New Report: Subsidizing the Military-Industrial Complex

I have a new report out today titled “Subsidizing the Military-Industrial Complex: A Review of the Secretary of Defense Executive Fellows (SDEF) Program.” It’s the first-ever analysis of a Department of Defense program known as the Secretary of Defense Executive Fellows (SDEF), which sends military officers to work at major corporations for nearly a year, after which they return with recommendations for reform of the Pentagon.

We found that the program disproportionately benefits defense contractors, with Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Raytheon all in the top 4 beneficiaries of fellows. These and other SDEF fellows often make recommendations which would benefit the corporations they worked at: more outsourcing, corporate subsidies, deregulation, reduced oversight, looser arms export rules, increased political power for government contractors, and more.

In addition, the program also has a significant revolving door problem. In a review of a large sample of former SDEF fellows, we found that 43% of them went on to work for a government contractor at some point in their careers. One comparison suggests that former fellows go through the revolving door at more than twice the rate of all Defense Department officials.

You can read the full report here, a summary op-ed here, some coverage of the story by The Lever here, and a Twitter thread summarizing some of our findings here. And, as always, you can check out more of my work at Brettheinz.com!