Hacker News Reader

We've put military contractors in prison for bid rigging and fined them hundreds of millions of dollars for defrauding us before. Within the last decade, even. Boeing is not immune.

> "strategic defense contractor"

What even is this term?

View on HN

There are many zillions of defense contractors. Most of them are nonessential, small, or generic suppliers that are ordinary companies. A "strategic" defense contractor is a much smaller subset of large corporations or sole-source providers of resources or critical subsystems deemed "essential", and so they are given more favorable deals, privileges, and shown direct and indirect political and economic favoritism at the legislative- and executive-branch levels. This allows them to get away with much larger incidents of malfeasance and crime that other companies and individuals would be prosecuted for. (MCAS took 2 planes to crash. 737 NG structural deficiencies post MD merger were never adequately addressed. The 787 has been riddled with problems.)

can you point me to any official document anywhere that uses the term "strategic defense contractor"?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com