Unit X

↻ 2025-02-17

This book was published in 2024 and it’s almost irrelevant today, in early 2025. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing yet, time will tell, but I am nearly certain that DoD procurement won’t be recognizable in five years.

As much as I agree that the technology we use in war is not as sophisticated as our commercial technologies, I don’t necessarily believe it must be. They are parallel courses, just as a government is not likely to function as a business, or it would not need to be a government.

Government does the things which don’t occur naturally in the market. Defense does things which are required for war. These aren’t the same as running Apple Computer. They might have some overlap, but they’re not identical, and the differences are important.

To the extent that investment is the key to the technologies needed for war, I can understand why the authors (and organization they ran) took the path of investment. That’s worked for In Q Tel and others for years, and it’s sensible. But it doesn’t change the fact that war technology will always be on a separate track than the development of your iPhone.

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