Last week, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth called out the military’s fixation on culture over combat readiness, and he was speaking for a lot of Americans who want a fighting force focused on victory, not virtue signaling. The problem goes beyond uniformed ranks and into the boardrooms that supply our weapons, vehicles, and systems. If the companies building our arsenal prioritize ideology over excellence, the consequences are not theoretical.
Woke Activism In The Defense Five
The five biggest U.S. defense contractors—Lockheed Martin, RTX, General Dynamics, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman—control huge swaths of procurement and should be obsessed with performance, not political theater. Instead, most of them have embraced third-party activist agendas that push diversity programs, trainings, and benefit packages rooted in ideology rather than mission. That surrender of focus undermines engineering culture and corrodes the merit-based systems America needs to survive on tomorrow’s battlefield.
One clear sign of this drift is corporate compliance with activist scorecards that pressure firms to meet sweeping social criteria. Several of these firms chase perfect marks from groups like the most influential LGBTQ corporate lobby, adopting policies that affect hiring, vendor selection, and employee health benefits. Those choices funnel limited time and money away from prototyping, testing, and sustaining lethal equipment.
Another vector is the Business Roundtable idea that corporations owe obligations to vague “stakeholders” rather than shareholders and customers who demand capability and value. That shift opened the door to huge corporate spending on racial equity initiatives and DEI bureaus that lobby internally for resources and priorities inconsistent with defense manufacturing. When billions are pledged to social causes, taxpayers rightly ask whether the investment improves jets, ships, or missiles.
Independent watchers classify most of these giants as high risk for politicized governance, noting how ESG frameworks creep into procurement decisions and charitable giving. That kind of capture invites captured regulatory and contracting behavior where identity criteria trump skills or past performance. Even the contractor with a lower risk rating still engages in political activity and corporate grantmaking that distracts from pure warfighting outputs.
The practical result is procurement that can reward identity parameters over technical merits, and subcontracting practices that propagate these priorities down the supply chain. When small suppliers must demonstrate compliance with mandated DEI metrics to win work, innovation and quality take a back seat to checkbox compliance. That is a recipe for lower performance and slower delivery of critical systems.
Contractors sometimes claim they have no choice because federal rules and expectations nudged them into compliance. For years, procurement guidance, reporting requirements, and cultural norms treated DEI as an operational imperative rather than a policy choice. But the legal environment has shifted, and companies now have an opportunity to reorient toward mission-first priorities.
DOJ’s New Guidance: Time To End Illegal DEI
On July 29, 2025, the Department of Justice issued enforcement guidance making clear that discriminatory DEI practices that use race or sex as criteria for hiring, training, promotions, scholarships, or contracting can be unlawful. That guidance destroys the false choice that firms needed to adopt identity-based programs to get federal work, and it restores a focus on qualifications and competency. The message is simple: government funding will no longer justify programs that prioritize group characteristics over merit.
The DOJ even warns that neutral-sounding phrases like cultural competence or lived experience can serve as proxies for protected characteristics if applied to limit opportunities or channel benefits. The right compliance posture is to evaluate skills, performance, and security suitability above all else. Contractors should take this legal cover and immediately decouple procurement decisions from ideological screening.
For defense firms, the fix is straightforward: stop letting external activist scorecards and internal DEI fiefdoms set the agenda for engineering and acquisition. Redirect teams toward rigorous testing cycles, supplier vetting on performance metrics, and transparent, objective contract award criteria. That change will not be painless, but the alternative is slower systems and reduced battlefield advantage.
Secretary Hegseth has signaled that the Department of War will no longer tolerate culture projects that sap readiness, and defense executives should take that seriously. General Dynamics shows some restraint and proves resisting activist pressure is possible without collapsing operations or talent pipelines. Yet “least bad” is not acceptable when national survival is on the line; every company supplying the military must align with law, mission, and the public interest.
If defense giants want to keep taxpayer money and the public trust, they need to refocus on what matters: building the best weapons, vehicles, and systems in the world. That means prioritizing technical skill, durability, and speed of delivery, and cutting the bureaucracy that diverts engineering talent into activism. The choice is clear—either the industry commits to excellence or it further erodes the military advantage America depends on.
