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Another top senior Pentagon official resigned on Monday declaring that the Pentagon needs “structural change” and is “falling behind” in the technology battle with U.S. rivals like China.
Preston Dunlap announced on his LinkedIn account Monday that he will leave the Pentagon in the coming weeks.
Dunlap is the founding Chief Architect Officer of the Department of the Air Force and oversees the architecture of over $70 billion of U.S. Space Force and U.S. Air Force research, development, and acquisition programs.
American Military News reported:
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Preston Dunlap, who served as the first Department-level Chief Architect Officer in the Federal Government and as the founding Chief Architect Officer of the Department of the U.S. Space Force and U.S. Air Force for the last three years, warned in an interview with Bloomberg News that the Pentagon is “falling behind” in the technology battle with U.S. adversaries.
In his resignation letter, Dunlap said, “By the time the Government manages to produce something, it’s too often obsolete; no business would ever survive this way, nor should it.”
Dunlap said getting the Pentagon to adopt the latest technology is like “defying gravity.”
Dunlap described the Pentagon as “the world’s largest bureaucracy,” adding that the “beast of bureaucracy” is “energized to reject the potential of innovation at every turn.”
In order to regain its “technological edge,” Dunlap argued that the Pentagon must adopt the “mentality and capability” of Silicon Valley, specifically Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
“Ultimately, my team and I proved that we can defy gravity and change can happen – even at the largest employer in the galaxy and even with small but highly capable teams. But, we shouldn’t be satisfied. We need this kind of progress at scale. And we need it now, not tomorrow. Or it will be too late,” he warned. “So let’s be careful to not…compete with each other, when we should be competing with China.”
“Ironically as I’m writing this, I received notification that the phone lines are down at the Pentagon IT help desk. Phone lines are down? It’s 2022, folks,” he added.
Last September, Nicolas Chaillan, a senior cybersecurity official at the Pentagon, resigned asserting that the U.S. cybersecurity is no match with China.
“We have no competing fighting chance against China in fifteen to twenty years. Right now, it’s already a done deal; it is already over in my opinion,” he said.