In the Pentagon they must surely be on high alert. On Sunday, Feb. 9 President Donald Trump declared that it would soon become the target for Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Accusing it of “hundreds of billions of fraud and abuse,” Mr. Trump will unleash his insurgents, fresh from feeding foreign aid into the wood-chipper. Their work could not be more important, or more risky.
That is because America’s armed forces face a real problem.
Not since the Soviet Union launched Sputnik and built huge tank formations at the height of the cold war have America’s military vulnerabilities been so glaring.
In the killing fields of Ukraine America is being out-innovated by drone designers; in the seas and skies off China it is losing its ability to deter a blockade or invasion of Taiwan.
The stakes are all the higher because the Pentagon is a place where MAGA ideology meets reality. Mr. Trump’s foreign policy is transactional: this week he said he had begun talks with Russia on the future of Ukraine. But it is built on the idea that peace comes through strength, and that is possible only if America’s forces pose a credible threat. And what if DOGE goes rogue in the Pentagon? If Mr. Musk causes chaos or corrupts procurement, the consequences for America’s security could be catastrophic.
The problems are clearest in the struggle to turn technology into a military advantage. The drones over Ukraine are upgraded every few weeks, a pace that is beyond the Pentagon’s budgeting process, which takes years. American and European jammers in electronic warfare cost two or three times as much as Ukrainian ones, but are obsolete. Many big American drones have been useless in Ukraine; newer ones are pricier than Ukrainian models.
Another problem is that America’s defense industry has been captured. At the end of the Cold War the country had 51 prime contractors and only 6% of defense spending went to firms that specialized in defense. Today, just five primes soak up 86% of the Pentagon’s cash. Wary of driving more primes out of business, the department has opted for a risk-averse culture. Contracts are typically cost-plus, rewarding lateness and overspending. The resulting lack of productivity gains helps explain why building warships in America costs so much more than it does in Japan or South Korea.
Behind this is the nightmare of budgets. Two-year delays are aggravated by congressional squabbling. Pork-barreling politicians waste money by vetoing the end of programs. They guard their control over spending so jealously that, without congressional permission, the Pentagon cannot as a rule shift more than $15 million from one line to another — too little to buy even four Patriot missiles. When the Pentagon proposed diverting just 0.5% of the defense budget to buy thousands of drones under its “Replicator” initiative in August 2023, winning approval took almost 40 Congressional meetings.
Pentagon angst is as old as the military-industrial complex. Past secretaries of defense, including Bob Gates and the late Ash Carter, were philosopher kings next to their new and manifestly unqualified successor, Pete Hegseth. And yet the defense bureaucracy has always seemed to come out on top.
There are two reasons why this moment may be different. One is that the time is ripe. Not only is the threat to American security becoming clear, but a new generation of mil-tech firms, including Anduril, Palantir and Shield AI, is banging on the Pentagon’s doors. Indeed, Palantir is now worth more than any of the five prime contractors.
More controversially, Mr. Musk is eager to crack heads together, an enthusiasm which stems partly from the second reason to hope: his experience elsewhere. In the 2010s, to escape the ignominy of paying for rides to the International Space Station on Russian spacecraft, NASA put fixed-price contracts to provide such services out to tender.
Boeing offered something called Starliner; Mr. Musk’s SpaceX offered Crew Dragon at a much lower cost. Crew Dragon has been a huge success. Starliner has yet to fly a successful mission (and has left Boeing having to absorb billions of dollars of budget overruns).
From 1960 to 2010 the cost of getting a kilogram into orbit hovered at around $12,000; SpaceX rockets have already cut that by a factor of ten, and promise much more. Helsing, Europe’s only defense unicorn, takes a similarly nimble approach to development, continually updating its systems with data from the front lines.
Mr. Musk’s task is big and complex. American weapons need more AI, autonomy and lower costs. Where possible, they should be made from cheap off-the-shelf parts that ride on advances in consumer tech. The Pentagon should foster competition and risk-taking, knowing that some schemes will fail. A decade ago Carter set up a unit for innovation, but it was often seen as a threat. The Pentagon needs more of them. It should also listen to combatant commanders, too often drowned out by politics. Hardest of all, Mr. Trump will have to get Congressional Republicans to give the Pentagon a freer rein to spend and innovate.
Reforming the Pentagon is much harder than other parts of government. America cannot focus on preparing for war in 2035 if that involves lowering its defenses today. It cannot simply replace multi-billion-dollar submarines and bomber squadrons with swarms of drones, because to project power to the other side of the world will continue to require big platforms. Instead America needs a Department of Defense that can revolutionize the economics of massive systems and accelerate the spread of novel systems at the same time.
Mr. Musk and his boss are conflicted. If Mr. Trump prefers sacking generals for supposedly being “woke” or disloyal, he will bring dysfunction upon the Pentagon. If Mr. Musk and his mil-tech brethren use DOGE’s campaign to wreck, or to boost their own power and wealth, they will corrupt it. Those temptations make it hard to think that this administration will succeed where others have f ailed. But the hope is that they will. America’s security depends upon it.
