There is good news and bad news when it comes to the nation’s defenses.
The good news is that JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon announced a $1.5 trillion initiative focused on national security. It is unclear how Dimon will gather the more than $10 billion of his bank’s own money that he committed for the effort, but good for him for trying to sound the alarm and generate enthusiasm for the effort.
Dimon assembled a council of big names to advise on where his bank and other capital funds should invest in defense industries for maximum impact, which is another sound step if it gets serious and specific quickly.
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I wish him well. This recognition of the actual threat from the Chinese Communist Party, the People’s Liberation Army, and the People’s Liberation Army Navy is great news, and this awareness of the threats posed by the alliance of tyrants that Chinese President Xi Jinping leads is long overdue.
Even better news, though, is that a new generation of business titans, such as Peter Thiel, Alex Karp, Palmer Lucky, and, of course, Elon Musk, has long been aware of the threats to our country, especially to the freedom of the seas, for many years. Their initiatives and companies are already about the work of next-generation weapons systems to overcome the advantage China has built up via sheer numbers and massive war-making capacity.
“Quantity has a quality all its own,” Adm. James Stavridis has said on my program scores of times. Now Adm. Mark C. Montgomery brings news to the program almost weekly of innovation from the battlefields of Ukraine and from the analysts on Taiwan of next-generation systems already deployed in the air and on and under the seas.
What we still need, however, is seriousness of purpose on defense from the Democratic Party, where it has simply vanished, consumed by hatred of President Donald Trump and absurd sideshow political matters.
There are a small number of very loud neoisolationists within the GOP, of course. But the Democrats, as a whole, are fundamentally unserious about the reality of the military threat posed by the alliance of tyrants led by Xi. If Dimon wants to lead he will be very clear on the threat and the need for both parties to listen to Sens. Roger Wicker (R-MS), Susan Collins (R-ME) and Tom Cotton (R-AR) — chairs of committees on Armed Services, Appropriations and Intelligence respectively — and follow their lead and support their efforts to rearm and innovate at the fastest possible speed.
Montgomery noted this week that we may have a National Defense Authorization Act by December’s end, which is an improvement over recent years but still ridiculously late given the threats around the world.
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The hope is that this new “Team Dimon” does more than gather and guess about the future of investment in defense industries and instead pushes both parties on the urgent need to expand defense funding to 4% of GDP, while urging support for the new companies pursuing our asymmetrical advantages.
If the private sector would also make it clear that Israel is not just our closest ally but also the only other country in the West with a defense sector making weapons like the new “Iron Beam” to keep the international peace, that would be another contribution from it worth having.
Hugh Hewitt is a longtime conservative commentator and author. He hosts the Hugh Hewitt Show on Salem Radio every weekday from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m.
