Staff Reports
Emil Michael, who Breitbart has billed as the Under Secretary of War and who serves as the Pentagon’s top technologist, made plain at a recent Breitbart policy event that the administration is actively tearing down the comfortable monopolies that long dominated defense contracting. His message was simple: decades of outsourcing our critical supply chains to rivals left the country dangerously exposed, and the new approach is to bring those capabilities home and inject real competition into procurement.
Michael spelled out concrete moves: chips, batteries, magnets, and critical minerals are being targeted for onshoring, and the White House points to a slate of deals and investments intended to rebuild American industrial capacity. That kind of industrial patriotism creates factories, apprenticeships, and high-paying trade jobs while denying strategic leverage to adversaries who once held us hostage for raw materials.
This administration’s acquisition reforms are not academic—they represent a cultural shove at the procurement status quo, favoring a venture-style, competitive approach over the cozy, sole-source arrangements that insulated legacy firms for decades. Officials from the Department of War and the Pentagon’s research arm have openly discussed trimming protected lists, inviting nontraditional suppliers, and treating the military’s buy process like an engine for innovation rather than a jobs program for entrenched incumbents.
Conservatives should celebrate a policy that replaces monopolistic procurement with market-tested competition: better price, faster delivery, and state-of-the-art capability for the warfighter. Michael even argued that AI and modernization will increase demand for plumbers, machinists, and electricians—blue-collar careers that pay well and strengthen national resilience—so this is about both security and restoring real work to American towns.
Make no mistake: breaking monopolies is hard because the old guard fights fiercely to protect contracts and comfortable margins, but surrendering our material advantage to foreign rivals was the greater betrayal. The right response is tough-minded oversight, streamlined rules that welcome new entrants, and support for domestic supply chains so that taxpayers get capability and servicemen and women get reliable equipment.
If Washington really means to put American industry and national security first, it will keep pushing procurement reforms, fund the necessary one-time investments to modernize, and hold contractors accountable to competition and performance—not political litmus tests or legacy convenience. This is a moment to double down on policies that make defense contracting competitive again so the country can win technologically, economically, and morally.
