Kevin Duffy on national defense

The best, most efficient defense is a strong economy (i.e., must be free and open) and commercial ties (interconnectedness, your neighbors have too much to lose by going to war with you).  Neutrality is also important to avoid entangling alliances.  High gun ownership levels provide a second line of defense.  This is basic Founding Fathers stuff. 

The U.S. also has the enviable position of friendly neighbors to the north and south and oceans to the east and west.  This is probably the most defendable place on earth.  There is no way the U.S. needs to spend 3.5% of GDP on its military, i.e. 40% of the world total with 4% of the world's population. 

The military industrial complex is a problem.  They are not exactly an impartial assessor of global threats.  They're a protection racket that constantly needs to justify their own existence.  Like all government entities, they want to grow.  They can't be trusted and they're constantly creating external enemies and making us less secure.

~ Kevin Duffy, April 20, 2025

Stephen Mack on how defense spending is off limits for DOGE

Is the DOGE initiative a delusion? 

The DOGE initiative promulgated by Elon Musk is being widely celebrated for all of the savings that it has realized.  Much of that savings is attributed to cancelled government contracts across the various federal agencies and departments.  A table of the savings can be found at the DOGE web site [see here].

An analysis of the savings shows that the Department of Defense (DOD) has been essentially untouched by DOGE.  As of 3/20/2025, of the 5,630 cancelled contracts on the list, only 25 (0.44%) are associated with DOD.  Of the notional $19 Billion in total savings, DOD contract cancellations only contribute $10 Million (0.053%) to the total. 

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It must be noted the waste, fraud and abuse at DOD has been documented over many years with many acquisition boondoggles and profligate dysfunctional financial management.  The Pentagon has "failed" all recent audits.  But little has been done to correct the systemic dysfunction in the Pentagon.  DOGE appears to be strangely reluctant to address the pathological elephant in the fiscal living room.

It should also be noted that Elon Musk sees DOD as a target rich environment for his companies.  Is the DOGE interest in addressing the fiscal pathologies in the Pentagon inversely proportional to Elon Musk's interest in making a lot of money from the Pentagon?

~ Stephen Mack, LinkedIn post, March 21, 2025

Mike Huckabee wants to spend 6% of GDP on defense to fight war on terror

Right now, we spend about 3.9 percent of our GDP on defense, compared with about six percent in 1986, under President Ronald Reagan.  We need to return to that six percent level.

~ Mike Huckabee, "America's Priorities in the War on Terror: Islamists, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan," Foreign Affairs, January/February 2008