Gov’t funding is short-term, project-based, risk-averse, and prone to groupthink
One hypothesis I’d like to investigate is that we’ve gotten a little too centralized and monolithic in our funding. That is something to address. The […]
Economics
An indictment of government acquisition
NASA is working on the constellation program, they’re trying to go back to the moon for example and eventually to Mars. Then you have SpaceX, […]
What the DoD doesn’t understand about markets
Most people in economics think of economics as being a largely positive, scientific approach to studying. More than that: It is a set of questions […]
More on the slowdown in science and technology
The number of transistors you can pack onto a chip has been roughly doubling every two years, and that was coined as Moore’s Law and […]
Radical uncertainty + cost-benefit analysis = danger
Most big decisions that we take are unique. They’re one-offs. And that means you really do need to think through yourself what is happening now. […]
Lessons on competition for defense policy-makers
Nathan Rosenberg: The historical outcome of this long-term freedom to conduct experiments which, as I have argued, has been the central feature of western capitalism, […]
Nassim Taleb says prepare for the worst-case in fat-tailed events like pandemics and war
Russ Roberts: Another way to say it–and, again, to put it into folksy terms that I also got from you–is that you care about–you don’t […]
China’s tech is about speed and scale, and other differences with the US
For all intents and purposes, China plus the US is essentially the entire tech market. From a value perspective, the two countries have 90 percent […]
Is there really a Silicon Valley/Military divide?
We performed an in-depth analysis of all public US federal (sub)contracting data over the last four and a half years to estimate the rankings of tech companies, […]
COVID-19 contract update and unfunded DoD costs
A major DoD concern is the unfunded costs of execution during COVID-19. Section 3610 of the CARES Act allows the government to pay its contractors […]
Defense budgets are “sticky” in the near term
In a letter to committee Chairman Adam Smith (D-Wash.) and ranking member Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas), the Democrats, most of whom are in the Congressional Progressive Caucus, urged the panel’s […]
Why are defense programs so big?
Mother Nature does not like anything too big… Mother Nature does not limit the interactions between entities; it just limits the size of its units… […]
Creating high-reliability organizations in the Department of Defense
High-reliability organizations are an example of a topic that I believe has not received attention in military history. Sociologist Charles Perrow’s Normal Accidents was published […]
Should the Pentagon look to Detroit-style or Hollywood-style markets?
With the microphone and with recording devices [for example], you can reach the whole globe. So, that’s a huge improvement in productivity of a singer. […]
Marc Andreessen says it’s time to build. But what’s standing in the way?
Medical equipment and financial conduits involve no rocket science whatsoever. At least therapies and vaccines are hard! Making masks and transferring money are not hard. […]