Time to Reload: Strategic Velocity, Defense Reformation: DeMarco Banter

I came across this piece shortly after it was published in late October ’24. I have left it open on my computer ever since and I go back to it often. It is quite telling, yet every time I ponder writing about it, I feel the pull of politics—and I hate that. This is not about politics; it is about national security at the highest levels. As such, I have done my best to stay out of the fray, yet I know it is there. We need to collectively think through these issues with an eye toward the greater good, regardless of who is seated where in DC. We need to get back to a more civilized debate with less finger-pointing. But regardless, here goes

The global strategic environment is undergoing a profound transformation. As the United States faces intensifying competition from peer adversaries, particularly China, questions surrounding the readiness and agility of the U.S. defense industrial base have come into sharp focus. A recent manifesto, titled “18 Theses for Defense Reformation,” authored by Palantir Technologies CTO Shyam Sankar, offers a pointed critique and an ambitious roadmap for reform. It suggests that without decisive action, America may cede its strategic edge not through battlefield defeats but through institutional atrophy and systemic inertia.

Diagnosing Decline: A Strategic Monopsony
The central thesis of the 18-point manifesto is that the United States is losing ground in Great Power Competition because its defense ecosystem is built around outdated procurement models, overcentralized authority, and a contracting culture that stifles innovation. Chief among the issues is the concept of a monopsony—a market in which there is only one buyer. In this case, the Department of Defense (DoD) is the sole customer for most defense technologies, creating a marketplace where risk-aversion, inefficiency, and a lack of competition prevail.

While the U.S. once led the world in defense production capacity, that advantage has eroded. The Cold War-era industrial base, which could rapidly produce and scale military equipment, has atrophied. The Pentagon’s acquisition timelines often span five to ten years—an eternity in the age of software-driven warfare, artificial intelligence, and autonomy. The very structures intended to ensure accountability now inhibit the agility required for modern conflict.

Theses for Change: Key Themes of the Manifesto
Sankar’s 18 Theses articulate a vision not just of procedural reform but of cultural transformation. Among the most compelling themes:

1. Promoting Competition: Breaking the dominance of legacy defense primes by opening the door to startups, dual-use tech firms, and non-traditional partners.
2. Contract Reform: Moving away from cost-plus contracts that reward time spent rather than outcomes delivered. Instead, emphasizing fixed-price, performance-based contracts.
3. Agile Budgeting: Enabling reprogramming of defense funds within months, not years, to match the tempo of commercial innovation.
4. Talent Retention: Incentivizing leaders and program managers to stay with critical projects through multiple budget cycles.
5. Outcome Orientation: Shifting focus from compliance and documentation toward fielded capability and strategic impact.
6. Commercial Alignment: Encouraging the development of technologies that serve both commercial and defense sectors, fostering economies of scale.
7. Production at Scale and Speed: Rebuilding the capacity to mass-produce advanced systems in times of crisis.
8. Software as a Core Capability: Elevating software development and coding to essential warfighting skills.

Collectively, these theses argue for an industrial and bureaucratic renaissance—one that treats time as a strategic variable and views adaptability as a form of deterrence.

Strategic Implications for Great Power Competition
The proposed reforms are not abstract ideals; they are responses to a changing character of warfare. China, for example, has demonstrated remarkable speed in prototyping, testing, and deploying new capabilities, particularly in cyber, space, and unmanned systems. Its military-civil fusion strategy allows seamless integration between commercial tech and defense application—a model that increasingly outpaces the traditional U.S. defense acquisition cycle.

Reforming the U.S. system is essential not only to regain lost ground but to ensure the nation can deter aggression through credible, scalable, and rapidly deployable capabilities. In a future defined by AI-enabled warfare, electromagnetic spectrum dominance, and robotic swarming systems, the edge will go to the competitor who can adapt faster, iterate more effectively, and integrate new technologies at scale.

The 18 Theses thus provide a roadmap for achieving strategic velocity — the capacity to act, react, and adapt at a pace that adversaries cannot match.

Balancing Innovation with Institutional Integrity
One challenge in reform efforts is ensuring that speed does not come at the expense of accountability or ethical oversight. The U.S. system is rightly cautious about deploying untested technologies, especially those with lethal applications. However, the current model often delays the very experimentation and prototyping necessary to validate new ideas.

A reformed model must find equilibrium: preserving the integrity of checks and balances while accelerating cycles of learning and deployment. That means empowering program managers with more autonomy, investing in testbeds and sandbox environments, and integrating operational feedback loops into acquisition pathways.

The Role of Policy: Economic and Human Capital Considerations
Defense reformation cannot occur in a vacuum. It intersects with broader national policy areas including:

• Industrial Policy: A revitalized defense industrial base will require domestic manufacturing incentives, targeted investments in critical materials (e.g., rare earths), and robust public-private partnerships.
• Immigration Policy: Attracting global talent in AI, software, and engineering is essential to maintaining technical superiority.
• Higher Education and Research: Universities remain vital to innovation pipelines. Policies should encourage defense-relevant research while maintaining academic freedom and integrity.

The 18 Theses implicitly argue for a whole-of-nation approach, where national security is not the domain of government alone but a collaborative enterprise involving industry, academia, and civil society.

Conclusion: Reform as a Strategic Imperative
The 18 Theses for Defense Reformation present an urgent, structured, and actionable vision for modernizing the American defense enterprise. At a time when the character of warfare is evolving rapidly and adversaries are accelerating their investments in emerging technologies, the cost of institutional stagnation may be strategic irrelevance.

Rather than viewing these reforms as critiques, they should be seen as a reaffirmation of America’s enduring strengths: its entrepreneurial spirit, technological ingenuity, and capacity for reinvention. The question is not whether reform is necessary, but whether it can be achieved at the speed and scale the moment demands.

In the age of great power rivalry, the next offset will not come from a single platform or breakthrough, but from a reimagined system that prizes speed, adaptability, and decisive execution. That future is still within reach—but only if the nation is willing to act.