Organizations commonly fail by deluding themselves. One form of self-delusion is confusing motion for progress. The author's point is that the Pentagon thinks it is funding technology but isn't getting value for its money. It's failing to do so because it lacks the will or ability to unite expertise, authority, and responsibility in a single brain. When organizations diffuse responsibility or grant authority to people unequipped to distinguish motion from progress, the result is always waste and stagnation.
Effective leadership is a continual struggle against this entropic tendency of organizations towards management of appearances over world-of-atoms results. During those rare interludes in history when a strong leader manages to temporarily reverse this organizational entropy, magic happens. Consider ULA versus SpaceX or DeepMind vs. OpenAI
Imagine how much further up the technology ladder we as a species would be if institutional competence were the norm, not an unstable and fleeting miracle.
Effective leadership is a continual struggle against this entropic tendency of organizations towards management of appearances over world-of-atoms results. During those rare interludes in history when a strong leader manages to temporarily reverse this organizational entropy, magic happens. Consider ULA versus SpaceX or DeepMind vs. OpenAI
Imagine how much further up the technology ladder we as a species would be if institutional competence were the norm, not an unstable and fleeting miracle.