[fat_pikachu]

> Your comment, at face value, seems to defend the status quo.

The comment is observational, not persuasive. Few people are happy with the current situation we find ourselves in. I'm certainly not.

> The author alleges there was a deal made by Clinton to allow M&As in the defense industry - he says that politicians and financial industry are both to blame. Can you provide an alternate explanation?

The author's argument is that the lack of competition in military suppliers is due to relaxed regulatory scrutiny. I don't find this convincing. Even if U.S. regulatory bodies had aggresively enforced antitrust, many of these companies would have gone bankrupt sooner or later because demand for military assets collapsed after the cold war. This, combined with the fact that newer competitors aren't entering the market, means we'd still be in a similar position due to attrition.

It's silly to blame the financial industry because they're reacting to the incentives that the government created. It isn't the investment bank's fault iRobot is worth more as a tech company than a defense company. This is akin to blaming an engineer choosing to work for a tech company rather than a defense contractor because the tech company pays more.

> The author clearly argues that this is due to anti competitive business practices that forced Boeing to withdraw from the bid. Northrup purchased a key supplier, now refuses to sell to Boeing.

That's a fair point, but I think it's trivial in the larger picture. There were other SRM manufacturers lost in the decades prior to the Orbital acquisition. The fact that we allowed the the number of suppliers to decrease to two and didn't encourage any new suppliers is indicative of a much larger problem. We can't expect to place these companies in stasis for decades until we decide we're ready to buy from them again. People and companies move on without the proper incentives.