Trading Honor for Influence: The Corrupt Cycle of Flag Officers in Defense Contracting

X post by Cynical Publius

I think it’s generally understood that one of Pete Hegseth’s biggest challenges will be to unwind the most pernicious effects of the Military/Industrial Complex.

But there is a little-known cultural aspect of this issue that I want to reveal, and Pete needs to break this cultural paradigm if he is to succeed.

I’ll explain.

I retired from the Army as a full colonel, and went to law school after retirement and became a corporate lawyer. I left the military and the defense industry completely and totally behind me, and never looked back. But I had tons of friends who stayed in and made flag rank, and I kept in touch with a lot of them. There is a cultural expectation in our military that if you make flag rank (i.e., a general or an admiral, depending on your service) that you have hit the jackpot, that pinning on those stars automatically means that you have joined the defense contractor gravy train, and upon your retirement from active duty you will be entertaining dozens of lucrative offers from defense contractors, making you rich. I know this because I have had these conversations with these guys, and there was even a time in my career where I did not find that offensive because that was considered normal and just—after all, you spent all those years sacrificing, why shouldn’t you be able to cash in on your success?

As a lawyer I have had these friends call me up, asking for advice on sitting on boards of directors, getting stock options, etc.—all the perks of being on the gravy train of defense contracting. They were so excited—finally they were getting what they thought they had earned.

I now know there is something deeply wrong with this.

Let me reiterate what I said above. THIS IS A CULTURAL ISSUE. The mindset of the modern military officer (and increasingly, very senior NCOs) is that getting a lucrative defense sector job post-retirement is a reasonable, normal and expected perk, and there is literally nothing wrong with it, legally or ethically (provided you follow the very rudimentary ethics rules in place for retiring officers).

NOBODY SEES A PROBLEM WITH THIS.

Pete needs to break this cultural paradigm. Somehow we need to make it unseemly and slightly distasteful for very senior officers to trade on their military honor for riches in a corrupt system of defense procurement. It needs to be seen as a form of legal prostitution—legal, yes, but you would not bring her home to Mother.

That sort of thing.

Something has to give.

And please don’t preach to me that the defense industry needs ex-uniformed types to be able to make products that will work on the battlefield. I know this. And there are plenty of retired O-4s, O-5s and E-7s who can do this work.

The flag officers are enticed mostly for their influence and their contact lists, not because of their skills.

It’s that latter practice that I find distasteful and corrupt.