heavily and as a result under funds their own military greatly. As members of NATO, they may figure that they don't have to worry about a blitzkrieg from Putin. A lot of the power projected by America is from massive DOD spending in developing new technology like our carriers, tanks, missiles, cyber warfare/security, subs, various planes (JSF, F-22, stealth bomber, SR-71...etc).

However, this assumes no game theory. If America hadn't invested as much as it did in DOD, I think it would be weaker and Europe would have to compensate and would then produce more of it's own needs.

The issue is that without the US there wouldn't be NATO, and Europe wouldn't have replaced it with anything effective. The closest attempt at an equivalent is the EU army which has never got off the ground, and if it did would be structured in ways optimal for the EU's political goals rather than what makes sense militarily. Think dozens of smaller forces that don't speak each other's languages very well. US DoD has similar issues with congressional pork but it's still one organization and one military under one government.

Or we would be best bud with an appeased Russia, who knows in political fiction...

But your point stands: it does something, it serves a purpose, it produces output, a far cry from what the guy you responded to claimed. It's not a job program, far from it.

Please omit swipes and name-calling from your comments here, regardless of how wrong another commenter is or you feel they are.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I think that every group of people substantially bigger than a pack develops a dominating belly of mediocrity. You can say the same about any big corp, even FAANG are big and settled enough now. The percentage of really brilliant people is just too low. And if more of them flock together, Theo often don't necessarily firm a brilliant team.

Today also on FP: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33756219

We can't remove mediocrity because it by definition is what is in the middle.

We can remove corruption if we just have the political will. Assuming the politicians themselves are not part of the corruption.

You're not wrong in some ways. In my industry they gave like $50M to a small group of university researchers to come up with some truly useless research. Very smart people, but a huge waste and some of the projects cost millions to essentially do what someone in industry could do in a week, but wouldn't because there's no point. I imagine if you multiply that by 1000, you could get an accurate depiction of the university jobs program.

Check out the 2022 Congressional Pig Book:

https://www.cagw.org/reporting/pig-book

It identifies $8bn of pork. That’s a lot of money, but if the overall DoD budget is $800bn, then your claim is 1% true by that measure.

Is the DoD inefficient in other ways? Surely yes, but to claim it is “really just” a jobs program is unfair and teleological.

I think it's more of welfare to large corporations.

I wonder what the wealth redistribution effects are in this scenario. I wonder if you’d achieve a similar effect by cutting 500B of taxes on the middle class, or if a lot of this money gets redistributed down to the low-taxpaying class.

Without prison sentences for higher level people responsible, this is a pointless exercise.

Start throwing them into prison, and they will rat each other out.

For what?

For stealing billions of dollars.

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