Why the Pentagon Fails Audits Year After Year After Year
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Hello Oddlots listeners, I'm Joe Wasenthal.
And I'm Tracy Alloway.
Obviously, mostly we've been talking a lot about the uh trade war lately, the tariffs, but there are other things going on in the world and in fact there are some episodes that we've recorded prior to all this that we still want to publish.
That's right. So what you are about to hear is an episode we recorded way back on March eighteenth. It feels like it was a lot longer ago, but it's been basically a month. And with everything that was happening in markets, all the trade announcements, the the tariffs, we've had to put this one on hold. But we want you to listen to it. It's a really interesting topic and still very, very worthwhile to hear about it.
Right. We're gonna be talking about the Pentagon budget and things like that. If it feels a little dated, the conversation, that's because it is dated. But take a listen. I still think that you'll find, you know, there is still no world in which the nature of defense spending is not an important question, is not something interesting. So even with everything else going on in the world, you should take a listen.
Here we go. Mm-hmm. Bloomberg Audio Studios Podcasts, radio, news.
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Wiesenthal.
And I'm Tracy Alloway.
Tracy, we've hinted on the podcast a few times over the last several months who want to do more on defense. And we're gonna we're gonna stamping it up. That's a hint, Joe, and I think
you've said it pretty explicitly.
But it is interesting, right? Like it it is a good it does seem like it should be a good topic for us, right?
It's a huge chunk of the economy. I think it's like the US government's biggest line item in terms of expenditure. It's either defense or interest rate payments on its bonds. Yeah, that's right. It's definitely number one or number two. And so it is worthy of additional study. I agree.
And you know, I think it's actually really important for us because, you know, we talk about industrial policy a lot. In defense is the one area where that is never wavered, right? Like it's always been the government is the primary buyer, purchaser, but there are these private companies and they also sell overseas and stuff. And it's always been about staying at the leading edge of tech. And probably if you're like thinking about like Industrial policy in other areas, like whether it's cars or batteries or semiconductors, I just assume there must be a lot that we can learn from how it works in uh the defense world.
As a military brat, I feel comfortable saying as well that it's kind of also connected to a social safety net. Yeah, you have health care tied to uh military service. You've got cheap groceries tied to military service. I used to love that. So it's interesting from a number of perspectives. What blows me away though is you hear that statistic every once in a while. That the Pentagon has never passed an audit, which raises all these big questions about if this is the biggest expenditure or one of the biggest expenditures for the US, how is it possible that we don't actually seem to know where the money is going?
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