The Role of Blue Ribbon Commissions in Addressing Political Challenges

Today's episode is about how the government procures military equipment. There’s a growing Washington consensus that we simply can’t buy the weapons we need, in the quantities we need, on the timelines we need.

To better understand what’s going wrong, we talked to Dr. Arun Seraphin. Seraphin just finished serving as a commissioner on a 14-person “blue ribbon commission” to investigate reforms to the way Congress and the military coordinate to buy things.

We got into:

How to design a commission to matter

Why the Pentagon’s IT doesn’t work

The value of pork

Directed energy weapons

Is the Asian pivot happening?

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