Favorites April 30th 2022: The F-35 and the FTC

Niagara Falls, 2018

Scott Lincicome @scottlincicome

"FTC Chief Khan Vows to Address Sinking Staff Morale" theinformation.com/articles/ftc-c…

One of the interesting takes I saw about this was that leading the FTC is a management job, and Khan is an academic. Switching to management can be a huge mistake sometimes, it feels like maybe the FTC is too large an organization to be the place to experiment with management.

Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇦 @Noahpinion

The real solution to military procurement, rather than slashing spending, is to introduce more competition. Defense spending should not mean shoveling ever more money to Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.

Eli Dourado @elidourado

Lockheed: it’s a risk to our business that DOD is starting to care about fast delivery and value for money. https://t.co/xNiYnKflWB

Introducing competition and focusing on not over-specifying details is the way to avoid F-35 style debacles. If we're going to spend a ton of money on military, best not to waste it.

Threads

• Thread that covers Ukraine's export situation. Because Russia has their ports blockaded, all their shipping must be by rail, but they use a different rail gauge than the rest of Europe. There are currently stations at the border where the rail cars switch out their bogies, (equivalent to what we call a railcar truck in the US).

• A deeper dive into the FTC dissatisfaction situation

• History lesson on the original lend lease act, and how it differs from the modern one helping Ukraine.