On October 15, 2025, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Deputy Secretary Steve Feinberg issued an internal memo barring nearly all Defense Department personnel, including military commanders, from communicating with Congress or state lawmakers without prior approval from the Pentagon’s office …
Pete HegsethSteve FeinbergPentagoncongressional-oversightseparation-of-powerspentagonobstructionmilitary-accountability
On October 16, 2024, defense contractor RTX (formerly Raytheon) agreed to pay over $950 million to resolve Justice Department investigations into fraudulent billing schemes, foreign bribery, and export control violations spanning more than a decade. The settlement addressed three major criminal …
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Representative Ken Calvert, chairman of the House defense appropriations subcommittee, disclosed that General Dynamics’ Virginia-class submarine program faced a projected $17 billion cost overrun through 2030, increasing the program’s total cost from $184 billion and delaying submarine …
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Senator Elizabeth Warren released a comprehensive report analyzing the defense contractor revolving door, identifying 672 cases where the top 20 defense contractors employed former government officials, military officers, members of Congress, and senior legislative staff. The analysis found that 91% …
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The U.S. Department of Defense granted Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) authority to operate (ATO) for Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI) and Special Access Program (SAP) missions on February 15, 2022, authorizing Oracle to host and process some of the Pentagon’s most …
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The Defense Department cancels the controversial $10 billion JEDI (Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure) cloud computing contract previously awarded to Microsoft in 2019, ending two years of bitter litigation with Amazon Web Services. The Pentagon announces a new multi-vendor procurement approach …
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The Pentagon awards the $10 billion, 10-year Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud contract to Microsoft, stunning observers who widely expected Amazon Web Services to win based on its established relationship with the intelligence community through the CIA’s C2S contract. Under …
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On July 23, 2019, the Senate voted 90-8 to confirm Mark Esper as Secretary of Defense, installing a former Raytheon weapons lobbyist as head of the Pentagon with authority over approximately $700 billion in annual defense spending including contracts worth tens of billions to his former employer. …
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On July 21, 2017, the Senate confirmed Mark Esper as Secretary of the Army, installing a former Raytheon weapons lobbyist in a senior Pentagon position overseeing billions of dollars in defense contracts. Esper had served as Raytheon’s vice president of government relations from July 2010 …
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General James Mattis joined the General Dynamics board of directors in August 2013, just five months after retiring from the Marine Corps in March 2013 as commander of U.S. Central Command. Mattis would earn over $900,000 in total compensation during his 2013-2017 board tenure, including $594,369 in …
James MattisGeneral DynamicsMarine Corpsrevolving-doordefense-contractorsgeneral-dynamicspentagonmilitary-industrial-complex