Is DoD’s Acquisition System for R&D Institutionally Corrupt?

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Most people have a good idea of what fraud, waste, and abuse looks like, but few recognize institutional corruption, because it’s “normal”.

From Harvard’s, Safra Center for Ethics:  “Institutional corruption is manifest when there is a systemic and strategic influence which is legal, or even currently ethical, that undermines the institution’s effectiveness by diverting it from its purpose or weakening its ability to achieve its purpose, including, to the extent relevant to its purpose, weakening either the public’s trust in that institution or the institution’s inherent trustworthiness.” – from “Institutional Corruption, Defined” by Lawrence Lessig.

Does the DoD have processes, policies, systems, or add-ons in place that negatively effect its existential purpose?  Are bureaucrat and industry insider’s cognizant of the purpose of Defense acquisition for R&D?  Bureaucrats have contrived a “Soviet-style” defense acquisition system at odds with the business ingenuity, adeptness, and innovation this Nation is known for.  What are the consequences of this separate and unequal system?

We discuss this and more in this frank podcast…

 

Sobering quote for the defense industry:
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children…” ~ Dwight Eisenhower, 1953

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  1. Thomas Bruneau

    These podcasts keep me motivated and inspired to continue to research and write on DoD acquisitions. I have summarized FAR 1.602-2 on pages 120-21 of my book. And, I experienced FAR 1.602-3 which was a total mess creating a huge amount of ill-will and waste of time.