When Special Interests Quietly Undermine National Security
This article was published anonymously.
(Image Source: Washington Post; https://tinyurl.com/mtph6nsy)
This research paper examines the Pentagon’s “Revolving Door” phenomenon and its impact on defense acquisition, oversight, and national security outcomes. It analyzes how the movement of senior officials between government and industry reinforces cost inflation, weakens regulatory enforcement, and entrenches contractor dominance within the defense industrial base. The paper concludes by evaluating existing legal frameworks and proposing institutional and incentive-based reforms to strengthen accountability, improve procurement efficiency, and better align defense policy with national security interests.
Soap dispensers in C-17 cargo plane lavatories may seem unimportant in the grand scheme of national security. However, when Boeing charges the U.S. Air Force (USAF) with an alleged 8000% markup on the price of soap dispensers, small items can tell auditors a lot about how U.S. national security interests are diverted. In 2020, the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations amplified audits conducted by the Department of Defense (DoD) Office of Inspector General (OIG), which uncovered that Boeing overcharged USAF by nearly $1 million for C-17 spare parts: to include $70,000 on toilet seats, $7,600 on coffee makers, and $1,300 on soap dispensers.i These price inflations are minuscule compared to the bloated cost of the flagship F-35 Lightning II program (which ballooned from $200 billion to $1.8 trillion) or the cost of Patriot missile systems and sustainment (which now cost roughly $1 billion per battery).ii,iii
As the annual defense budget soars towards $1 trillion, the Pentagon continues to fail all its audits. 54% of the Pentagon’s discretionary spending goes to private contractors and 63% of its $3.8 trillion in assets remain unaccounted for.iv In early 2025, the Stimson Center published a study claiming that the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) could eliminate “dysfunctional weapons systems and outmoded business practices” to save over $60 billion taxpayer dollars from DoD waste.v But while DOGE identified $80 million in wasteful DoD spending, it did nothing to restructure or re-negotiate any major weapons systems contracts to cut costs.vi
Why is the Pentagon unable to control its own defense budget? Why is it unable to procure soap dispensers and other simple spare parts that exist within its own warehouses? Despite President Trump publicly signaling that DOGE could cut defense spending in half, why has defense spending continued to rise substantially during both of his presidencies?
This analysis will explain why the movement of senior defense officials between government roles and defense industry positions is far more crippling than helpful to U.S. national security, why current laws to mitigate the phenomenon have proven ineffective so far, and what needs to happen to make those laws successful. These “too big to fail” defense system price tags balloon due to many systemic reasons: monopoly sustainment, cost-plus contracts incentives, requirements creep, congressional parochialism, and the Pentagon’s historically weak financial visibility. The Pentagon’s revolving door phenomenon acts as a powerful accelerant and preserver of these systemic issues. The term “revolving door” describes the movement of retired senior military officials from the Pentagon and military services into the arms industry.vii After working as lobbyists, board members, and executives for industry primes, many of these retired military officials return to the Pentagon as members of civilian leadership.viii The revolving door weakens enforcement, normalizes contractor-friendly rules, preserves monopoly sustainment models, and protects programs from cancellations. It creates an impenetrable layer of incentives that benefit defense primes and the pockets of senior Pentagon officials, but block efforts to lower the cost of U.S. national security.
Revolving Door Phenomenon: Where is it centralized and how is it perpetuated?
A 2021 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report found that 1,700 senior government officials had taken positions in the arms industry within five years of federal retirement. This practice was and continues to be particularly pronounced among top civilian and military staff; within the past five years, over 80% of retired four-star generals and admirals went on to work in the arms sector as board members, advisers, lobbyists, or consultants.ix
Within the Pentagon, the revolving door phenomenon is centralized in offices responsible for defense procurement and acquisition: namely, the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition & Sustainment (OUSD(A&S)).x OUSD(A&S) provides department-wide acquisition policy, oversees sustainment of existing weapons systems, and acts as the milestone decision authority for major defense programs. On the Acquisitions side, Service Acquisition Executives and Program Executive Officers have the power to restructure entire defense markets by approving, delaying, restructuring, or terminating entire programs.xi On the Sustainment side, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Sustainment (ASD(S)) and the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) set pricing for spare parts and renew maintenance contracts.xii Acquisitions leadership can reinforce or break down industry monopolies by designing the legal, contractual, and data environment that determines whether industry competition will be possible. Sustainment leadership, on the other hand, can preserve those monopolies via additional repair and sustainment contracts.
It is important to note that, while OUSD(A&S) acts as the major policy authority over defense procurement, the underlying requirements and draft contract actions are generated at the military service level. Industry primes meet face-to-face with military personnel at service-level procurement shops. However, the revolving door clusters where policy power, not contracting execution, sits. Senior civilian officials and general officers carry portable political and regulatory influence that make them far more valuable to industry as a post-government landing zone. This is why OUSD(A&S) is the hottest exit ramp from DoD into industry.
Additionally, the armed services committees and defense appropriations subcommittees are major revolving door centers, but for different reasons than OUSD(A&S). The House Armed Services Committee (HASC) and the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) authorize new defense programs and set policy constraints on defense acquisition. Former HASC and SASC staffers know which committee members protect which programs; if they secured jobs with industry primes, they would be able to expertly insert specific language into authorizations that shield threatened programs and protect funding. The House and Senate Appropriations Committees (HAC and SAC) control the release of defense funds. Former appropriations staffers who subsequently join with industry primes know how to add monetary plus-ups within draft bills, craft targeted talking points for hearings, and, in general, use their congressional expertise to benefit the prime’s business models.
A clear example of this dynamic is the Lewis-Lowery lobbying controversy, where several former staffers of the House Appropriations Chairman Jerry Lewis, including his longtime aide, joined the lobbying firm Copeland Lowery. They then secured hundreds of millions of dollars in earmarks and plus-ups for clients like General Atomics and Trident Systems by leveraging their intimate knowledge of the appropriations process and their relationships with their former boss.xiii Similarly, a former senior staffer for the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee secured over $1.69 billion in congressional plus-ups for an aeronautical manufacturer over a decade.xiv More recently, the former Minority Staff Director for the HASC was retained by a lobbying firm to specifically target over $9 billion in military construction funds for the benefit of his client.xv
The portable expertise coming out of OUSD(A&S), congressional defense committees, and the overall DoD leadership is highly valuable to the defense industry. Industry primes are willing to pay handsomely for this expertise, which makes the revolving door career movement a logical, opportunistic next step for retiring senior staff. Ellen Lord, for example, was a former Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics (2017-2021) and controlled all major DoD procurement.xvi Before entering DoD, she was the CEO of the aerospace firm Textron Systems. Despite being a longtime executive at a major defense contractor, the Senate did not scrutinize her confirmation. After completing her DoD service, she went on to take multiple board seats and advisory roles at defense and aerospace-linked companies.xvii Frank Kendall was Lord’s predecessor (2011-2017); after he served as Undersecretary, he became Vice President of Engineering for Raytheon. He would later return to DoD as Secretary of the Air Force in 2021.xviii Joseph Dunford, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (2015-2019), became an independent director of the board of Lockheed Martin just five months after retiring from active duty. During his time as Chairman, the F-35 program was facing major cuts due to criticisms from SASC and international customers over its ballooning price and serious design flaws. Dunford signed a crucial F-35B approval memo and stated he had “full confidence” in the aircraft’s ability to support Marines in combat.xix As a final example of opportunistic revolving door career-building, four-star General Jim Mattis retired from his position as Commander of U.S. Central Command (2010-2013) to join the board of General Dynamics. He was then appointed as Secretary of Defense (2017-2018), where Congress waived his seven-year civilian cooling-off requirement after active duty. After encountering major policy disagreements with President Trump, Mattis resigned from the role and returned to the board.xx
The career actions of Lord, Kendall, Dunford, and Mattis are legally permitted. All four former DoD officials endured no more than mild scrutiny from the public and revolving door watchdogs like the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) and OpenSecrets. The fact remains, however, that these four individuals were very likely hired by industry for their department insider knowledge, political influence, and deep knowledge of government contracts.
Why is the Revolving Door Phenomenon Crippling to U.S. National Security?
The revolving door exists not only because of opportunistic individuals, but because it is in the best interest of the U.S. military for the defense industrial base to utilize real military expertise; otherwise, it would be impossible for industry primes to make useful equipment. Most of modern warfare’s technical expertise does not live permanently inside the government, but rather at firms like Lockheed Martin or Northrop Grumman. Proponents of the revolving door contend that, when DoD officials rotate from DoD to industry, the government becomes more technically literate and sharper to notice contractor bluffs. However, the benefits of the revolving door ultimately prove insufficient when government oversight fails, data rights to overly complex weapons systems are privatized, industry monopolies harden, and profit replaces performance as the primary metric of an “improved national security.”
The revolving door distorts incentives by undermining honest oversight and warping objective decision making within the government. When officials expect future industry employment, they are less likely to kill failing programs, publicly challenge industry primes, or fight to reverse earlier acquisition decisions.xxi Bad, bloated programs survive longer than they should and absorb the funding needed for real threats. Emerging threats may then surface too fast for a sluggish DoD to recognize properly.
The revolving door also destroys the government’s bargaining power. When senior officials rotate between DoD and defense firms, they return to industry knowing exactly how budget fights work, how requirements are written, and where oversight is weakest. When these individuals return to government, they often rely on the same contractors for “expertise” and write requirements that match existing contractor products. Therefore, the Pentagon cannot negotiate hard on prices, contractors gain quasi-monopoly leverage, and the U.S. pays more for fewer ships, jets, and missiles – directly degrading warfighting capacity.
The revolving door locks the U.S. into fragile, monopolized supply chains. Its networks reinforce sole-source production, proprietary technical data, and contractor-owned sustainment. Instead of multiple suppliers vying for lucrative defense contracts, the DoD ends up with the “big five primes” (RTX/Raytheon, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin) that control everything from engine-building to software authority.xxii If Lockheed’s suppliers are disrupted via cyberattacks, labor crises, or kinetic strikes, massive swathes of the U.S.’s weapons production lines are at risk. Wartime surge production will become slow, politically contested, and contractually constrained.
The revolving door also distorts the Pentagon’s ability to assess threats. Its dynamics encourage overinvestment in high-tech, high-cost, low-volume systems. It generally discourages the cheap mass production of redundant, “attritable” systems (e.g., low-cost unmanned aircraft).xxiii The F-35’s software, for example, is famously criticized for having nearly 1,900 million lines of code.xxiv The U.S.’s small numbers of extremely expensive assets will become vulnerable to cheap adversary weapons. It becomes harder to protect U.S. interests abroad when U.S. Navy destroyers are forced to shoot down $2,000 drones with $2 million missiles.xxv The defense budget will increasingly prioritize program survival over lethality, and preservation of legacy platforms over future force adaptability.
Why is the Revolving Door Phenomenon Crippling to U.S. Allies & Partners? Consider Case Studies in the Middle East:
The revolving door is not just damaging to U.S. national security, but to the national security of U.S. allies and partners who buy equipment from these same industry primes and rely on U.S. defense systems for their own national security enterprises. Because most government-to-government defense acquisitions occur through the U.S. Foreign Military Sales (FMS) system, partner militaries inherit the same contractor-controlled sustainment, software, and data-rights constraints embedded in these overpriced U.S. programs.xxvi,xxvii, xxviii This dynamic weakens the lethality and effectiveness of foreign militaries while also degrading trust in U.S. reliability as a long-term security provider.
For example, the rapid collapse of the U.S.-backed Afghan Air Force in 2021 revealed broader structural incentives within the U.S. defense system that favor complex, contractor-dependent platforms. When the U.S. military withdrew its support and contractors, untrained Afghan forces were unable to sustain operations, which facilitated Taliban’s rapid advance, capture of Kabul, and collapse of the Afghan government.
In 2016, the U.S. decided to replace Afghanistan’s Russian-made Mi-17 helicopters with UH-60 Black Hawks as part of a broader plan to modernize the Afghan Air Force and reduce reliance on Russian supply chains.xxix However, U.S. contractors largely handled Black Hawk maintenance, spare parts, and logistics. Afghan crews struggled to transition from the simpler Mi-17s, which the crews were significantly more capable of maintaining themselves.xxx When the U.S. contractors abruptly withdrew, Black Hawk readiness plummeted within weeks. Fixed-wing platforms like the A-29 Super Tucano and rotary systems like the MD-530s met similar fates, since they depended heavily on contractor-supported maintenance, parts, and weapons integration. While the technical complexity of these systems exceeded Afghan institutional capacity, aircraft sustainment efforts required continuous external support from contractors and U.S. logistics networks.
The revolving door can prioritize contractor financial interests over military effectiveness, which creates a preference for systems like the Black Hawks: complex and laden with proprietary sustainment ecosystems and long-term service contracts. If left unchecked, these ulterior incentives will alter the types of systems available to foreign buyers, shape the design of partner forces, and severely degrade the independence and effectiveness of our allied foreign militaries.
Additionally, arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Persist despite questionably legal battlefield outcomes and humanitarian consequences the Middle East. A 2019 report conducted by the Transparency International Defense & Security Program examined how “recently retired (U.S.) senior military officers now work for the defense industry in MENA-related lobbying jobs.”xxxi It linked these retired officials to the creation of a broader set of “pathways to influence” that help sustain U.S. arms exports to Saudi and UAE partners even when those exports do not produce effective or strategically beneficial outcomes. U.S. industry has sold both countries precision-guided bombs, F-15A and F-16 fighter jets, and Patriot missile defense systems, which all require endless contractor support and U.S. training and sustainment pipelines.xxxii Simultaneously, human rights organizations have repeatedly documented the ineffective, indiscriminate, or unlawful use of U.S.-supplied weapons by Saudi-led coalition forces in Yemen. Saudi-led coalitions began targeting civilian areas with U.S.-supplied cluster munitions in 2015 and struck a non-military water drilling site in 2016 – killing several dozen civilians.xxxiii Coalitions struck a detention facility with a U.S.-made precision-guided bomb in 2022, killing at least 80 people.xxxiv
The provision of advanced U.S. military capabilities has not consistently translated into effective or discriminate use on the battlefield, which raises concerns about how partner forces employ these systems once transferred. The revolving door stifles foreign militaries’ independent operational capacity and adversely distorts pathway to procurement, but it also has real humanitarian consequences if not checked.
Policy Proposals, Laws, and Institutional Reforms
There are several public policy proposals, laws, and institutional reforms currently aimed at mitigating the revolving door problem that plagues the DoD. Enforcement of these laws is fragmented across Congress, the U.S. Office of Government Ethics (OGE), the Department of Justice (DOJ), Inspectors General, and the Government Accountability Office.
“Cooling-off” Restrictions, under federal law, are the core legal pillars of revolving door mitigation. One set of restrictions (“Section 207,” 18 U.S.C. § 207) are interpreted and implemented by the OGE but criminally enforceable by the DOJ.xxxv This law regulates post-employment lobbying by barring some retired senior officials from communicating with their former government offices. Some restrictions include lifetime communications bans if officials worked on contracts “personally and substantially.” One- to two-year communications bans apply if officials worked in Senate-confirmed, Senior Executive Service, or flag officer positions.xxxvi
The Procurement Integrity Act (PIA, 41 U.S.C. §§ 2101–2107), enforced primarily by the DoD Inspector General and DOJ, is the main federal law designed to prevent corruption at the contract-award stage of federal procurement.xxxvii Under the PIA, officials may not accept compensation from a specific company for one year if they served as a source selection authority on that company’s contract worth over $10 million.xxxviii Both Section 207 and the PIA, in theory, enforce cooling-off constraints on how quickly and directly former DoD officials can influence contracts after leaving the DoD.
On top of legal concerns, defense contractors themselves may periodically encounter a smattering of public disclosure requirements on whether they employ former senior DoD officials. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Disclosure requires that publicly traded defense primes disclose the names of their board members and executive officials in filings with the SEC.xxxix All required disclosures are publicly available through SEC’s Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval (EDGAR) system. If former officials register as lobbyists, then their employers must publicly disclose their names, clients, and issue areas under the Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA).xl
Finally, Congress has sparingly placed reporting requirements and restrictions within the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The FY2008 NDAA required the DoD to create and maintain the After Government Employment Advice Repository (AGEAR) database to help inspector generals monitor compliance with post-employment ethics restrictions.xli However, AGEAR was never made public, and watchdogs have repeatedly documented that the database is incomplete and underutilized. The FY2018 NDAA placed new post-government lobbying restrictions on former senior DoD officials: an effort that collapsed quickly due to the NDAA’s vague definition of “lobbying activities.”,
Within this challenging legal environment, three pieces of ambitious legislation have been proposed to Congress in the past three years. The Close the Revolving Door Act of 2023 sought to impose lifetime bans on former legislators from lobbying any current legislators.xlii The DoD Ethics and Anti-Corruption Act of 2023 sought to “promote ethics and prevent corruption in DoD contracting” by introducing four-year cooling-off periods, stricter contractor reporting requirements, and four-year hiring bans on “giant defense contractors” of former senior DoD officials.xliii While both acts are formally pending, they have effectively died in committee after the end of the 118th Congress. The Transparency in Contract Pricing Act would require contractors to quickly notify relevant contracting officers of large price increases, especially for non-competitive contracts. The act was referred to the SASC in September 2025, where its status remains “introduced.”xliv
Lastly, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced in November 2025 that he would be replacing long-entrenched Program Executive Officers (PEOs) within DoD’s acquisitions system with new “Portfolio Acquisition Executives” that are “more empowered to make decisions and more directly accountable for performance.”xlv There are roughly 75 Program Executive Offices across the DoD, each led by a PEO.xlvi PEOs oversee major systems, often worth billions of dollars, and hold gate-keeping power over prime-contractor relationships. While Hegseth framed this action primarily as a “war on bureaucracy,” his change in governance structures may de-silo contract decisions and break up “old boy network” dynamics that fuel revolving door capture.
Strike at Underlying Incentives to Make Revolving Door Laws More Effective
It is no surprise that, despite decades of legal efforts to slow down the revolving door, 65% of defense industry lobbyists still come from former government or military positions as of 2024.xlvii As long as defense contracting systems remain structured around cost-plus contracting, sole-source sustainment monopolies, and long lifecycle commitments, there will be strong incentive for firms to hire former insiders (despite reporting requirements or cooling-off periods). Expensive procurement programs benefit many congressional districts and states economically, which limits appetite for strong reforms even more. Many of these legal efforts are too narrow (e.g., apply only to formal lobbyists or certain senior government positions), allowing former officials to exploit obvious loopholes. Existing laws, such as the PIA’s one-year compensation ban, only apply to service-level program managers: which is how former Chairman Dunford was able to join the Lockheed Martin Board of Directors mere months after retirement. Dunford could have needed a Section 207 waiver since he fits the definition of a “very senior official,” except Section 207 does not enforce communications bans on board membership or advocacy roles.
Moreover, cooling-off laws are rarely, inconsistently, and often only symbolically enforced. Although it has been on the books since 1962, Section 207 has resulted in a tiny number of criminal cases – almost none involving senior DoD leadership – despite thousands leaving for industry every year. After the FY2018 NDAA attempt at a lobbying ban, a 2020 Pentagon OIG report found that the DoD did not bother to establish a reliable tracking or compliance-monitoring infrastructure, which undermined the law’s operational enforceability.xlviii Ultimately, Director Dunford did not evade the law; the law simply does not meaningfully restrict revolving door transitions.
Reframing the Problem
Ethics is a weak motivator in defense politics. Perhaps reform-minded Senators like Elizabeth Warren or Michael Bennet should tout their legislation not as defense-ethics reform bills, but as proposals to eliminate an internal national security threat. If the revolving door is reframed as a phenomenon that undermines wartime production, surge capacity, and materiel affordability in a China contingency, hawkish China-focused legislators may feel more inclined to address this readiness issue by enforcing current post-employment laws and reporting requirements.
Additionally, senators and government accountability bodies should reframe the enforcement of revolving door laws as a potential savings multiplier. If the GAO publicly estimated the cost inflation associated with sole-source sustainment, revolving door behavior, and weak oversight, it would have the opportunity to statutorily tie these cost overhangs with deficit reduction, troop readiness, and troop pay. If fiscal conservatives and budget hawks received a clear picture of how $1 trillion dollars could have been used to fix barracks conditions, develop cheap unmanned weapons systems, and improve cyber defense (instead of prolonging the F-35 program), their anger could fuel proper enforcement of revolving door laws and regulations.
Chip Away at the Enforcement Paradox
Revolving door laws remain ineffective because of the absence of credible enforcement mechanisms. As previously mentioned, while Section 207 restricts a narrow category of post-employment conduct on registered lobbyists, it does not enforce those communication bans on board membership or advocacy roles. This allows many senior leaders who provide “strategic advice” to slip through the revolving door unscathed. The existence of a partial “enforcement paradox” weakens incentives to enforce the existing Section 207 ban and renders expansions of that ban to other roles nearly impossible. This “enforcement paradox” refers to a structural paradox where existing restrictions are enforced by actors who operate inside the same political and economic ecosystem that benefits from weak enforcement. How can laws be meaningfully enforced when those tasked with enforcing them face personal, institutional, and career incentives to look the other way?
In theory, revolving door laws are enforced by a diffuse set of institutions: the DOJ, the OGE, agency IGs, the GAO, and congressional oversight committees. In practice, none of these bodies possess both the authority and the incentive to enforce post-employment restrictions aggressively. The DOJ rarely prosecutes revolving door violations because the legal threshold for criminal enforcement is high, the evidentiary burden is complex, and the targets are often well-connected former officials. Ethics violations are typically framed as ambiguous compliance disputes rather than clear corruption cases, making them unattractive prosecutorial investments.
A historically famous example of this technical fragility is the 1987 Nofziger case. Lyn Nofziger was a senior political adviser in the Reagan administration who, after leaving government service, quickly became a paid lobbyist for private clients seeking to influence federal agencies.xlix The DOJ prosecuted Nofziger under the Section 207 “cooling-off” provision that restricts senior officials from lobbying their former agencies for a set period after leaving office. Specifically, the DOJ alleged that Nofziger made communications to senior executive-branch officials, on behalf of private clients, within the statutory cooling-off period: thus, in violation of Section 207. The jury convicted him in 1987, making the case one of the very few criminal Section 207 convictions ever obtained.
However, the conviction was reversed when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that the DOJ failed to prove a critical statutory element: knowledge of the restriction. At the time, Section 207 required that the defendant knowingly violated the law. Congress later amended Section 207 to tighten knowledge requirements, but the collapsed case exposed how Section 207’s reliance on narrow definitions of communication and intent creates substantial legal risk for prosecutors. This discourages criminal enforcement and pushing revolving-door violations into the realm of ethics guidance rather than corruption prosecution.
The OGE has historically issued advisory opinions, but it otherwise cannot compel compliance or impose meaningful penalties. During his public remarks after resigning as OGE Director in 2017, Walter Shaub criticized the limits of OGE’s authority and the way ethics enforcement functions when broader political incentives work against compliance. “There isn’t much more I could accomplish at the Office of Government Ethics,” Schaub stated, “the OGE’s recent experiences have made it clear that the ethics program needs to be strengthened.”l IGs, meanwhile, lack independent enforcement power and depend on cooperation from the very agencies whose senior leadership often benefits from revolving door permissiveness. IGs operate under the Inspector General Act of 1978, which gives them broad authority to audit, inspect, evaluate, and investigate agency programs and operations.li However, the statute does not give IGs the power to independently impose disciplinary action, compel agency implementation of recommendations, or enforce statutory compliance on their own. Instead, IGs must report their findings and recommendations and rely on the agency’s leadership or Congress to act.
Congressional committees face an even more obvious conflict: members and staff benefit politically and professionally from close relationships with the defense industry, and aggressive enforcement risks undermining district jobs, campaign contributions, and future employment prospects.lii This creates an enforcement environment characterized by rational inaction, where any enforcement is symbolic rather than deterrent.
If enforcement failure is structural rather than moral, the solution may lie in redefining who enforces these laws and how enforcement incentives are aligned. One structurally ambitious option is to consolidate revolving door enforcement authority into a single, statutorily empowered entity: either a strengthened independent ethics enforcement office or an expanded GAO mandate with quasi-prosecutorial authority. Unlike agency-embedded inspectors or politically constrained committees, the GAO already possesses institutional legitimacy, technical expertise, and relative insulation from electoral and career pressures. Granting the GAO authority to initiate civil penalties, issue binding compliance determinations, and refer cases automatically to the DOJ would reduce reliance on discretionary enforcement by conflicted actors.
While empowering the GAO may sound radical, Congress explicitly authorized the GAO in the Competition in Contracting Act of 1984 to hear protests of federal contract awards, giving it a formal oversight role in procurement disputes.liii Congress has also expanded GAO’s authority by requiring agencies to formally respond to GAO findings, while also tying procedural and functional consequences to the GAO’s protest proceedings that impact agency procurement actions (2).liv,lv Granting the GAO further enforcement capabilities would simply build on existing adjudicative and oversight functions, and Congress may be willing to do this if the revolving door problem is reframed to them as a national security and financial Achilles’ heel.
Empower and Elevate Independent Oversight
Revolving door watchdogs like POGO, OpenSecrets, Responsible Statecraft, and Campaign Legal Center play a crucial role in exposing revolving door dynamics because they are structurally insulated from the career incentives that constrain government enforcers. Despite producing some of the most detailed and credible analyses of post-government employment patterns, these organizations remain largely reactive, under-resourced, and dependent on fragmented disclosures. If Congress mandated real-time disclosure of post-government employment, board memberships, and advisory roles for senior officials out of the Pentagon (rather than occasional, ad hoc reporting or investigative requests), watchdogs could sharpen their findings and paint a clearer picture of the adverse effects of the revolving door.
Decouple Career Advancement from Contractor Alignment
The revolving door exists because career incentives inside the national security system point outward toward industry rather than inward toward public service. As long as post-government employment with defense contractors remains the most lucrative and prestigious capstone to senior Pentagon careers, enforcement efforts will remain reactive and incomplete. Robert Rizzi, in his book, Introduction to Government Ethics, states it best: “federal ethics law aims to regulate what it cannot prohibit: the gravitational pull of private sector employment, both while in government and after government service.”lvi
The revolving door is not an inevitability. For example, France approaches its pantouflage (its movement of elite civil servants from senior government posts to lucrative private-sector roles) by subjecting senior civil servants to reviews by the Haute Autorité pour la transparence de la vie publique (High Authority for the Transparency of Public Life) before entering the private sector and preserving strong public-sector career security through tenure, pension guarantees, and return rights.lvii These mechanisms partially offset the financial appeal of private employment by anchoring long-term career legitimacy and security within the state itself.
A deferred public-service compensation – one that vests only if officials refrain from defense contractor employment for a defined period – could professionally and financially reward independence upon government retirement. This “golden handcuffs” approach could make cooling-off periods more financially attractive than punitive. Alternatively, instead of allowing expertise to exit the government and flow primarily into the private sector, Congress and the executive branch could expand high-status post-career roles within government and quasi-government institutions; independent review boards, acquisition red-teams, wargaming centers, reserve advisory corps, and congressional support agencies. These additional roles could allow career advancement to culminate in continued public authority rather than private affiliation.
Conclusion
From soap dispensers to sixth-generation fighter jets, war and its tools should not be built by special interests. Former government officials who have benefited from the revolving door phenomenon are not evil, but they are opportunistic and selfishly motivated, potentially to the detriment of U.S. national security. Post-employment laws and reporting requirements are meant to protect national security and, ultimately, public interest. These laws should prevent former officials from using their public service to advance their personal and financial interests at the expense of the public. If enforcement bodies fail to meaningfully enforce these laws and allow the revolving door to swing unchecked, the line between defending the nation and profiting from its defense will disappear entirely, leaving national security decisions in the hands of those who profit the most from perpetual threat.
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