The Pentagon’s IPO for War: Now With 100% More Cowbell

The Pentagon’s acquisition system is being overhauled into a “Warfighting Acquisition System,” turbocharging weapons production, slashing bureaucracy, and empowering officials to deliver arms at “wartime speed.” Portfolio Acquisition Executives now wield sweeping authority, startups are courted like prom queens, and the defense industrial base is being rebranded as Silicon Valley with missiles.

So much for the “peace president”—Trump’s arsenal of freedom looks more like an IPO for war, where venture capital meets missile launchers and bureaucrats cosplay as battlefield commanders.

Forging the Arsenal of Freedom

Related:

FoRGED Act Documentation

Pentagon Appointee Opposes ‘Belligerent Military Initiatives’ Aimed at China

The Pentagon official tasked with overseeing U.S. defense policy toward Southeast Asia recently advised against pursuing hawkish defense policies and a major trade war against China, a marked contrast with top Trump appointees.

John Andrew Byers, a longtime history professor who oversaw the Charles Koch philanthropic network’s grants promoting libertarian foreign policy stances at universities, was sworn in this week as the deputy assistant secretary of defense for South and Southeast Asia — a role that immediately thrusts him to the center of America’s response to China’s ongoing military pressure campaign targeting the Philippines, with which Washington holds a mutual defense treaty.

Pentagon Appointee Opposes ‘Belligerent Military Initiatives’ Aimed at China

Related:

Lowy Institute: Trump’s grand bargain? The Philippines caught between US and China by Richard Heydarian

CGS non-resident fellow Andrew Byers co-authors article with The American Conservative

Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for South and Southeast Asia: Andrew Byers

“THE US SIGNALS READINESS TO LAUNCH NUCLEAR STRIKE AGAINST RUSSIA” 🤯

By John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with

Last week on October 19 the US Navy announced that “General Michael ‘Erik’ Kurilla [lead image, lower right] , commander of CENTCOM, conducted a visit aboard the USS West Virginia [top], a U.S. Navy Ohio-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine at an undisclosed location at sea in international waters in the Arabian Sea. Kurilla was joined on the USS West Virginia by Vice Admiral Brad Cooper [lower left], commander of the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet and NAVCENT.”

“THE US SIGNALS READINESS TO LAUNCH NUCLEAR STRIKE AGAINST RUSSIA”