We make a grave mistake with the security of our nation when we put it in the hands of private business instead of military or civil servants. We’ve outsourced much of the nation’s physical and electronic defense to private companies since America hit the panic button after 9/11. We didn’t use mercenaries to fight World War Two and we shouldn’t be using them now. This has made us less safe as a nation and will bear poison fruit for decades to come.
When I learned American mercenaries were killed in Fallujah back in 2004, I thought, ‘Why are we using mercenaries in Iraq?’ When I heard Edward Snowden had defected in 2013, I thought, ‘why is Booze Allen doing that kind of work?’ When I read in 2017 that federal agencies had been using Russia’s Kaspersky Labs for electronic security I thought,’you’ve got to kidding me’.
The primary mission of U.S. armed forces and intelligence agencies is to protect the nation. Their leaders’ duty is to the constitution. The primary mission of any business is to make a profit. A C.E.O.’s duty is to shareholders, not the people of the United States. Notice how the goals don’t align?
Contractors offer a significant cost savings as there are no pesky retirements or medical plans to budget. The government uses them for things it can’t, won’t or shouldn’t do.
Military contractors allowed the U.S. to claim it had less combatants in the field, to provide convoy support the military hadn’t anticipated, to supply logistical support to units in garrison. Intelligence contractors allowed the U.S. to run black sites and do dirty work around the world for the war on terror. Electronic security contractors allowed the U.S. to use skills it hadn’t developed.
Contractors are generally paid more than their military or civil service equivalents for doing the same job. This begins to rot the core institutions themselves as they start to attract people who want to check a box before going on to make the real money as a civilian contractor.
Businesses must grow to survive. With a drawdown in some Global War On Terror operations under Obama, mercenary outfits sought other clients. Erik Prince pitched his services to China and Gulf sheikdoms. Military contractors found work protecting hydrocarbon companies, using the same GWOT playbook on domestic environmental activists and indigenous tribes. Israel’s ex-spies execute direct measures for Black Cube against politicians, rape accusers and former civil servants within the United States.
Corruption sinks in as money, threats and deceit intertwine. On a micro level, I knew a guy who’d been in the Mossad. He said when men left the service they’d call in threats to Jewish centers in Europe to get hired as security. On a macro level, guys like Erik Prince try to use fear to get Trump to create a private intelligence agency answerable only to the President. Can you imagine if that disaster had gone through?
Reliance on the profit motive has failed to protect us in the digital realm as well. American weapons’ research was stolen throughout the 2000s, using something as obvious as peer-to-peer networks which lead to Russian and Chinese “breakthroughs” in the headlines with hypersonic missiles. Government agencies used anti-virus software made by Kremlin-controlled Kaspersky Labs. United States’ cyberweapons “leaked” to Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, which then immediately used them to hack Sony Studios. Data miners and social media networks, frequently used to gather intelligence, conspired with foreign powers to influence the 2016 election, because, hey, a paycheck is a paycheck. Lest anyone think civilian companies have a better handle on internet security, one need only mention the Equifax breach, the Facebook hack or the hundreds of millions of dollars stolen electronically from the U.S. banking system each year.
The real danger for society comes when greed fully infects the source institution. Officers and agents see their peers richly rewarded for using their same skills on the outside. Why should they have to wait until they get out? This is what happened in Russia, where the Soviet Union’s old KGB merged with the mafia, and in Mexico, where Special Forces turned on their government and became the Zetas cartel. If you dig farther back in history, the Indian subcontinent was subjugated by a mercenary army raised by the British East India Company. We aren’t there yet but why wait for it to get to that point?
We should reform our systems so that people working within the national security envelope do not have dual loyalties. If we need to expand the personnel rosters at the DoD or CIA, then let’s do that. It would eliminate the post-service market for trigger-pullers, hackers and spooks, saving us from a host of future problems as each group tries to expand their business. Some arenas are best left to the government, like waging war and spy games. If folks want to do that, they should stay in the service and when they get out, make a genuine transition to the civilian world.
We need to build real cyber defense capabilities. The piecemeal patchwork of private companies hasn’t worked. Everything from our voting systems to our electrical grid has been hacked by hostile powers recently. If personnel can’t be recruited because of drug tests, stop drug testing. If they can’t be recruited because of pay, increase it or train a new generation in the necessary fields using scholarships that come with government service attached. This field is critical to our defense and we haven’t taken it seriously.
Privatization of our defense and intelligence since 2001 hasn’t worked well. The men and women who protect our nation should be government/military employees. Who would you prefer protecting you? Somebody who answers the call of duty, honor, country or somebody who answers the call of the highest bidder?
Wes Clark Jr. 