Pentagon Advisory Boards Need to Offer 10X Ideas, Not 10% Ones
DoD s 40-plus boards must be restructured to help the department think far bigger.
Thursday’s news that the Biden administration will delay the seating of several Trump appointees to defense advisory boards is a welcome signal that incoming leaders recognize these groups are essential, not just patronage jobs. But the review needs to go much further than that.
The Defense Department is at a crossroads. Incremental improvements are no longer good enough to keep up with China; the Pentagon needs substantive and sustained changes to its size, structure, policies, processes, practices, technologies, and culture. The last administration asked most of the Pentagon’s 40-plus boards for advice on small improvements with a few notable exceptions, such as the Innovation Board’s Software Study and the work of the National Security Commission for AI the latter an independent effort chartered by Congress.