Apparently the crux of the article is that the military wants more private capital to flow in the defense industry and an healthier ecosystems because the few large companies which have become keys to the military complex have become really inefficient.
It’s interesting but a different point entirely.
There has been such a healthy ecosystem of smaller companies in the defense industry, but the pentagon has forced the companies to consolidate. See: "last supper" of 1993 for example, but even before that there have been decades of mergers.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/merger-mania-should-the-p...
This report has also some nice graphs showing that this has been a very long trend, see Table 1 and figures 2 and 3:
https://media.defense.gov/2022/Feb/15/2002939087/-1/-1/1/STA...
<https://steveblank.com/secret-history/>
Algolia search: <https://hn.algolia.com/?q=https%3A%2F%2Fsteveblank.com%2Fsec...>
His business dealings with the communist Chinese are a bit more concerning.
Edit for response:
> why did you put quotes around american enough
Because in my view you're either an American citizen or you're not. I think it's offensive to speak of being American being a matter of degree. Insinuating that Elon Musk is less of an American than anybody else with an American citizenship is simply offensive.
Came here to say this! Malcolm Harris wrote a book about this history (https://bookshop.org/p/books/palo-alto-a-history-of-californ...), recently discussed on an interesting episode of Tech Won't Save Us (https://techwontsave.us/episode/155_the_untold_history_of_si...).