How about extending this to cover your humble civilians too
this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2025
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Senators Introduce Bipartisan Bill to Guarantee Military Right to Repair Its Equipment
(www.warren.senate.gov)
haha no
This is for civilians, we're the ones paying the repair bills.
When civilians want something, it's always "those poor corporations!"
At least with the bill focused on military you can put forward the importance of "combat readiness", "supporting the troops", "taxpayer dollars", and other things that politicians often say they care about.
If this passes for the military, then that will mandate the creation of a parts supply chain, as well as documentation and manuals for maintenance and repair, for whatever the military buys. Once that stuff is created, it'll be a lot easier to mandate that the existing stuff be made available to the public, too.
That might not make much of a difference for a guided bomb, but it'll make a huge difference for the huge amount of commercial off the shelf stuff that the military buys: laptops, routers, tablets, phones, civilian vehicles, tools, other basic equipment.
Buy military surplus equipment, I guess?
I imagine it's a lot easier to expand to civilians later than to get a bill through without the military/government benefitting first.
So the military has been bound by the same handcuffs that McDonalds is with it's ice cream machines?
It was messed up that McDonalds agreed to that. It's TERRIFYING that the group in charge of our military ever did.
Yeah its absolutely wild. Even Louis Rossman has done some videos about the military's lack of right to repair. Its insane to me that you'd buy a multi-billion dollar jet like the F-35, and legally be unable to repair it without calling in (and paying a hefty service contract for) someone from Lockheed or Pratt and Whitney to troubleshoot it. That can't be sustainable if you do end up needing to send a ton of these things into combat
Not to mention the toxic incentives it creates when the vendor is the only one allowed to repair the thing they sold you. If they get a paycheck every time they repair the thing they build, then obviously they're gonna build that thing to break.
Exactly. This is completely insane. The DoD has the negotiating leverage to write these right to repair requirements into their RFPs, specifications, and contracts. The idea that their procurement offices simply failed to do this boggles my mind.
Back in the war, if you had a winning design, you were required to license it, full drawings included, to many different manufacturers at fair prices. The Defense Production Act is still on the books, and it contains a lot of power to control the economy. Why is DoD handcuffing themselves?
Corruption
McDonalds made money from the deal. They were paid by Taylor to force their franchisees to use their ice cream machines with the extortionist service contract.
So the military has been bound by the same handcuffs that McDonalds is with it’s ice cream machines?
Yes... It's funny because I worked on a platform called the MLRS. I saw what repairs to the circuitry of the GPS and other modules look like. I could have fixed it myself... by hand... The circuit boards were vietnam era looking stuff (the platform was from the 80's, but developed during the 70s)... Meaning the trace pitch was measured in mm. Like I could pop open shit and eyeball and solder that shit with crappy $10 bargain bin soldering iron. But nah, needed to get a special civilian to show up and replace the board (they didn't even try to fix it).
Unclear if you worked for the army, or for Mcdonalds. Either way you were probably paid about the same, and had to go to war every day.
Mcdonalds 20% less morally compromising, much worse benefits.
About the same amount of mcrib.
Service contracts are where the money is at!
A lot easy to hide grift in service contracts
Gotta get that recurring revenue!
McDonald's was happy to do it because they're not really in the restaurant owning business. They force their franchisees to use the exact ice cream machine they get paid by Taylor to enforce. It's a literal racket
Now the military part... Yeah, that's fucked up, I always thought Uncle Sam got the right to repair their own shit but apparently not.
mcdonalds is a real estate bussiness
I think that's just in the US. They also have franchisees elsewhere that still have to pay for the franchise rights. They're for sure not in the restaurant business though, at least not big time. That's risky and costly so the franchisees get to take that risk.
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The US military is not for national defense, it's a pay pig for a handful of corporations.
idk why this is downvoted. literally all the US military does is make money for contractors, hopefully by cracking brown children's skulls, but that's just a bonus for them.
Drop the word "military" and I'm onboard.
I'm on board regardless.
Any legal precedent for this has to be a win right?
It might have some side effects of affecting more than just the military, but codified right to repair into law is never going to be a bad thing IMO.
What about the civilian right to repair.
Why can’t we all just be allowed to fix all of our shit. Sell me parts, let me open up things and poke around without illegals saying I violated the warranty.
Don't worry. We prioritize the military over healthcare, wealth disparity, hunger, homelessness, cost of living, climate change, etc. This issue will be resolved right quick.
But fuck veterans. They can go fuck off and die.
While this isn't as far as I'd like them to go, this is extremely big news. The amount of money spent on absolute bullshit fees by defense contractors is bonkers. Us taxpayers are shelling out billions of dollars to buy a single jet that we then have to spend millions of dollars per year to maintain, simply because we aren't allowed to maintain it ourselves.
Boy oh boy really putting through the important shit huh? God damn do I hate our current politicians.
This is important. Rossman did an interview with a few military techs, and here are few highlights
- they couldn't get the router password (that they own) for troubleshooting. Imagine your ISP locked you out of the router?
- it cost 200k to ship a 100k part because they weren't allowed to fix the broken one. 300k - thats a decent sized home in some areas, just to replace a wire or something. (Look up military pricing too, I remeber seeing something about how the military pays $400 for $4 bag of fuses)
- they have to fly manufacture service techs that don't get schematics, if they need them, an engineer is flown out who closely guards them.
Its a complete waste of taxpayer money. Money that could be redirected into more important stuff, but alas our corrupt politicians will find other things to waste it on.
We're allowed to fix our own cars (although manufactures are trying to stop that), why can't the military fix their own equipment or farmers fix tractors? Get a foothold in the military sector and the rest will follow.
This is important.
It's the downstream consequence of decades of outsourcing, kicked off in earnest in the Reagan Administration. "Right to Repair" is just the tip of an enormous iceberg of military privatization.
Money that could be redirected into more important stuff, but alas our corrupt politicians will find other things to waste it on.
That's the nut of it. This money is being wasted in the general sense. But it isn't wasted in the eyes of crony legislators and bureaucrats who see themselves on the receiving end of the kickback stream.
This goes back to the BBB and its rampage through some of the most high efficiency Medicaid programs on offer, in order to shuttle somewhere between $175B and $541B (depending on who is counting) to a national security system that's just legions of badged up bullies harassing locals for the entertainment of a few hooting chuds.
why can’t the military fix their own equipment or farmers fix tractors?
Because
and SaaS is how corporate industry has decided it will continue to grow its profits indefinitely.
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So finally they’ve figured out that “privatization” is a shitty idea. Not only does it introduce another point of failure in logistics and operations, but the private sector doesn’t mind trying to make every contract on they can retire off of using taxpayer money.
This has nothing to do with privatization, at least not in the sense you seem to mean. It has everything to do with ownership, and the military wants to actually own the products it buys.
This isn't going against the private sector as a supplier of goods, it merely says if you sell to the military, the military actually owns that product instead of rents it.
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Look up military pricing too, I remeber seeing something about how the military pays $400 for $4 bag of fuses
That "military pricing" is called "corruption". Despite everyone knowing that it happens in most militaries (or big b2b), it still is that.
Its a complete waste of taxpayer money. Money that could be redirected into more important stuff, but alas our corrupt politicians will find other things to waste it on.
I mean, you had a truly magnificent military budget for already 30 years after the nation which was supposed to be the problem solved by it started asking for food aid and falling apart into pieces.
When the funds are provided and it's certain they won't have to be used, the tasks existing expand to fill the budget.
The US military budget is so over the top that even things that it achieves are not so significantly different from what Russian military budget with Russian corruption achieves, yet its size utterly dwarfs that.
If US military budget were used as efficiently as that of, say, Poland, US military would have colonized most of the Solar system already. With actual people as colonists.
That's about that fiscal discipline the Republican party was supposedly in favor of, until it wasn't.
OK, I live in Russia, so shouldn't probably blabber too much about US politics.
Thanks for the type up! I really do appreciate the info, I'm just bitching about the current state of things and how this seems like a distraction compared to the laundry list of other stuff going on.
It's not though. The current administration can suck and also do good things. Both can be true simultaneously.
No problem. I'm not happy with the current state of things either, but crossing one thing off the list, even if its lower priority to us, is still good for someone.
I find it interesting that some of the other comments go on picking apart my thing, that basically boil down to military = bad, so right to repair = bad and its not a problem because they are already wasting money. Be glad something good is moving forward.
Consumer rights have been increasingly stomped on by the mega corporations for years now, and they continuasly push the boundries. The very concept of a terms of service "contract" that can be changed anytime by 1 party (and heavily in their favor) is insane. The more control we get back the better.
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I mean this genuinely is a good concept.
I completely agree, just bitching because there's tons of other legislature that's just as necessary if not moreso, plus the looming shithead wannabe dictator and all his garbage.
That wasn't a thing already? Not a requirement for military orders?
You mean they could ship something into the military without proper documentation and bill it every time maintenance has to be done?
Some things in your land of the free seem to confuse me.
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This is really going to confuse MAGA. Pro-military but anti-corporate profits…
…
your first mistake was thinking anyone associated with maga will think this critically, lol
perfect example of the tone-deaf left.
corporate democrats will never get it and are just "republican lite".
jackasses.
What is tone deaf about this?
instead of pushing for a right to repair for all US citizens, including military, they instead opt for right to repair for military only.
this sends the message that corporate interests are far more valuable to political leaders than the needs of their constituency.
Warren looks great on paper, but given the opportunity she fails to deliver to the American public what is needed. she's no different than Joe Biden, Al Gore, Bill Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, etc. At the end of the day they serve their corporate masters and not the public.
if they did serve the public this wouldn't even be news because everyone would have had the right to repair decades ago.
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