Another resignation

“Success is much overrated anyway. For when it comes to teaching us something, success can’t hold a candle to failure. Who ever learned much from his successes? Who has not learned from failure?” — Paul Greenberg

This past week, another senior official resigned his position at the Pentagon, and again went out with a blistering press release. This time it was a senior official “responsible for driving technological innovation,” according to Bloomberg. The official issued a ninepage statement, which he made public on LinkedIn.

“By the time the Government manages to produce something,” Preston Dunlap wrote, “it’s too often obsolete. Much more must be done if DoD is going to regrow its thinning technological edge.”

The Department of Defense is the best example of a large bureaucracy. Public education has nothing on the military. Sometimes the United States military is like — sometimes it’s exactly like — a large battleship. They don’t turn on dimes.

Mr. Dunlap, and others like him, have made suggestions to their former employers, including this one: Take actions that might fail. Innovative companies (and agencies) must be willing to take chances, from AI to hypersonic weapons.

If a bureaucracy has too many people who are too timid to try hard things, less fearful companies (and agencies) might instead. In the private sector, this is called competition, and if a company fails because of lack of courage, well, these things happen.

But the Pentagon is up against the Chinese, North Koreans, Iranians, Russians and terrorists of every stripe. We can’t shrug if its own people are worried.

cc: This state’s congressional delegation