Out of all of the hires of this new administration, Hegseth is the most surprisingly competent.
What about this is showing competence? So far it’s just a wild promise of success
The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed
51–60 of 527 posts
Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed
#52Department of Defense... unless Congress changes the name.
War.gov seems pretty official, so according to the USG official site, it is Department of War.
Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed
#53I was very confused until I realized the author was Steve Blank not Steve Klabnik.
I'll be honest with you: every time I see a link to his blog here I go "oh no why is a post of mine on HN I didn't even write anything" and then realize it isn't me. Ha!
Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed
#54Embarrassing regurgitation of propaganda. This is basically the military DOGE. Are these systems dysfunctional in some ways, could well-intended sweeping reforms improve them? Sure, maybe, I don't know much about it. Is that what's happening here? No, this a way to get the existing functions out from under the oversight and constraints of acquisition laws to reduce friction for corruption and war profiteering. If you…
Steven Blank (the author) is a respected member of the startup community and is not partisan. He's been working with the defense department for 10 years (across both administrations) to modernize the way the military buys technology. His work to create the "hacking for defense" project to modernize things is not at all like DOGE and preceeds it by many years https://www.h4d.us/
He's also never worked on any project involving delivering physical goods to DoD.
It's one thing to chuck software at DoD, it's another to try and put together a new IFV when a bunch of competing interests have their opinions and you are trying to balance it all.
Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed
#55Embarrassing regurgitation of propaganda. This is basically the military DOGE. Are these systems dysfunctional in some ways, could well-intended sweeping reforms improve them? Sure, maybe, I don't know much about it. Is that what's happening here? No, this a way to get the existing functions out from under the oversight and constraints of acquisition laws to reduce friction for corruption and war profiteering. If you…
Steven Blank (the author) is a respected member of the startup community and is not partisan. He's been working with the defense department for 10 years (across both administrations) to modernize the way the military buys technology. His work to create the "hacking for defense" project to modernize things is not at all like DOGE and preceeds it by many years https://www.h4d.us/
He’s using partisan terminology like Department of War. Fairly certain he’s a partisan
Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed
#56Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed
#57Department of Defense... unless Congress changes the name.
War.gov seems pretty official, so according to the USG official site, it is Department of War.
De facto vs de jure. The Trump admin can create any .gov domain they want (doge.gov, trumpcard.gov) and use whatever terminology they want but it doesn't adhere to the law necessarily.
Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed
#58Remember Fat Leonard? This time there's going to be more than one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_Leonard_scandal
Like piggies to the trough.
There are plenty of things to criticize in procurement. I don't see this as a useful reaction or attempt to fix issues in a long term way.
Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed
#59More weapons more quickly. This is what I want. I'm sure they will be used for good. /s I'm sure there are good reasons for this, and the approach doesn't seem totally unreasonable, to be fair. I'm just personally woefully unequipped to understand how to deploy weapons humanely and morally, and naively think less weapons is better. Thankfully there are adults in the room making these decisions for me...
>deploy weapons humanely and morally A bit of an oxymoron there wouldn't you say? >naively think less weapons is better This I agree with. We should really only have a few dozen nuclear weapons, and nothing more. The whole point is to have a clear line of "DO NOT FUCKING CROSS AT ALL", and that's it. You cross us? We nuke you. We don't bother you, you don't bother us unless you want to face nuclear annihilation. Seem…
> You cross us? We nuke you.
It's a nice theory, but it works only if every act of war is clearly an act of total war and there's a responsible party to nuke. Who were we supposed to nuke after 9/11? Who do we nuke if the next big North Korean hack takes out Microsoft instead of Sony? Or if it disrupts the US power grid for a week? Who do we nuke if Russia props up the regime in Iran and Iran props up a terror group that attacks our close ally?
That's the thing: nuclear wars appear to have a good track record of preventing conventional war in the mold of "we show up at your border with tanks". But it doesn't prevent the kinds of conflicts in which nuking another country might not be a defensible reaction.
Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed
#60Department of Defense... unless Congress changes the name.
Department of Defense always sounded too close to Ministry of Truth.