We are all familiar with the “revolving door” between Defense Technology Corporations, The Pentagon and Civilian appointees of the President.
This practice, common since WW2, is both credited with making sure “expertise” and “competence” and “efficiency” are infused directly into the armed forces, no matter who is elected, and is applauded by Wall Street, shareholders and investors alike, as well as adding to a disgust Americans feel toward their own government for income distribution upward to the same military contracting opportunists and billionaires, over and over and over again.
After all, who knows more about military technology than the CEO’s, Shareholders, and upper managements of the Corporations who build and sell high tech electronics, radar guided, GPS refinements for targeting, sensing devices and instant imagine networks all controlled by high speed satellite communication technologies?
But there is a problem here. The industry and the military, called by Eisenhower the “Military-Industrial Complex” and now including Information Technology as part and parcel of the hardware industry, and its revolving door between civilian and military, has produced an industry which is not only the most profitable kind of government contracting, but also profits the same people over and over again, and the same shareholders and the same investors.
Now comes the news from “Demand Progress,” headed by David Segal, a grassroots group shining the light on an unholy alliance between the near-trillion dollar (and possibly Over a trillion dollars, who knows?) pentagon and intel budgets and “black box budgets” and private industry, that the current expected nominee of the Defense Secretary, Anthony Blinken, and Michele Flournoy and General Lloyd Austin are listed as partners in a firm called Pine Island Capital Partners.
So far, so good. However, Demand Progress that Pine Island Capital released an IPO of 200 million dollars days after Joe Biden’s election, and that all three partners are on short lists as civilian appointees in Defense and Intelligence, and.. that Pine Island released this filing with the SEC recently regarding its intention to capitalize on the new administrations’ emphasis on NOT cutting the Pentagon or Intel Budgets, while bolstering the electronic sensing infrastructure of the military.
The SEC filing from Pine Island reads thus:
“The reputations and networks of Pine Island Capital Partners’ team, both individually and collectively, will ensure exposure to a significant number of proprietary opportunities,” the company said in one SEC document. “We believe there will be increased demand in the U.S. defense market for advanced electronics, communications, sensor and detection processing and other technologies that enhance the modernization efforts of the Department of Defense’s military readiness. We believe this demand represents strong growth that our management team is uniquely positioned to capitalize on given our combined investment experience and deeply connected partner group of former U.S. defense and government officials.”
Very well said. Pine Island intends to “ensure exposure” to “proprietary opportunities” in view of “increased demand” for advanced electronics and sensor and communications tech. The “management team” is “uniquely positioned” to “capitalize on.. deeply connected… defense and government officials.”
I had hoped for better. I had hoped we, as Democrats, could break with Business as Usual in the Pentagon/Intel for Profit Business.
If we need better intel and military tech and better sensory and better communications, so be it. No argument there. It is only a huge problem when 1/3 of the Federal Budget is directed at enriching those who direct the policy, for their friends, their families, their old colleagues, and as such, is our first call out against Democratic Contracting Corruption to break with, and distinguish ourselves from, Republican Contracting Corruption.
Joe, say it ain’t so. Remove Blinken, Flournoy and Austin from any consideration as civilian members of your Defense/Intel team. “Surely you have a better man than that,” reported to be General Harold Alexande’s comment to General Eisenhower after his man Lloyd Fredendall was poleaxed in his first major battle in Tunisia at the battle of Kasserine Pass. Surely we can find better men, and women, with true disinterested administrative expertise.. not to benefit themselves, but the national security of the nation.
Let’s break with the past. It is time, way past time. If the Democratic elites are going to be pissed off at Progressive Democrats for the struggle for funding a new, reborn America with priorities OTHER than mass surveillance, death and destruction, let it begin here. On the other hand, the Democratic elites could just say, “you are right,” and let this kind of revolving door profiteering for war die, here and now. That would be the easy way out.