SPECIAL REPORT WRITTEN BY

March 2020 Marcus Weisgerber

Katie Bo Williams
SECURITY REPORT
 SPECIAL REPORT MARCH 2020
SECURITY
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REPORT Kevin Baron
Loren Dejonge Schulman
Patrick Tucker

IN

1 AMERICAN READINESS
ENGINEERING
EFFICIENCIES
Digital engineering, AI-powered analytics,
and virtual training can equip the military
to overcome adversaries—and time and
budget challenges, too.

LEARN 5 WAYS TO DRIVE

READINESS AND CONTROL COSTS
AT BOOZALLEN.COM/READINESS

Sonya: Army Solutions Engineer, Booz Allen

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page 03 National Security Is Made

of People
We need a way to measure the readiness of our
civilian national-security workforce. Then we need to
fix it.

Page 07 'Are You in This? '

If so many Americans believe Russia is an ally, China
is a good business partner, and terrorism isn’t worth
fighting anymore, how can the United States be
counted on for global security?

Page 10 Will Flying Cars Help the US Beat

China? The Air Force Hopes So
Foreword Service officials say giving American manufacturers
first-mover advantage is just as important as the
Americans are passionately engaged on domestic politics and issues, yet far military benefits of vertical-lift buses.
less so in national-security affairs. The U.S. military grows increasingly insular,
Page 13 Amazon’s Bezos Hits Silicon
diplomatic-corps applications are down, government workforce and structures
are outdated, and too few Americans are entering national security professions Valley For Not Working With
to staff the monumental security tasks required. Why? What needs to be done Pentagon
about it? His comments come as his company fights to wrest
DOD’s giant cloud contract from Microsoft.
In November, Defense One and the Center for a New American Security, or CNAS,
launched the American Readiness Project, a yearlong series of news articles, Page 16 Meet the House Republicans Who
commentaries, and events to explore just how interested and prepared the nation
Want to Rein In Trump On War
is to be a global security leader. Here are some of the first articles. Stay tuned
After the Soleimani strike, a working group of
for more.
moderate Republicans and Democrats trying to
Bradley Peniston “clarify” Congress’s war responsibilities hope they
Deputy Editor, Defense One can build momentum.

AUTHORS: Marcus Weisgerber Loren Dejonge Schulman

Katie Bo Williams Patrick Tucker
Kevin Baron

3 AMERICAN READINESS
 STORY ONE
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Screaming Eagles

A U.S. Coast Guard Sector San

Diego MH-60T Jayhawk
helicopter crew conducts a
search and rescue demonstration
in San Diego, August 10, 2019.

| Petty Officer 1st Class Patrick

Kelley

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“I AM SHOCKED by the declining state of our civilian workforce. No enemy in

the field has done more harm to this vital component of our national security
than the cuts, neglect, and toxic rhetoric of the past decade”…said no Defense
Secretary or Secretary of State ever.
For several years, members of Congress and senior defense officials have
worried, dramatically and out loud, about the state of military readiness,
devoting bipartisan harangues and billions in emergency spending to repair-
ing a crisis that never quite seems to end. As typically understood, military
readiness—the ability of forces to do what the nation asks of them—is worth
careful consideration. The Department of Defense spends remarkable effort
and resources in sustaining and measuring readiness, while shushing public
debate. The national-security-wonk world devotes commensurate time assess-
ing whether military readiness considers the right measures, or if a crisis really
exists, or if we can define what forces should be ready for. Regardless, there
is a common understanding that if military readiness is unsound, U.S. national
security may be at risk.
Remarkably, there is no such common understanding of the readiness of the
U.S. Air National Guard / Staff Sgt. Patrick Evenson national security civilian workforce—no metrics, no tirades, no constituencies,
no bestowing value. There is increasing recognition that great power compe-
STORY ONE
tition will not be waged principally in the military sphere, and civilian domains
will be vital in this era. But the most bipartisan, universal assessments of the
national security personnel required to execute in those domains is disdain:
lazy bureaucrats, unelected conspirators, back-office functionaries, retired-
in-place cubicle-dwellers. The most consistent policy agendas applied to the
national security workforce is to cut them.
The practice of denigrating and ignoring the civilian men and women who

National Security Is are as much a part of our national security as their uniform counterparts
has to end. Sustaining our military advantage will not be a sufficient mea-

Made of People sure to keep our strategic advantage, nor is the military capable of fulfilling
government demands in economic, diplomatic, ideological, or technology
competition. Indeed, to understaff and undermanage civilian counterparts
does our uniformed force an enormous disservice. We measure what we
We need a way to measure the readiness of our civilian
value, we manage what we measure. Why, then, are there no national security
national-security workforce. Then we need to fix it. civilian readiness metrics?
The time to develop them is now. With its democratic values, open
By Loren Dejonge Schulman economy, and diverse citizenry, the United States possesses a number of
distinct advantages in the development of human capital, and public service
remains a top career choice for young people. But taking these for granted
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U.S. AIR FORCE / Sgt. Jeremy T. Lock
will squander them. As I wrote earlier this year, the
federal national security workforce is entering a
perfect storm shaped by workforce demographic
trends, short-sighted leadership, slow adaptation to
modern challenges, and inflexible talent acquisition
and management. Young talent—a key source for
innovation and fresh thinking—is wildly underrepre-
sented. Repeated hiring freezes, wage freezes, and
below-average pay increases have crushed morale
and retention, with no evidence that congressional
or policy leaders considered their impact on the
future workforce. Mid- and senior-level talent is
departing in disproportionate numbers across key
agencies. Government hiring practices are anti-
quated and slow, and they deter as much talent as
they acquire. High-demand technical talent is wary
of government service, often for excellent reasons.
Imploring testimony and commentary highlights
“the demolition of U.S. diplomacy” or the weakening
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of civilian control.
In a future crisis, the people required to manage
such events on behalf of the nation will not be in
the right place. They are not waving, but drowning.
If the White House or Congress decided to throw
a life preserver, how might they define national
security workforce readiness? It’s hard enough to
define readiness for military units, but a national
security civilian equivalent might include the abil-
ity of the national security civilian workforce to:
accomplish the tasks demanded by the president;
to meet assigned missions; and to conduct the range
of policymaking (informing, developing, communi-
cating, implementing, or evaluating) on matters of
urgent national security interest. These are a start,
but worth iterating on. Routinely described as an
art, not a science, the prospect of quantifying the
effectiveness of policymaking is challenging.
But the ingredients of effective national security
policymaking may be easier to understand. To make
its assessments, the Defense Readiness Reporting
System measures personnel, equipment on hand,
supply/maintenance, and training—a limited metric,
as Todd Harrison has written, for only evaluating
inputs instead of outputs, and presuming the inputs
on hand are right correct ones. Still, to start, national
security readiness metrics might assess:
ɰ The number and trend of national security personnel fluent
in languages relevant for great power competition (e.g., China
and U.S-Asia allies and partners).
ɰ The number and trend of national security personnel with
experience and expertise in area studies relevant for great
power competition.
ɰ The number and trend of technical personnel with
experience and expertise in emerging technologies with sig-
nificance to great power competition.
ɰ The number and trend of economic technical personnel with
experience and expertise in economic security and statecraft
career fields.
Raw numbers of personnel don’t say much about
effectiveness, as DOD acknowledges in its own
readiness measures, and evaluations on how good
civilian personnel are at their underlying tasks don’t
exist in the same way they do on the uniformed side.
But proxies of such assessments are possible if you
draw out what environment is necessary for good
policy to flourish. These are subjective, but such
measures might include:
ɰ Availability and growth in funding for priority substantive,
managerial, and technical professional development of the
national security civilian workforce.
ɰ Effective use of talent management systems with high-qual-
ity and accessible data inputs and modern evaluative metrics
for career transitions and promotion.
ɰ Retention and return metrics on high-value recruits.
ɰ Agency and national security workforce diversity metrics.
ɰ Low barriers to talent movement between departments and
agencies, as well as on- and off-ramps between federal, aca-
demia, and private employment.
ɰ Low barriers to accessing external expertise for policy chal-
lenges (from consultative agreements to temporary clearances
to physical visit barriers).
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ɰ Time required for national security nominees to secure
Senate confirmation.
ɰ Time and steps required to launch diplomatic and develop-
ment initiatives requiring congressional approval (compared
to time and steps required to launch security force assistance
missions).
ɰ Frequency of authorization legislation for key components
of the national security bureaucracy, and quality of delibera-
tive and transparency development of authorization
legislation.
But much of what ails the national security
workforce is arguably cultural. As I wrote in April,
“painting bureaucrats as lazy or even evil has
become an accepted, if short-sighted, political posi-
tion across partisan lines, to include by executive
branch leaders…Trust in the assessments of the
intelligence community, the loyalty of the diplomatic
corps, and the judgment of the average policymaker
has been questioned by senior officials, publicly
and privately.” A similarly negative tenor shapes the
relationship between the national security estab-
lishment and key technology innovation hubs. Civil
servants themselves rightfully question whether
they are being adequately protected from political
retribution. And across the board, transparency on
national security objectives and activities remains
low. In short, it’s popular to hate national security
bureaucrats—and for those bureaucrats to hold the
American people at arm’s length—and that’s bad
for America. Metrics to assess this environment
might include:
ɰ Instances of toxic and positive rhetoric on national security
bureaucrats from the White House, federal agencies, and
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TWO EMPLOYEES / U.S ARMY .COM
Congress.
ɰ Senior political appointee commitment to workforce devel-
opment, such as leader-driven human capital strategies and
performance reviews considering workforce health.
ɰ Procurement, research and development relationships
between national security agencies and technology innovation
hubs.
ɰ Workforce surveys on responsiveness of inspectors general,
EEOC, Merit Systems Protection Board, and other workforce
protection mechanism.
ɰ On-the-record press availabilities and public speaking
engagements by confirmed senior officials.
The national security workforce rightfully has a
reputation of exclusivity, secrecy, and traditionalism.
While such an atmosphere has benefits in high-risk
environments, it also serves as an obstacle to the sort
of talent these agencies should want to draw from.
Barriers that deter national security workforce hires
are some of the most measurable factors to include
any readiness determination, such as:
ɰ Number of positions requiring high-level security
clearances.
ɰ Overlap between security clearance review flags and desirable
hiring traits, such as international connections and
experience.
ɰ Time required for fully cleared national security hires between
preliminary offer and on-boarding.
ɰ Pay metrics for comparable career and educational fields in
the government and private sectors.
ɰ Formal benefit availability comparison between government
and private sectors.
ɰ Informal benefit availability (e.g., flexible workplaces) com-
parison between government and private sectors.
These are obviously notional; you can surely
develop better ones—and you should! Today, not only
are there no such measures, there is no constituency
for caring about what they evaluate, and no political
benefit to pursuing that. That must change if the United
States is to even claim it is engaging in great power
competition.
With such metrics—yours or mine—perhaps some-
day a senior official will declare: “if we do not maintain
our commitment to remain strong in the cubicle, on
the cable crosshatch, and yes, in the embassy, then we
will pay the butcher’s bill in blood, and we will forever
lose the precious gift of our freedom.”
Or…maybe not.
STORY TWO
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Chinese sailors stand in formation

before a visit by Chief of Naval
Operations (CNO) Adm. John
Richardson to the People's
Liberation Army (Navy) (PLA(N))
headquarters in Beijing Jan. 14,
2019. | Chief Mass Communication
Specialist Elliott Fabrizio

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LONDON — In the telling of the impressively interactive Imperial War Museum, World
War I began as something of a sideshow spectacle for Britain’s rich and comfortable
and disengaged. Just a few decades removed from the peak of empire, the coun-
try’s richest 1 percent owned nearly 70 percent of the wealth. Recruiting posters
advertised war as a nearby adventure for commoners: “There’s room for you!”
But within years, the urgency of total war became clearer. Later posters show
Britons from all walks of life lining up to serve and contribute to the fight. Eventually,
every citizen was asked to sacrifice, to limit the very food they ate, because the
British Isles were in danger of starvation. “Save the wheat and help the fleet!” one
poster reads. “The kitchen is the key to victory. Eat less bread!”
The poster that struck me most depicts an artilleryman and a sailor preparing
for battle atop a rock. Below them, a Boy Scout hands up a tin (the poster was
designed by founder Lord Robert Baden-Powell), a nurse prepares a dressing, a
woman stacks ammunition, and a man swings a hammer on an anvil. Off to the
side stands a clean-looking man in a three-piece suit and fedora, the luxury of a
cigarette between his lips, watching them. Doing nothing. The message is at the
bottom: “Are YOU in this?”
DoD photo / by D. Myles Cullen-Patrick
Imagine that question being asked of Americans today. It’s the very question
STORY TWO behind the American Readiness Project from Defense One and the Center for a New
American Security, or CNAS. In the United States, most Americans don’t even know
what “this” is. They’re standing apart from those in the fight — broadly speaking,
the military and defense civilians, the intelligence community, the defense industry,
foreign-policy academia.
The next day, as I flew home from London, Defense One reported that a recent
poll found that 28 percent of Americans believe Russia is an ally of the United States.
That’s up almost 10 points in a year. Meanwhile, 36 percent of those surveyed — and
'Are You in This?' nearly half of military respondents, and half of all respondents under age 30 — said
China was a U.S. ally. More than one-fifth of respondents said Syria was an ally.
(Neither is.) People were evenly divided on whether Turkey or Saudi Arabia are allies.
If so many Americans believe Russia is an ally, China is (They are, and Turkey is a treaty ally in the NATO alliance.) This Reagan Foundation
a good business partner, and terrorism isn’t worth fight- survey is just the latest evidence of a growing gap between basic facts and public
perception when it comes to national security.
ing anymore, how can the United States be counted on for
But there is also a growing confidence gap between ordinary Americans and
global security? national security leaders. The latter want to keep U.S. troops deployed and ready
to respond if needed (which Americans support) and fighting in Afghanistan and
By Kevin Baron the Middle East (which Americans increasingly do not support.)
When presidential candidates say they are through with “forever wars,” they draw

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“I am concerned that we are

seeing groups, frankly, in
both parties come together in
a very dangerous way around
isolationist principles."
REP. LIZ CHENE Y, R-W YO

enthusiastic applause. America’s front-line ambassa-

dor to Syria says that shows “total ignorance of what’s
going on in the world today.”
Americans who see China as a source of cheap
goods or lucrative investment opportunities don’t
see that it has become a threat to democracy and
American hegemony. The NBA censored its own play-
ers from supporting human rights and stifled criticism
of its business partner, China. And Google employees
defy their own leaders, as Silicon Valley’s resistance
to the U.S. military continues to alarm the Pentagon’s
Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Amazon’s Jeff Bezos reiterated an alarm over the
weekend. “My view is, if big tech is going to turn their
back on the Department of Defense, this country is
in trouble,” Bezos told security leaders at the annual
Reagan Defense Forum on Saturday. “That just can’t
happen.”
Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., echoed the sentiment. “I
am concerned that we are seeing groups, frankly, in
both parties come together in a very dangerous way
around isolationist principles,” she said at the forum.
“As leaders, we impact this. As leaders we have to be
A WORLD WAR I RECRUITMENT POSTER ASKS ORDINARY CITIZENS TO GET INTO THE FIGHT. | IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUMS
in a position that we are very clear about the critical
role that America has played” in global security.
And Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., asked: “This is
a point in our nation, I think, where we choose: Do we
continue to lead?”
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump continues
to praise dictators, including China’s Xi Jinping and
Turkey’s Recep Erdogan, while sparring unnecessarily
with leaders of U.S. allies, such as Canada’s Justin
Trudeau and France’s Emmanuel Macron. On Tuesday,
Trump welcomed Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei
Lavrov back to the Oval Office. Perhaps the visit is the
simply the administration’s way of keeping adversaries
close, but it sends a confusing message.
If so many Americans believe Russia is an ally,
China is a good business partner, and terrorism isn’t
worth fighting anymore, how can the world count on
the United States for global security? The United States
has long benefited from allies and friends and from a
leadership role that allowed it to set the terms of global
interaction and trade.
When Britons were needed to fight 100 years ago,
their leaders made the case and called them up, asking
“Are YOU in this?” If U.S. leaders aren’t educating and
recruiting the nation with a similar contemporary call
to action, and with new policies for success, how can
the United States be the 21st-century leader of global
security? If Americans don’t even know who the enemy
is, why should they be expected to fight for anything?

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NuStar

A fairing is put around NASA's

NuStar and an Orbital Pegasus
rocket at Vandenberg Air Force
Base, Calif., Mar. 2, 2012.
| Doug Gruben

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THE U.S. AIR FORCE wants flying cars. But more than that, it wants to give U.S.
manufacturers a head start in a hot future market.
On Tuesday, service officials released a request for proposals for the Agility
Prime program, which seeks a highly modular vertical-lift aircraft that could play a
variety of roles. The service dubs them ORBs, for organic resupply buses.
“Given their flexibility, an ORB could act as an organic resupply bus for disaster
relief teams, an operational readiness bus for improved aircraft availability, and
an open requirements bus for a growing diversity of missions. ORBs could enable
distributed logistics, sustainment, and maneuver, with particular utility in medical
evacuation, firefighting, civil and military disaster relief, installation and border
security, search and rescue, and humanitarian operations,” the request said. Will
Roper, the service’s assistant secretary for acquisition, said last week that that
program is much broader than just building a flying bus. He’s looking to create
the circumstances by which the industry can take off in the United States before
it swims to China.
Roper made his remarks to a handful of Pentagon reporters, but he could have
U.S. Air Force / Samuel King, Jr.
been speaking to an international crowd of policy-makers and Fortune 500 CEOs
STORY THREE in Davos or Munich. Helping to launch a flying car market in the United States is
“equally” as important as acquiring them for the Air Force, he said.
DOD provides about “20 percent of the [research and development] funding in
this country,” he said. “Twenty percent is not going to compete with China long-term,

Will Flying Cars Help the with a nationalized industrial base that can pick national winners.”
A January report from data analytics company Govini supports that view. Govini

U.S. Beat China? found that while the U.S. government and U.S. businesses are spending more on
research and development than China, the pace of China’s investment is surpassing

The Air Force Hopes So that of the United States.

Service officials say giving American manufacturers
first-mover advantage is just as important as the military
benefits of vertical-lift buses.
By Patrick Tucker
Among the tech winners that China has been able to poach from the United
States is the consumer drone market. Roper described it as a cautionary tale for
what could happen with flying cars. “The Pentagon didn’t take a proactive stance
on it and now most of that supply chain has moved to China. If we had realized that
commercial trend and shown that the Pentagon is willing to pay a higher price point
for a trusted supply chain drone,” the drone market would be different, and the U.S.
military would be the direct beneficiary. “We probably could have kept part of the
market here and not have the security issues we do now when someone wants to use

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“The companies that are
able to make it to that point
are able to go to domestic
certifiers and say, ‘You should
trust that I am able to fly
commercially.'"
WILL ROPER, ASSISTANT SECRE TARY
FOR AIR FORCE ACQUISITION
a foreign-made drone at an air force or service event.”
Agility Prime is saying, ‘we’re not going to let that
happen again and we’re going to be part of the global
tech ecosystem.’
”The Air Force has created a venture arm, Air Force
Ventures, to persuade the venture capital community
to invest in projects with military relevance. Roper said
that partnering with the big-money houses of Silicon
Valley has already helped to bring $400 million in pri-
vate investment into companies working on defense
problems.
The Air Force has also introduced processes meant
to get more money to companies that aren’t traditional
defense contractors. In the beginning phase, there’s
AFWERX, which the Air Force created in 2017 as a
seed investor. AFWERX is making investments of
roughly $50,000 in small companies as part of the
Small Business Innovation Research, or SBIR, program.
Companies that make it to phase II of the SBIR program
could get $1 million. Finally, the Air Force is looking
to match the investment of private venture capitalists
for bigger bets.
That’s a big departure from the way defense con-
tracting happens traditionally, with a known defense
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AIR NATIONAL GUARD / 2ND LT. EMERSON MARCUS
contractor snagging a big multi-year contract and
then working it until it’s canceled. “We’re not going
to get a new defense prime. It collapses every year
through mergers and acquisitions. Trying to recreate
the 20thcentury industrial base is a losing strategy,”
Roper said.
Early-stage investments in technology that could
have dual military and civilian use, Roper said, is the
only way the United States is going to stay competitive
with China. But the military has a lot of other assets
it can bring to bear on tech innovation that the private
sector can’t, such as testing ranges for experimental
aircraft.
The acquisitions program for Agility Prime would
feature a “challenge-based acquisition plan. We’ll have
different durations of flight and payloads that have to
be carried. And if you pass the hurdle, you will move
further down the wickets of getting safety certified and
moving onto a procurement contract. We’re working
with our operators right now on what missions” that
might entail, he said.
Roper hopes that certifying companies to pro-
duce flying cars for the Air Force will go a long way to
convincing other federal authorities to give their stamp
of approval. “The companies that are able to make it to
that point are able to go to domestic certifiers and say,
‘You should trust that I am able to fly commercially,’”
he said.
Peter W. Singer, a strategist at New America, said,
“Pentagon leaders are putting far more thinking into
supply chains than they were in the past, in both already
established programs of record as well as what might
be the programs 20 years from now. So I am supportive
of this kind of thinking. A challenge, though, is in areas
where the consumer side might take off, pun intended.
The Pentagon’s buying power might be enough to aid a
startup at the early stage, which is obviously valuable.
But the long term prospects of a firm selling into a
mostly civilian market are going to be decided outside
the E-Ring.”
Paul Scharre, a senior fellow and the director of
the Technology and National Security Program at the
Center for a New American Security, said, “I think it’s
good that DoD is thinking about supply chain secu-
rity and how commercial markets evolve. Keeping a
demand signal in the marketplace for trusted suppliers
is important for shaping how an industry evolves.”
Stephen Rodriguez, a senior advisor at the Atlantic
Council, said “China came to dominate the commer-
cial drone market not only by investing heavily out
of their federal coffers but also, and probably more
importantly, coordinating their industrial policy with
commercial technology developers. This enables
Beijing to clearly see what technology they need to
buy or build and what technology wasn’t important.
We still wrestle with this paradigm. Whether we have
a ‘trusted market’ or not, Washington still needs to
understand what technologies are truly game-chang-
ing on an ongoing basis, and then building programs
around that policy.”
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Blast off

Space Exploration Technologies

(SpaceX) completed a successful
launch of their Falcon 9 Dragon
spacecraft headed to the International
Space Station from Space Launch
Complex 40 from Cape Canaveral Air
Force Station, Fla., Sept. 21, 2014 at
1:52 a.m. EDT.
| John Studwell/AmericaSpace

photo by John Studwell/

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SIMI VALLEY, CALIFORNIA — Silicon Valley firms shouldn’t be reluctant to do work

for the military, said the founder and CEO of Amazon, which is currently mounting
a rear-guard campaign to win a giant Pentagon cloud-contract award.
“One of the things that’s happening inside of technology companies is there
are groups of employees who, for example, think technology companies should
not work with the Department of Defense,” Jeff Bezos said Saturday at the Reagan
National Defense Forum. “People are entitled to their opinions, but it is the job of a
senior leadership team to say no,” he said.
“My view is, if big tech is going to turn their back on the Department of Defense,
this country is in trouble,” he said. ”That just can’t happen.”
Bezos was alluding to Google employees who persuaded the company to stop
supplying the military with algorithms to identify objects in battlefield drone. But
he was also praising a big customer who may yet become a very big customer: the
Department of Defense. Amazon has been selling its cloud services to the CIA, the
Army, and the Homeland Security Department. The billionaire’s rocket company,
Blue Origin, is vying for Air Force space launch contracts. And in October, it lost its
U.S. Air Force / Samuel King, Jr
biggest would-be contract — the $10 billion JEDI program — to Microsoft. Amazon
STORY FOUR is protesting, alleging improper involvement by President Trump.

Amazon’s Bezos Hits Silicon

Valley For Not Working
With Pentagon
His comments come as his company fights to wrest DOD’s
giant cloud contract from Microsoft.

By Marcus Weisgerber
U.S. AIR FORCE / STAFF SGT. LAURA BUCHTA

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“If big tech companies are
going to turn their back on the
DOD, then this country is going
to be in trouble."
JEFF BEZOS
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“I know it’s complicated but…do you want a strong
national defense or don’t you? I think you do. So we
have to support that,” he said. “We are the good guys,
I really do believe that.”
It’s hardly the first time the billionaire has weighed
in on the debate in the commercial sector about work-
ing with the military. In October 2018, the same line at
the WIRED25 conference: “If big tech companies are
going to turn their back on the DOD, then this country
is going to be in trouble.” And as The Atlantic’s Franklin
Foer wrote earlier this year, “Other Big Tech companies
have fretted about the morality of becoming entangled
with the national-security state. But Bezos has never
expressed such reservations. His grandfather devel-
oped missile-defense systems for the Pentagon and
supervised nuclear labs.”
Bezos is hardly alone in his criticism of Silicon
Valley, which the Defense Department has been wooing
AP / PABLO MARTINEZ MONSIVAIS
as it looks for a technological leg up over China and
Russia.
“I’m frankly alarmed when I see some companies
to whom much is given not want to work with the U.S.
government,” General Dynamics CEO Phebe Novakovic
said in June. “Who do they think provides them this
freedom? Where do they think the platform for their
technology [and] innovation comes from the security
and stability of this nation. So, I find as an American,
that troubling.”
Former Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford
criticized tech firms for their work in China, which he
said helped strengthen the communist party.
Former Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work said
lives would be put at risk by a 2018 Google decision to
automate intelligence analysis and processing.
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President Donald J. Trump and

First Lady Melania Trump greet
service members at the Salute to
Our Armed Services Ball at the
National Building Museum,
Washington, D.C., Jan. 20, 2017.
| U.S. Army Sgt. Kalie Jones

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AMID A BROAD congressional push to limit President Trump’s ability to go to

war with Iran, a handful of moderate House lawmakers are working to “clarify”
Congress’s war powers responsibilities, Republican lawmakers leading the effort
told Defense One on Tuesday.
The small working group is made up of lawmakers from both parties that belong
to the bipartisan Problem Solvers’ Caucus. Its chairman, Rep. Tom Reed, R-New
York, hopes they can agree on language to bring to the broader 48-member caucus.
“It’s obviously not done, so I can’t prejudge it,” Reed said. “But my intention going
into this is to take presidential personalities out of it — don’t talk about President
Trump or President Obama. Talk about, what does the presidency have in regards
to Article II as well as War Powers authority that we can recognize in Congress.”
“I think it’s ripe for us to get together and say, this is what we mean as Congress,
and this is what the presidency has, and how do we comply with the rules.”
The War Powers Resolution does not affirmatively provide the president with any
authority to carry out hostilities, but multiple administrations have used increas-
ingly permissive interpretations of the law’s requirements to justify military action,
such as in Libya under President Barack Obama and this month in Iraq, with Trump
U.S. Air Force / Airman 1st Class Dalton ordering a military strike killing Iran’s Gen. Qassem Soleimani.
STORY FIVE Critics see most congressional efforts to limit the president’s war-making author-
ity short of cutting off funding as academic, but for Reed and some of his colleagues,
“Congress needs to do its job.”
Reed declined to name other members of the working group, but Rep. Paul
Mitchell, R-Mich., said he is involved. He described their conversations as aimed
Meet the House Republicans at putting “parameters” around the existing Authorizations for the Use of Military
Force, or AUMF, and laying out Congress’s “expectations” from any administration
Who Want to Rein In Trump that carries out hostilities bound by the War Powers Resolution. The proposal should
also include a deadline for Congress to act once it is notified by the administration
On War of the use of force, Mitchell said.
“There’s a specific responsibility on Congress to act on a notice,” Mitchell said.
“Get that notice, what the plan is, [then] have a timeframe that we have to move
After the Soleimani strike, a working group of moderate forward, we have to take action. Either approve it, revise it, vote against it — but
Republicans and Democrats trying to “clarify” Congress’s lacking activity, the president moves forward.”
The new effort in the wake of the Soleimani strike is part of a widespread mood
war responsibilities hope they can build momentum.
on Capitol Hill that Congress needs to reclaim its Article I authority to declare war.
For critics, the legal meaning of “war” has shifted too far in the two decades since
By Katie Bo Williams Congress authorized the George W. Bush administration to attack the Taliban and
al-Qaeda in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. (That AUMF remains in use today.)

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“I’ve heard a lot more people
talk about the propriety of a
new congressional authorization
than were willing to handcuff
the president on Iran."
REP. FR ANK ROONE Y, R-FL A.
The House on Friday voted largely on party lines to
pass a nonbinding resolution to restrict U.S. hostilities
against Iran — but the three Republican “yea” votes are
part of a broader, eclectic group of GOP lawmakers
interested in reasserting Congress’s role in deciding
when the United States goes to war, even if it means
casting a vote opposing the president.
In December, an amendment to the annual defense
policy bill that prohibited unauthorized military force
against Iran drew 27 Republican votes. The measure
did not survive in the final version of the bill, but it
got the vote of lawmakers from both the moderate
Tuesday Group and Problem Solvers Caucus — and
the Trump-allied, flame-throwing Freedom Caucus.
Rep. Frank Rooney, R-Fla., who is retiring and flirted
with voting for impeachment, and Rep. Matt Gaetz,
R-Fla., a staunch Trump ally, both voted in favor of the
measure. It’s a remarkable combination of lawmakers
from two sides of the GOP that have almost nothing in
common with one another.
Two other amendments from longtime war critic
Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., also drew over a dozen
Republican votes each. One “expressed the sense of
Congress that the 2001 AUMF has been utilized beyond
the scope that Congress intended, and that any new
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authorization for the use of military force to replace
the 2001 AUMF should include a sunset clause, a clear
and specific expression of objectives, targets, and geo-
graphic scope, and reporting requirements.” The other
repealed the 2002 AUMF, which allowed Bush to invade
Iraq. Both also were stripped out in the final version of
the bill signed by Trump.
At least in the case of the Tuesday Group, the
amendment votes weren’t organized, said Rep. Fred
Upton, R-Mich., a former chair of the group. “We did
not talk about those amendments in Tuesday Group.
It was sort of on our own,” he said.
“I think what the commonality there is — members
who understand and respect that we have a consti-
tutional obligation here to put country first and set
aside politics,” Reed said. “And when you do that, it
is amazing you can get some strange bedfellows put
together, because the commonality is we’re all mem-
bers of Congress.”
AP / EVAN VUCCI
Far fewer Republicans voted for Friday’s more sym-
bolic measure to limit the president’s powers to war
with Iran for several reasons, according to multiple
Republicans. Many supported the individual strike
on Soleimani, and agreed with the administration’s
interpretation that it did not require congressional
authorization.
“I gave it some thought,” said Rep. Fred Upton,
R-Mich., a former chair of the moderate Tuesday Group
who voted for the December Iran amendment but not
the War Powers Resolution on Friday. “Because it was
[a non-binding resolution], I viewed it as more political.
I supported what the president did. I went to the house
briefing, I left convinced.”
In the Senate, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., has four
Republican votes for his binding War Powers Resolution
— enough to pass the Senate, although Trump is almost
certain to veto the measure and supporters lack the
two-thirds majority needed to override the veto in either
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U.S. AIR FORCE / SENIOR AIRMAN CHRISTOPHER QUAIL
chamber.
But the appetite is there, Upton, Reed and others
said. “I’ve heard a lot more people talk about the pro-
priety of a new congressional authorization than were
willing to handcuff the president on Iran,” Rooney said.
Still, Reed acknowledged that the conventional
wisdom on the Hill is that War Powers and military
authorization votes are “politically toxic” — and there-
fore too risky to take. “People who voted for the Iraq
war authorization — that’s still lingering with them even
in today’s politics,” he said, “and that scares a lot of
members away from dealing with this issue because
they’re worried about the politics of it.”
Matt Mackowiak, a longtime GOP strategist,
shrugged off the diverse combination of Republican
lawmakers who coalesced around the December
amendment from liberal Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif.,
and who have decried Trump’s unilateral strike on
Soleimani.
“ It ’s interesting because you have
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U.S. AIR FORCE / WAYNE CLARK
non-interventionist conservatives, and conservatives gonna get a veto-proof majority or affect funding, all
who have Constitutional concerns, separation-of-pow- of this is really just talk.”
ers concerns,” he said. “Part of the reason this has
happened is because the president’s position on this
is not entirely clear — he’s non-interventionist, doesn’t
want to be at war. But in the short term in kinetic situ-
ations, he is very much willing to ramp up operations.”
Mackowiak doesn’t see Congressional leadership
of either party pulling together a veto-proof majority to
either pass a new, more limiting authorization, or use
the power of the purse to curtail Trump.
“This is an academic discussion,” Mackowiak
said. “It motivates a very small number of members
of Congress. It’s going to fade over time, unless they’re
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Patrick Tucker Marcus Weisgerber

Technology Editor Global Business Editor

Patrick Tucker is technology editor for Defense One. He’s also the Marcus Weisgerber is the global business editor for Defense One,
author of The Naked Future: What Happens in a World That Anticipates where he writes about the intersection of business and national
Your Every Move? (Current, 2014). security.

Kevin Baron Loren Dejonge Schulman

Executive Editor Deputy Director of Studies and Leon E. Panetta Senior Fellow, CNAS

Kevin Baron is the founding executive editor of Loren Dejonge Schulman is the Deputy Director of Studies and the Leon
Defense One. E. Panetta Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security.

Katie Bo Williams
Senior National Security Correspondent

Katie Bo Williams is the senior national security correspondent for

Defense One, where she writes about defense, counterterror, NATO,
nukes, and more.

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