How Pete Hegseth Can End The Defense Contractor Gravy Train

Amid the Democrat senatorial clown show of Tuesday’s secretary of defense confirmation hearings, one confrontation between Pete Hegseth and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., resonated particularly strongly with me as a retired Army officer.

It was when Warren challenged Hegseth with his past writings that “generals should be banned from working for the defense industry for 10 years.” Warren tried to put Hegseth in a twist by asserting that he would not follow his own rule, but Hegseth defused the situation masterfully by replying, “I’m not a general, senator.”

Laughter ensued, but this exchange had me thinking deeply about one of the primary issues I believe plagues the Department of Defense in 2025, that being the revolving door between our military’s senior ranks and the military-industrial complex.

It is generally understood that one of Hegseth’s biggest challenges will be to unwind the most pernicious effects of the military-industrial complex, from cost overruns, to decades-long delays in weapons development, to reliance on in-theater contractor support, to mismatches between requirements and capabilities, to every other vice of the world of defense acquisition. Hegseth faces the Herculean task of cleaning out the Augean Stables at the Pentagon, but there is also a little-known and related cultural paradigm Hegseth must shatter if he is to succeed in this arena.

My personal experiences inform this analysis. I retired from the Army as a full colonel. My career was a mix of peacetime and wartime assignments, often in tactical units that deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq, but also serving repeatedly in the fearsome budget wars of the Pentagon and Congress. After an incredibly fulfilling military career, I decided I wanted to move in an entirely different direction, and I went to law school after retirement, becoming a corporate lawyer (I know, what was I thinking?!). I left the military and the defense industry completely behind me and never looked back. Nevertheless, I had many friends who stayed in service and made flag rank, and I kept in touch with most of them. 

My service taught me an extremely important lesson. There is a cultural expectation in our modern military that if you make flag rank (i.e., a general or an admiral, depending on your service) you have hit the jackpot, and that pinning on those stars of flag rank automatically means you have joined the defense contractor “gravy train.” Upon your retirement from active duty, you will be entertaining dozens of lucrative offers from defense contractors, making you wealthy with limitless financial opportunities. I know this because I have had these conversations with those same friends, and there was even a time in my military career when I did not find that sentiment offensive because such enrichment was culturally considered normal, just, and fair. After all, you spent all those years sacrificing for your country, why shouldn’t you be able to cash in on your success?

As a civilian lawyer, I have had these same friends call me upon retirement, asking for advice on sitting on boards of directors, negotiating employment or consulting contracts, receiving stock options, etc. — all the perks of being on the gravy train of defense contracting. My friends and former comrades in arms were so excited — FINALLY, they were getting the reward they thought they had earned and were fully entitled to.

I now know there is something deeply wrong with this. In fact, I first detected this cultural rot when I was serving in the Army staff as a colonel and — after the statutory cooling-off period — a former general officer boss tried to sell his new company’s wares to me. He even expected me to call him “sir.” I am not exaggerating when I say this nauseated me, but such is the military-industrial complex.

Let me reiterate what I said above. THIS IS A CULTURAL ISSUE. The mindset of the modern, senior U.S. military officer (and increasingly, very senior NCOs) is that obtaining a lucrative defense sector job post-retirement is a reasonable, normal, and expected perk, and there is literally nothing wrong with it, legally or ethically.

NOBODY SEES A PROBLEM WITH THIS. That is the problem.

There are, of course, formal Department of Defense ethics rules that seek to limit the effects of the revolving door. However, these rules are fungible and waivable and subject to the whims of Department of Defense lawyers (who are often sympathetic to their former bosses because, hey, the gravy train applies to lawyers too). The idea of “selling to your former agency” is subject to interpretation, and “cooling-off periods” allow for rather rapid reintegration into the military-industrial complex roller coaster. No, what I speak of here is much less a legal issue than a fundamental cultural issue.

Hegseth needs to break this cultural paradigm that actively encourages the wasteful expenditure of taxpayer dollars as a reward for senior military service. Somehow, we need to make it unseemly and highly distasteful for very senior officers to trade on their military honors for riches in a corrupt system of defense procurement. This practice needs to be widely seen as a form of legal prostitution — legal, yes, but would you bring your new girlfriend home to Mother?

That cultural mind shift will be a fundamental issue in solving the seemingly intractable problem of the military-industrial complex. Something has to give, and it begins and ends with making the habit of trading service for dollars a shameful one.

At this point, I am certain innumerable readers are internally protesting that military experience is an essential element of the defense industry and a fundamental requirement in procuring weapons systems that are effective on the modern battlefield. I completely agree with this sentiment. Only former warriors can tell civilian engineers what does and does not work in combat.

But we do not need generals and admirals to do this. Former O-4s, O-5s, and E-7s can do this work. In fact, those more junior officers and NCOs are better qualified than flag officers because most flag officers are generationally removed from the realities of the tactical modern battlefield. Instead, those flag officers are recruited solely for their influence, their ability to persuade former subordinates, and their iPhone contact lists — not because of their technical, tactical, or managerial skills. This is influence-peddling, plain and simple, and it is no different than the habits of the worst K Street lobbyists.

I sincerely hope Pete Hegseth is confirmed as secretary of defense. I believe he is the pugnacious, “dirty boots” warrior-outsider that the corrupt defense establishment desperately needs. One of his greatest challenges will be to reform defense procurement systems, and a key component of that reform will be to shift our senior military leaders away from the desirability of the post-retirement, defense contractor gravy train.

Let’s make the Department of Defense great again, and that starts with making the habit of trading senior military honors for dollars shameful.

Cynical Publius is the nom de plume of a retired U.S. Army colonel and practicing attorney. The Federalist verifies the identity of its pseudonymous authors. You can follow Cynical Publius on X at @CynicalPublius.