The Uncertainty for Beltway Bandits: Billions at Stake
January 17, 2017
I don’t find CNBC a source of useful information. I did notice a write up with a title which caught my attention; specifically “Trump’s Rift with Intelligence Community Is Spooking US Spy Agency Contractors.” The business of some intelligence agencies boils down to information access, search, and content processing. With digital content readily available, the Beltway Bandits (contractors, consulting outfits, and body shops which provide “services” to the US government have been, are, and should be in hog heaven. Successful Beltway Bandits wallow in money, not mud, I wish to point out.
The CNBC story asserts:
The changing political landscape in Washington and friction between President-elect Donald Trump and the U.S. intelligence community could have major implications not only for the spy agencies but for the shadow private contractors such as Booz Allen Hamilton that support them.
Yikes. The Boozer!
The idea is that
Booz Allen, which gets 97 percent of it revenue from U.S. government agencies, provides everything from cyber and IT services to work designed to enhance the nation’s intelligence capabilities.
CNBC notes:
Overall, the U.S. budget for the national intelligence program was $53 billion in fiscal 2016 and another $17.7 billion for the military intelligence program.
My view from rural Kentucky is that the “total” is probably different from what CNBC reports. One example: What about the budget for projects for the White House, what about entities with one innocuous name which perform “interesting” work. Are these figures tallied?
CNBC notes that despite the uncertainty which accompanies any new president taking office, spending for information and intelligence is likely to go up.
My thought is that Booz, Allen and similar firms are going to chug along. Information access is a tough problem. Who is the president and his appointees going to rely upon? A Yandex query? Experts in Cairo, Illinois? Nope. The Beltway crowd, a tradition for decades.
Stephen E Arnold, January 17, 2017
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