Pentagon Advisory Boards Need to Offer 10X Ideas, Not 10% Ones

News that the Biden administration will delay the seating of several Trump appointees to defense advisory boards is a welcome signal that incoming leaders recognize these groups are essential, not just patronage jobs. But the review needs to go much further than that.

The Defense Department is at a crossroads. Incremental improvements are no longer good enough to keep up with China; the Pentagon needs substantive and sustained changes to its size, structure, policies, processes, practices, technologies, and culture. The last administration asked most of the Pentagon’s 40-plus boards for advice on small improvements — with a few notable exceptions, such as the Innovation Board’s Software Study and the work of the National Security Commission for AI — the latter an independent effort chartered by Congress. 

Read the rest at Defense One