After getting drafted in the mid-1960s as the Vietnam War intensified, I saw all my fellow Soldiers as “olive drab green.” Despite my childhood immigration from Nicaragua, going back there didn’t cross my mind. Nor did fleeing to Canada like about 125,000 draft dodgers.
Ironically, my father who came to California from Nicaragua in the 1940s was also conscripted and saw combat in Europe for two years. Following the war, he returned to Central America for me and my mother so we could move to San Francisco and pursue the American dream.
I worked hard in the corporate and government world, reaching eventual service as Assistant Administrator, U.S. Small Business Administration in Washington, DC, over a decade ago.
Throughout my lifetime, the worst discrimination I ever felt was political – not racial, nor ethnic.
Of course racism existed back then, as did heroic efforts to defeat it. It was inspiring to hear Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. tell the world, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
Those important lessons have stayed with me.
That’s why recent news of Lockheed Martin’s “White Privilege” awareness seminar caught my attention. It’s the world’s largest arms manufacturer and one of America’s largest companies with 2020 net sales of $65 billion. Their activities impact taxpayers and deserve scrutiny.
For those who missed it, a recent company Zoom call shows over a dozen White male executives including retired senior military officers in a training seminar with the screen capture headline: “Lockheed Martin’s White Men’s Caucus.”
According to Chris Rufo, a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, the training included“exercises where they said being a White male was analogous to being a KKK member, to being in the Aryan Nation.” Other exercises had them “review 156 White male privilege statements” and ultimately they were “apologizing for their race, apologizing for their sex and orientation.”
At first glance, I thought this could be shameless pandering to the Defense Department, their top client, because newly appointed Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is Black. But then realizing you don’t become a four-star Army general like he did through social justice activism, I found their actions presumptuous and offensive to his career and the military as a whole.
Even worse, after seeing other Lockheed Martin-related news, taxpayers should pay close attention to this question: is their so-called “training” a smokescreen for something else?
Lockheed Martin is attempting a $4.4 billion monopolistic acquisition of Aerojet Rocketdyne, America’s last independent company which produces solid rocket motors used in missile propulsion systems.
If the proposed merger announced in December 2020 is successful, several other American defense companies which buy missile systems from Aerojet would be forced out of the missile business or alternatively have to look overseas for foreign suppliers.
Since the Biden White House wisely signed a “Made in America” Executive Order in January 2021, a Lockheed-Aerojet merger would compel U.S. industry peers to either violate the order or stop making these important weapons which will hurt the country’s ability to protect us. It’s a nightmare for national security.
Secretary Austin recognizes the dangers posed by defense industry consolidation, per his Senate confirmation hearing. He noted “a number of weaknesses exist in the defense industrial base” which include “reliance on sole or single source suppliers, reliance on foreign sources (including adversarial sources), and vulnerabilities to predatory and capital investments…”
Similarly, President Biden’s nominee for Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall, warned in 2015 that, “the trend toward fewer and larger prime contractors has the potential to affect innovation, limit the supply base, pose entry barriers to small, medium and large businesses, and ultimately reduce competition – resulting in higher prices to be paid by the American taxpayers.”
Fortunately, they and top aides have the chance to review and approve, or disapprove, the Lockheed-Aerojet proposed merger, along with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) which shares oversight of major defense acquisitions. Hopefully they will see past Lockheed Martin’s racially-charged spectacle and make informed decisions based on national defense alone.
And taxpayers can remind them corporate mega-mergers don’t necessarily work out anyway, wasting lots of time and money. From my experiences in the banking sector, I remember the infamous case in which Bank of America acquired Countrywide Financial for $2.5 billion in 2008, only to lose $40 billion in legal costs, real estate and settlements.
So as Lockheed Martin makes headlines for virtue signaling, taxpayers ought to ask what’s going on behind the scenes and ensure government regulators do also.