Defense companies that miss deadlines and increase costs should be punished with bans from bidding on new military contracts, Rahm Emanuel, ambassador to Japan, said according to The Hill, Tuesday.
The ambassador also proposed a five-year ban on buying back stocks or until deadlines are met for companies that fail to meet their commitments, adding that such a policy "would quickly get the attention of the C-suite."
He also recommended preventing “the big five” from bidding on contracts in some areas, such as emerging systems, and encouraging bids from startups and “small, ambitious firms only.”
According to the Congressional Research Service, the five largest contractors with the Department of Defense are Lockheed Martin Corporation; Raytheon Technologies Corporation; General Dynamics Corporation; The Boeing Company; and Northrop Grumman Corporation.
Emanuel said the “atrophied defense industrial base” is the “weak link” in the U.S. strategic posture and blamed the major defense contractors as having “zero sense of urgency or understanding at how U.S. deterrence and security commitments are being undermined,” according to The Hill.
Biden officials and lawmakers in both parties have called for reforms to America’s military production, with the bipartisan House Select Committee on Competition Between the U.S. and the Chinese Communist Party having focused a December hearing on “The Imperative to Strengthen America’s Defense Industrial Base and Workforce.”
Committee chair Rep. John Moolenaar, R-Mich., said that “bold policy changes and significant resources are now needed to restore deterrence and prevent a fight with the PRC [People’s Republic of China].”
Emanuel also called for employing “economic statecraft” to counter China, insisting that energy should be used as a “strategic asset.”
"Right now, our economic statecraft is absent — and that’s a ‘diplomatic’ understatement," Emanuel wrote, and called for marrying economic policies with "political, diplomatic and security policies."
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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