1. Subsidizing the Military-Industrial Complex: A Review of the Secretary of Defense Executive Fellows (SDEF) Program
- Author:
- Brett Heinz and Ben Freeman
- Publication Date:
- 04-2024
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft
- Abstract:
- For nearly 30 years, an obscure Department of Defense (DoD) program has given Pentagon contractors a taxpayer-subsidized opportunity to influence U.S. military policy, creating massive conflicts of interest — yet little scrutiny. This research brief offers a first of its kind look at the DoD’s Secretary of Defense Executive Fellows (SDEF) program, which sends U.S. military officers to work at major corporations for a year, and then return and provide recommendations to the DoD for how it might improve. Military contractors benefit disproportionately from the SDEF program. Twenty-nine percent of all SDEF fellows have gone to the nation’s top 50 government contractors, with 15 percent going to the “big five” military contractors alone. None of the 317 fellows in the program’s history has ever served at a public sector institution. Decades of SDEF recommendations have consistently focused on reforms that would both benefit corporations and bolster their influence over the DoD, including calls for a greater share of the agency’s budget to be given to military contractors, reduced oversight, greater private outsourcing of agency responsibilites, and the loosening of international arms trade regulations. SDEF also keeps the revolving door between public service and private profit spinning. Forty-three percent of SDEF fellows went on to work for a government contractor at some point in their post-military career. In consistently failing to distinguish between what’s best for corporate executives and what’s best for the American people, the SDEF program represents a dangerous embrace of the military-industrial complex. Whereas Dwight D. Eisenhower warned against the “conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry” whose “total influence” can be seen in “every office of the Federal Government,” the SDEF program explicitly advocates for it. SDEF has become a reliable method for corporations to disguise self–interested policy aspirations as helpful recommendations for DoD. If this program is to continue, DoD must act forcefully to address and minimize the unsettling conflicts of interest embedded within SDEF by: Enforcing a “one defense contractor per year” rule; Barring fellows from working in “government relations” roles; Exploring post–employment restrictions for former fellows; Re–balancing orientations away from undue corporate influence and political bias; Rationalizing program size.
- Topic:
- Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, Military-Industrial Complex, and Militarism
- Political Geography:
- North America and United States of America