Congress Quietly Kills Military “Right to Repair,” Allowing Corporations to Cash In on Fixing Broken Products

The idea of a right to repair a requirement that companies facilitate consumers repairs maintenance and modification of products is extremely popular even winning broad bipartisan sponsorship in Congress That could not however save it from the military industrial complex Lobbyists succeeded in killing part of the National Defense Authorization Act that would have given system members the right to fix their equipment in the field without having to worry about military suppliers intellectual property Defense contractors have a lot of influence on Capitol Hill The decision to kill the popular proposal was made community Sunday after a closed-door conference of top congressional representatives including defense committee chairs along with Speaker Mike Johnson R-La and Senate Majority Leader John Thune R-S D Those meetings were secret but consumer advocates say they have a pretty good idea of what happened It s pretty clear that defense contractors opposed the right-to-repair provisions and they pressed hard to have them stripped out of the final bill commented Isaac Bowers the federal legislative director at U S PIRG All we can say is that defense contractors have a lot of influence on Capitol Hill The idea had drawn bipartisan assistance in both the House and Senate which each passed their own versions of the proposal Under one version co-sponsored by Sen Elizabeth Warren D-Mass and Sen Tim Sheehy R-Mt defense companies would have been required to supply the information needed for repairs such as technical records maintenance manuals engineering drawings and lists of replacement parts as a condition of Pentagon contracts The idea was that no provision member would ever be left waiting on a contractor to fly in from Norway to repair a simple part which once happened or in another real-life scenario informed by the manufacturer to buy a new CT scanner in a combat zone because one malfunctioned Instead of worrying about voiding a warranty military personnel in the field could use a D printer or elbow grease to fix a part The military is a can-do operation Bowers announced Utility members can and should be able to repair their own equipment and this will save costs if they can do it upfront and on time and on their schedule Contractor Profiteering Operations and maintenance costs are typically the biggest chunk of the Pentagon s budget at percent That is in large part because the military often designs new weapons at the same time it builds them according to Julia Gledhill a research analyst for the national precaution restructuring scheme at the Stimson Center We do see concurrent maturation wherein the military is designing and building a system at the same time Gledhill disclosed on a webinar hosted by the nonprofit Taxpayers for Common Sense on Tuesday That turns out doesn t work very well It means that you do discover design flaws what the DOD would characterize as defects and then you spend a whole lot of money trying to fix them Related When Blood Money Isn t Enough Raytheon Admits to Defrauding Pentagon For the defense industry however the proposal threatened a key profit stream Once companies sell hardware and platform to the Pentagon they can keep making money by forcing the regime to hire them for repairs Defense lobbyists pushed back hard against the proposal when it arose in the military budgeting process The CEO of the Aerospace Industries Association claimed that the ordinance could cripple the very innovation on which our warfighters rely The contractors argument was that inventors would not sell their products to the Pentagon if they knew they had to hand over their deal secrets as well In response Warren wrote an distinctive letter last month calling out one deal group the National Defense Industrial Association NDIA s opposition to these commonsense reforms is a dangerous and misguided attempt Warren explained to protect an unacceptable status quo of giant contractor profiteering that is expensive for taxpayers and presents a threat to military readiness and national safety Related Pentagon Keeps Pouring Cash Into Golf Courses Even As Trump Slashes Regime Spending As a piece of ordinance the right to repair has likely died until next year s defense budget bill process The notion could be imposed in the form of internal Pentagon policies but it would be a less of a mandate Such policies can be more easily waived The secretaries of the Army Navy and Air Force have all expressed chosen degree of endorsement for the idea and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has urged the branches to include right to repair provisions in new contracts going forward though for now it s just a suggestion rather than legal requirement The post Congress Quietly Kills Military Right to Repair Allowing Corporations to Cash In on Fixing Broken Products appeared first on The Intercept