The Hyperpartisanship Effect

Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work said he worries today’s “hyperpartisanship” could jeopardize the department’s third offset strategy, which looks to recapture the United States’ technological advantage over its adversaries. Work, who was responding to a question from columnist David Ignatius at a Washington Post event on Wednesday, said he wants the United States’ capability challenges to be discussed outside the Pentagon too, but partisanship could stand in the way. “I want to make sure that we dust off the strategic muscles that we allowed to atrophy because we’ve had so much enormous strength and really start thinking about these problems in a coherent way across the government,” he said. “I have great optimism that we can tackle these problems, but we’re going to have to put our attention to them and really get after them. And the thing I worry about most is the hyperpartisanship that we see.”