Hegseth shreds Soviet-style bureaucracy and 'five-year plans' governing Pentagon

By Fox News · Fox News

War Secretary Pete Hegseth tore into the Pentagon’s entrenched acquisition bureaucracy in a fiery address Friday, comparing the department’s planning culture to Soviet-style central planning that he says has crippled innovation, risk-taking and the nation’s ability to prepare for war. Speaking to a group of defense industry executives, Hegseth opened by invoking the specter of a familiar enemy — but quickly turned his critique inward. "Today, I'd like to talk to you about an adversary that poses a threat, a very serious threat, to the United States of America," Hegseth said. "This adversary is one of the world's last bastions of central planning. It governs by dictating in five-year plans from a single capital, it attempts to impose its demands across time zones, continents and continents, oceans and beyond, with brutal consistency, it stifles free thought and crushes new ideas. It disrupts the defense of the United States and places the lives of our men and women in uniform at risk." After teasing comparisons to the former Soviet Union and even the Chinese Communist Party, Hegseth delivered his punchline: "The adversary I'm talking about is much closer to home. It's the Pentagon bureaucracy — not the people, but the process." US COULD LOSE NEXT MAJOR WAR DUE TO PENTAGON'S 'BROKEN' ACQUISITION SYSTEM Hegseth accused decades of War Department policy of being paralyzed by "impossible risk thresholds" and "burdensome and inefficient processes" that have turned the Pentagon into a self-reinforcing machine where "process, not outcomes, matter." He argued that previous administrations only made things worse by trying to "go around the process rather than confront it head-on," leaving both the U.S. military and defense industrial base weaker and slower to adapt. "The institution shapes the individuals as much as the individuals shape the institution," Hegseth said. "Over time, the prevailing pattern becomes more and more entrenched, risk-averse and immovable." Hegseth sai…